By: Maddie Gustafson
Books have a way of helping us feel seen, especially as adoptees. They give language to feelings that are often hard to describe, share stories that feel familiar and relatable, and help validate our identities. Reading about adoptee experiences helps us connect with our roots and with ourselves.
The Power of Representation
It’s crucial to center adoptee voices in these stories. When adoptees tell their own stories, it gives the complete picture of adoption: the good, the bad, and everything in between. These stories remind us that being an adoptee is complex, and it’s okay to talk about the uncertainty and loss, as well as the joy and love that can come with it.
Representation matters. When adoptees see themselves reflected in books, it helps normalize the many layers of the adoptee experience. It shows that adoption isn’t a single story or one-size-fits-all narrative. Every adoptee’s story is deeply personal and unique. Seeing authentic adoptee voices in literature helps build understanding, not just within the adoptee community, but for anyone wanting to learn and listen.
Adoption is often talked about, but not always by those who live it. When we discover a book written by an adoptee, it can feel like a breath of fresh air. These authors put words to our often unspoken and complicated experiences, helping other adoptees see themselves reflected in the story and validate their experiences. That kind of affirmation, knowing that your thoughts and feelings make sense, can be incredibly powerful for an adoptee’s identity. Through their writing, adoptee authors create space for honesty, healing, and connection.
Hearing personal reflections, narratives, and stories remind us that adoptees aren’t alone in their thoughts, questions, or emotions. Each book adds to a larger conversation, one that continues to grow as more adoptees share their voices. We celebrate the power of books, to heal, to connect, and to remind us that every adoptee voice matters.
Book Recommendations
If you’re looking to dive into adoptee voices this month, here are a few great books to start with. To find more recommendations, visit Adoptee Reading for more!
When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology
Edited by: Shannon Gibney & Nicole Chung
Two teens take the stage and find their voice . . .
A girl learns about her heritage and begins to find her community . . .
A sister is haunted by the ghosts of loved ones lost . . .
There is no universal adoption experience, and no two adoptees have the same story. This anthology for teens edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung contains a wide range of powerful, poignant, and evocative stories in a variety of genres.
These tales from fifteen bestselling, acclaimed, and emerging adoptee authors genuinely and authentically reflect the complexity, breadth, and depth of adoptee experiences.
This groundbreaking collection centers what it’s like growing up as an adoptee. These are stories by adoptees, for adoptees, reclaiming their own narratives.
With stories by: Kelley Baker, Nicole Chung, Shannon Gibney, Mark Oshiro, MeMe Collier, Susan Harness, Meredith Ireland, Mariama J. Lockington, Lisa Nopachai, Stefany Valentine Ramirez, Matthew Salesses, Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, Eric Smith, Jenny Heijun Wills, Sun Yung Shin, Foreword by Rebecca Carroll, Afterword by JaeRan Kim, MSW, PhD
You Should Be Grateful: Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption
By: Angela Tucker
An adoption expert and transracial adoptee herself examines the unique perspectives and challenges these adoptees have as they navigate multiple cultures
“Your parents are so amazing for adopting you! You should be grateful that you were adopted.”
Angela Tucker is a Black woman, adopted from foster care by white parents. She has heard this microaggression her entire life, usually from well-intentioned strangers who view her adoptive parents as noble saviors. She is grateful for many aspects of her life, but being transracially adopted involves layers of rejection, loss, and complexity that cannot be summed up so easily.
In “You Should Be Grateful,” Tucker centers the experiences of adoptees to share deeply personal stories, well-researched history, and engrossing anecdotes from mentorship sessions with adopted youth. These perspectives challenge the fairy-tale narrative of adoption, giving way to a fuller story that explores the impacts of racism, classism, family, love, and belonging.
All You Can Ever Know
By: Nicole Chung
What does it mean to lose your roots—within your culture, within your family—and what happens when you find them?
Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From early childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth.
She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hopes of giving her a better life; that forever feeling slightly out of place was simply her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as she grew up—facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn’t see, finding her identity as an Asian American and a writer, becoming ever more curious about where she came from—she wondered if the story she’d been told was the whole truth.
With warmth, candor, and startling insight, Chung tells of her search for the people who gave her up, which coincided with the birth of her own child. All You Can Ever Know is a profound, moving chronicle of surprising connections and the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets—vital reading for anyone who has ever struggled to figure out where they belong.
Abandoned at Birth: Searching for the Arms that Once Held Me
By: Janet Sherlund
Adoption is often painted as a happy, inspirational act—a baby finds a family and lives happily ever after. But the truth is that adopted children experience displacement and rupture from their mother and that trauma can impact an individual for a lifetime. Adoption can lead to feelings of loss and grief not just for the adoptee, but for the biological and adoptive parents as well.
This startling fact comes vividly to life in Janet Sherlund’s heartbreaking memoir, Abandoned at Birth. In her literary debut, Janet Sherlund explores the complex issues so many adoptees and their parents grapple with, including the complicated emotions of rejection, loss, grief, denial, and shame.
Sherlund, who was given up for adoption within days of her birth, shares her journey to fulfill her lifetime longing for connection with her family of origin, her instinctive ache for connection with her birth mother, and what it was like to have a “borrowed identity.” In poignant detail, Sherlund describes her quest to find out who she is, where she came from, and why she was given away. And she reveals the pain and courage required to discover one’s true identity.
Whatever Next? On Adult Adoptee Identities
By: Josephine Jay, Adaline Bara, & Hannah Feben-Smith
For adoptees, the word ‘lucky’ gets thrown around a lot. They’re regularly told they’re lucky to not be in an orphanage, lucky to have been brought into a family, lucky to be adopted at all. Often they’re depicted in media as being broken, in need of saving and fixing. Then they’re expected to become the hero of their own journeys and overcome their origins.
Whatever Next? considers how these traditional narratives surrounding adoption have both dominated and damaged adoptive communities for many years, and what we should do to avoid these pitfalls.
Inspired by the conversations within their Whatever Next? community project, Jo, Addie and Hannah explore the key tropes that adoptees grapple with and how these conversations are evolving, with the goal of kickstarting new dialogues around the adoption experience more broadly, and showcase how beneficial shared discussion can be.
