A young woman from a blue-collar background--aspiring and driven--spent over twenty years quietly wondering if the family who raised her was truly hers. At thirty-two, she confirmed the unthinkable: she is the biological daughter of another, entirely unknown family. Her search unfolds like a page-turning mystery, leading to an astonishing discovery--her biological grandfather was a U.S. diplomat and author, photographed in the Oval Office with President Kennedy, greeting Charles Lindbergh on the tarmac, and meeting with Rosa Parks and international leaders.

The Minimalist is the second novel by Chinese adoptee Kailee Pedersen. Her first, Sacrificial Animals, was named a Best Horror Book of 2024 by the New York Times, and her new book is billed as a “gruesome and unsettling psychological drama.”

Hour of the Ox received the 2015 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, selected by Crystal Ann Williams, who called it "a timeless collection written by a poet of exceptional talent and grace, a voice as tough as it is tender." Cancio-Bello examines the multiplicity of distance, wanderlust, and grief at the intersection between filial and cultural responsibility. Desires are sloughed off, replaced by new ones, re-cultivated as mythos.

Heart Eater traces the author's childhood and how she went from being a nameless, abandoned nine-month-old baby in Seoul, South Korea to, as an adult, becoming an award-winning Asian American author who writes in multiple genres. The book is made of short essays, or "field notes," that explore moments and experiences in the author's life that made her pay extra attention to the words being used.

As a Black child adopted out of the New York foster care system as a toddler and raised by white evangelical parents, Rhonda Roorda had to learn how to walk in two different worlds. She often questioned "whether my skin was too dark" and if she "acted too white." She recalls being haunted by feelings of shame and not being enough.

Born in a remote mountain village in Ethiopia, Isaac Melber's life began with loss. Orphaned at a young age and placed in an orphanage, his future seemed uncertain-until a family from Kentucky crossed an ocean to bring him home. But Isaac's story is more than an adoption story. In Twice Delivered, Melber shares the raw, deeply moving journey of growing up between two worlds-wrestling with grief, identity, anger, belonging, and faith.

England, 1971. Harriet Bush is eight years old, cross-legged on her brother's bed, reading Swallows and Amazons and scratching at the wallpaper. Love and Happiness follows Harriet across two decades; from a Congleton childhood through Stockport flat-shares, from the adoption papers that arrive on her sixteenth birthday to an extraordinary piece of engineering that will make her briefly notorious. She is Black, adopted, raised by a white family who love her fiercely and understand her imperfectly.

As far back as she could remember, Shirley Munro had always known that she was adopted. What she didn’t know, at first, was how those two words, “you’re adopted,” were layered in mystery, forbidden identity, deceptions, and wishful fairytales -- and then covered up with “in your best interest.” This memoir has been lovingly stitched together with poetry, anecdotal storytelling, soul-stirring recollections, and histories.

How do you survive when your world explodes? By the time she was seven, Amy Lee Scott had seen her world end twice: first as an infant, when adoption brought her from Korea to Ohio, and again when her adoptive mother died of cancer. Orphaned twice over, Scott confronts her personal chaos by investigating a litany of historic catastrophes and the disruptions that followed.

When a stranger who turns out to be his niece receives an extra 23andMe test by mistake, it changes Alex Blum's life forever. At the age of sixty, Alex Blum made a life-altering discovery: he was the eldest of four biological brothers he never knew existed. Born in 1955, Blum had always known he was adopted, yet the secrecy of the era kept every detail of his origins sealed.

What is adoption, really? On Human Adoption begins where most adoption narratives end: not with the social idea of rescue, but with what follows. Using New Zealand as a case study, a country whose adoption legislation both mirrors and illuminates the intent of adoption law across the English-speaking world, Dr Barbara Sumner examines adoption as a legal and ideological construct that erases biological identity in the service of the state.

What’s it like when a complete unknown is actually close family? In Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Kinship—a provocative anthology curated by B.K. Jackson, with a foreword by Libby Copeland, twenty-eight acclaimed and emerging writers explore the transformative experience of encountering unknown close relatives. These are intimate stories by those who’ve spent years longing and searching for their unknown biological families and by others shocked to discover they have parents or siblings they never dreamed of—blindsiding revelations that demand both a radical recalibration of identity and a redefinition of family.

What if everything you knew about yourself turned out to be only half the story? Comedian Al Isaacs grew up as an only child with loving parents, a gift for laughter, and a simple truth about his family until an innocent phone call from his mother's doctor just weeks before his father's passing exposed a decades-old family secret-he had been part of a gray-market adoption, hidden behind false paperwork and decades of silence.

Founded in 2015, Adoptee Reading helps adopted people discover books and other writing about adoption from the adoptee perspective. Find our full list of nearly 500 titles at AdopteeReading.com, which...

Some questions follow us from the beginning. Brenda Laface was adopted as an infant. She built a life that looked complete from the outside: a marriage, a family, the roles that society had already drawn the outline for. But the questions she carried about who she was and where she came from never quieted. And when the life she had constructed finally cracked open, she found herself doing the one thing she had been trained to do: she looked honestly at what was inside.

It’s 1915 and the world is transforming, but for thirteen-year-old Bolt and Eleanor—twins so close they can literally read each other’s minds—life is falling apart. When their mother dies, they are forced to leave home under the care of a vicious con man who claims to be their long-lost uncle Charlie, the only kin they have left. During a late-night poker game, when one of his rages ends in murder, they decide to flee.

In this excerpt from Lee Langvad's novel My Interpreter – translated from Danish by Hazel Evans – an adoptee narrator who lives in Denmark goes for a…

Amy Roost reviews the anthology, Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity and the Meaning of Kinship, Edited by B.K. Jackson.

Weirdo: Tales of a Geek Adoptee delivers an inside look at adoption during the Baby Scoop Era, chronicling a shocking part of American history that should never be forgotten. Relinquished for adoption in the late 1960s, Heather Massey grew up knowing few details about her origins, with the rest shrouded in secrecy. Yet one fact was certain: she was a geek in a family of normies who couldn't understand her passion for anime and science fiction.

Korean adoptee Mee Ok Icaro shares how illness, grief, plant medicine, and writing led her back to her adoption story—and ultimately helped her reclaim her voice, identity, and sense of belonging.

Hello again, adoptee readers! Some of you may have noticed that Adoptee Reading has been inaccessible for many months. In late 2025, I realized that the site was being inundated with traffic origin…

In 1955, following the devastation of the Korean War, Bertha and Harry Holt made headlines for adopting eight Korean children. Driven by evangelical convictions and emboldened by a special act of Congress, the couple founded the Holt Adoption Program, which would facilitate the migration of tens of thousands of Korean children to the United States over the following decades. The Sueppels were among the families profoundly shaped by the legacy of the Holt Adoption Program.

Harry and Bertha Holt were called by God to “save” multiracial Korean children—many of whom did not need saving.

One Book | One Minnesota is a statewide book club that invites Minnesotans of all ages to read a common title and come together virtually to enjoy, reflect,

Amanda Fields and Holly Rizzuto Palker speak with Susan Kiyo Ito, author of I Would Meet You Anywhere, about adoption, the complexities of meeting one's birth mother, and reproductive freedom.

When you’re like me, you have to lie.It’s been one year since Manny was cast out of his family and driven into the wilderness of the American Southwest. Since then, Manny lives by self-taught rules…

Each person has their own unique story, and as Lynne Leppard’s early life included foster care and adoption, she often found herself wondering about her origins and heritage. Her loyalty to her…

Adopted as an infant by a naval officer and his wife during the Baby Scoop Era, Diane Wheaton has always heard conflicting versions of the truth of her origins—but it’s not until she is forty-seven…

Air Force veteran Randall Lorentz happened to meet research librarian Suzanne Malek. “He wanted to know why his DNA results didn’t match his reality,” Malek said. “We soon discovered his pare…

“What if you spend the rest of your life chasing love, only to find her cowering in the pit of your stomach? What then?” Almost Loved follows a former foster child’s search for love and connection,…

Fiction | Alice Stephens: Cavities and Fillings | Bodega Magazine