Adoptee Reading Books Written and Recommended by Adoptees – is a list of 100 adoptee authored books from 2010 to 2019 complied by Adoptee Reading blog. As someone who prides themselves on reading relinquishment and adoption books (memoirs, clinical, research) throughout the year, I was very excited to see the Adoptee Reading recommended book list. The list of adoption books is impressive because of the wide variety of adoptee memories, biographies, and history of adoption books. It includes anthology books, some of which I have read, Flip the Script: Adult Adoptee Anthology, and others that are new to me – Lost Daughters: Writing Adoption from a Place of Empowerment & Peace and, Parenting as Adoptees. Books by authors that were born around the world, addresses the transracial and cultural experience of being an adoptee from international adoption. With a lack of information written about how adoptees are impacted by DNA testing, it was great to see numerous books on adoption reunion impacted by DNA.
Two books I have read that I was very glad that made the list are The Harris Narratives: An Introspective Study of a Transracial Adoptee and by Susan Harris O’Connor and All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir by Nicole Chung. Susan Harris O’Connor’s insights into racial identity are presented in detail that I have not heard in an adoption workshop or read in the research. All You Can Ever Know is a national bestseller and an award-winning book due to Nicole’s incredible writing skills of what it is like to lose your roots, being transracially adopted, and the complex journey of meeting her first family.
Some of the authors I have been fortunate to hear on Adoptees On podcast. An Affair with My Mother: A Story of Adoption, Secrecy, and Love, by Caitríona Palmer writes of her secret reunion relationship with her birth mother that abruptly ended, will be helpful to those dealing with secret reunion relationships and secondary rejection. David Bohl’s memoir Parallel Universes: The Story of Rebirth openly shares his pain with not fitting-in and how he used alcohol and drugs to medicate his emotional pain will be helpful to those whose relinquishment trauma leads to addiction. Anne Heffron’s book You Don’t Look Adopted is one of the best books I have read about “coming out of the fog” with raw emotions of how relinquishment impacts relationships, identity, and the healing that comes with accepting the painful reality of an adoptee’s life-long journey.
Adoption research books include A Law of Blood-ties: The “Right” to Access Genetic Ancestry by Alice Diver and Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism by Kim Park Nelson. While I have read many of Sherrie Eldridge’s books, I was happy to see she has a new book self-help book 20 Life-Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make. An adoption parenting book that made the adoptee reading list includes Parenting in the Eye of the Storm: The Adoptive Parent’s Guide to Navigating the Teen Years by Katie Naftzger. The list also includes poetry, fiction, children’s books, and the history of adoption books.
Congratulations to all the adoptee authors who made the Adoptees Reading list of the last decade. It is extremely brave to share their very personal and painful journey. While it can be very healing to write and publicly share one’s story, it also often comes with a price with a lack of privacy, criticism, and sometimes backlash from family, so I hope the authors are fortunate to have good people around them. As an adoption social worker, words alone cannot express how much I have learned from all the adoption triad members who have shared their stories with me either in sessions, conferences, Adoptees On podcasts, and through adoption books. The complete adoptee reading list can be found at http://adopteereading.com/100-adoptee-authored-books-from-the-decade-2010-2019/
