- Community Connection
American Adoptions: “Your Adoption Relationships”
This source is a starting point for adoptees who want to understand their relationships. Some of these guides are about friends, reunion, attachment theory, and more. This source can apply to and most benefit adoptees seeking guidance in understanding and approaching relationships.
- Birth Family Search
23andMe
23&Me is a popular genetic testing service. The website states, “Your genetic data is analyzed, and we generate your personalized reports based on well-established scientific and medical research.” The company also makes an effort to protect your information. This source can apply to and most benefit adoptees who are interested in exploring their DNA.
- Birth Family Search
Ancestry DNA
Ancestry DNA is a popular genealogy company. According to the website “AncestryDNA® gives you much more than just the places you’re from. With clear-cut historical insights and rich geographic details, we connect you to the places in the world where your story started – and you might even discover living relatives.” The company also makes a effort to protect your information. This source can apply to and most benefit adoptees who are interested in exploring their DNA.
- Birth Family Search
FamilyTreeDNA
FamilyTree DNA is a well known genetic testing company and is a division of Gene by Gene. According to the website “Founded in 2000, FamilyTreeDNA pioneered the field of genetic genealogy—the use of DNA testing to establish relationships between individuals and determine ancestry. As leaders in the industry, we provide advanced technology for users to gain further insight into their family history—all with a simple swab of DNA.” The company also makes an effort to protect your information. This source can apply to and most benefit adoptees who are interested in exploring their DNA.
- Birth Family Search
MyHeritage
MyHeritage is another genealogy platform. According to the website “ We search for people whose DNA matches yours: your relatives. Our DNA Matching technology reveals the percentage of DNA you share with your matches, showing you how closely related you are. You can connect with your newly found relatives to learn more about your family and discover shared ancestors.” The company also makes an effort to protect your information. This source can apply to and most benefit adoptees who are interested in exploring their DNA.
- Birth Family Search
WeGene
WeGene is a Chinese DNA company. According to the website “The WeGene Personal Genome Service test includes genetic health risk reports. The test uses qualitative genotyping to detect select clinically relevant variants in the genomic DNA of adults from saliva for the purpose of reporting and interpreting genetic health risks.” The company doesn’t disclose its privacy policy. This source can apply to and most benefit Chinese adoptees who are interested in exploring their DNA.
- Birth Family Search
GEDmatch
GedMatch offers a free DNA site built for genetic genealogy research. The website mentions that it may attempt to alert you if information is needed legally. GedMatch also offers you opportunities to engage in forums, this information may also not be protected. This source can apply to and most benefit Chinese adoptees who are interested in exploring their DNA.
- Birth Family Search
China DNA
China DNA is a group that does DNA analysis to help adoptees connect to their Chinese ancestry, genealogy, and heritage.
- Birth Family Search
Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Boston
The Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Boston’s Birth Family Search Process for Adoptee’s webpage gives steps and information on how to do a birth family search. Official paperwork in PDF format is available and a flow chart is also accessible to the public. This source can apply to and most benefit Korean adoptees who are interested in birth family search.
- Birth Family Search
A Family in China
An archive of a podcast that discusses the searching journey in multiple perspectives (adoptees, birth parents, & searchers). This source can apply to and most benefit those who are invested in learning more about this topic.
- Birth Family Search
Bao Bei Hui Jia
Bao Bei Hui Jia is a Chinese birth family searching site where you can post searching posters for free. You can provide information like birthday, missing time, family seeker characterization, possible memories, etc. This site is for Chinese adoptees or adoptive parents searching on behalf of their child.
- Literature
All You Can Ever Know
Cheung is a Korean transracial adoptee from Oregon and was born severely premature. She grew up knowing her adoption story as a “comforting, prepackaged myth”. As she grew up, she began to face prejudice, find her Asian American identity and became more curious about her origins. In this memoir, Cheung tells of the “search for the people who gave her up, which coincided with the birth of her own child”. It 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”.
- Literature
Palimpsest: Documents From a Korean Adoption
Sjöblom was adopted from Korea at two years old into a Swedish home. Throughout her childhood, she struggled to fit in and was constantly told to suppress her feelings of wanting to know more about her origins. Thus, she learned to bury the feelings of abandonment, like many other adoptees. In this illustrated memoir, “Sjöblom’s unaddressed feelings about her adoption come to a head when she is pregnant with her first child [and] she discovers a document containing the names of her biological parents”. She realizes “her own history may not match up with the story she’s been told her whole life: that she was an orphan without a background”. She ends up digging more into her background by traveling to Korea and the orphanage and finds out that the truth is “more complicated than the story she was told and struggled to believe”.
- Literature
Adoption Literature for Children and Young Adults: An Annotated Bibliography (Bibliographies and Indexes in Sociology)
This is an annotated bibliography that covers literature published from 1990 to 1991 suitable for children and young adults “dealing in some fashion with adoption”. There are 503 titles in this volume and are divided into fiction and nonfiction by reading level. “Most of the books included feature adoption as a main theme, others use adoption as a secondary theme, while others have characters who just happen to be adopted”. The bibliography encompasses topics such as “the age of arrival, sibling adoption, single-parent adoption, foster parent adoption, step-parent and relative adoption, transracial and intercountry adoption, Amerasian children, racial identity, minority families, special needs, large families, birthparents, search and reunion, surrogacy and open adoption, and some of the less pleasant aspects of adoption”. It is compiled by a reference librarian who is also an adoptive parent. There is also a featured selective resource list and directory of adoption-related organizations.
- Literature
Lucky Girl: A Memoir
In this true story, journalist Mei-Ling Hopgood, one of the first wave of Asian adoptees to arrive in America, “comes face to face with her past when her Chinese birth family suddenly requests a reunion after more than two decades. | In 1974, a baby girl from Taiwan arrived in America, the newly adopted child of a loving couple in Michigan”. Hopgood had an “all-American upbringing, never really identifying with her Asian roots or harboring a desire to uncover her ancestry”. | When Hopgood was in her twenties, her birth family showed up. They end up being “a boisterous, loving, bossy, complicated middle-class family who hound her daily life by phone, fax, and letter, in a language she doesn’t understand until she returns to Taiwan to meet them. As her sisters and parents pull her into their lives, claiming her as one of their own, the devastating secrets that still haunt this family begin to emerge. Spanning cultures and continents, Lucky Girl brings home a tale of joy and regret, hilarity, deep sadness, and great discovery as the author untangles the unlikely strands that formed her destiny”.
- Literature
A Single Square Picture: A Korean Adoptee’s Search for Her Roots
Kim Ji-yun, who grew up in Seoul, Korea soon became Catherine Jeanne Robinson, who had an American family and lived in Salt Lake City, Utah. Twenty years later, she returned to Seoul in search of her birth mother and found herself “an American outsider in her native land”. Katy was left “conflicted, shattered, exhilarated, and moved in ways she never imagined”. This book is “a personal odyssey that ascends to the universal”, and is “a story that will resonate with anyone who has ever questioned their place in the world — and had the courage to find the answers”.
