BIPOC Adoptee Authored Memoirs, Poetry, and Creative Writing
Rebecca Carroll, Surviving the White Gaze: A Memoir. Simon and Schuster, 2022.
Nicole Chung, All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir. Catapult, 2019.
Shannon Gibney, The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption. Penguin Random House, 2024.
Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung, eds. When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology. Harper Teen, 2023.
Susan Harness, Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption. Nebraska University Press, 2018.
Abigail K. Hasberry, Adopting Privilege: A Memoir of Reinventing My Adoptee Narrative. Muse Books, 2025.
Lee Herrick, In Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected Poems. Gunpowder Press, 2024.
Lee Herrick, Scar and Flower. Word Poetry Press, 2019.
Susan Ito, I Would Meet You Anywhere: A Memoir. Ohio State University Press, 2023.
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Interrogation Room. White Wine Press, 2018.
Julayne Lee, Not My White Savior. Rare Bird Books, 2018.
Mariama J. Lockington, For Black Girls Like Me. Square Fish, 2022.
Sarah Myer, Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story. First Second, 2023.
Harrison Mooney, Invisible Boy: A Memoir of Self-Discovery. Steerforth, 2022.
Sun Yung Shin, Unbearable Splendor. Coffee House Press, 2016.
Cameron Lee Smalls, The Adoptee's Journey: From Loss and Trauma to Healing and Empowerment. IVP, 2024.
Jane Jeong Trenka, The Language of Blood: A Memoir. Graywolf Press, 2005
Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin, eds. Outsiders within: Writing on Transracial Adoption. University of Minnesota Press, 2021 [2006].
Alice Stephens, Famous Adopted People: A Novel. Unnamed Press, 2018.
Angela Tucker, You Should Be Grateful. Penguin Random House, 2023.
Jenny Wills, Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related. A Memoir. McClelland & Stewart, 2019.
Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, Palimpsest: Documents from a Korean Adoption. Drawn and Quarterly, 2019.
BIPOC Adoptee Authored Academic Texts
SunAh M. Laybourn, Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants. NYU Press, 2024.
Sara Docan‐Morgan, In Reunion: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Communication of Family. Temple University Press, 2024.
Kathryn A. Mariner, Contingent Kinship: The Flows and Futures of Adoption in the United States. Vol. 2 Univ of California Press, 2019.
Kimberly McKee, Disrupting Kinship: Transnational Politics of Korean Adoption in the United States. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2019.
Kimberly McKee, Adoption Fantasies: The Fetishization of Asian Adoptees from Girlhood to Womanhood. Ohio State University Press, 2023.
Kim Park Nelson, Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism Rutgers University Press, 2016.
SooJin Pate, From Orphan to Adoptee: US Empire and Genealogies of Korean Adoption U of Minnesota Press, 2014.
Elizabeth Raleigh, Selling transracial adoption: Families, markets, and the color line. Temple University Press, 2018.
Non-Adoptee Authored Academic Texts on Transracial and Transnational Adoption
Laura Briggs, Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012.
Laura Briggs, Taking Children: A History of American Terror. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2020.
Sara K. Dorow, Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, and Kinship. New York: New York University Press, 2006.
Margaret D. Jacobs, A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World U of Nebraska Press, 2014.
Heather Jacobson, Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption, and the Negotiation of Family Difference. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008.
Mark C. Jerng, Claiming Others: Transracial Adoption and National Belonging. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
Kathryn Joyce, The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption. New York: Public Affairs, 2013.
Eleana Kim, Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
Hosu Kim, Birth Mothers and Transnational Adoption Practice in South Korea: Virtual Mothering. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Diana Marre and Laura Briggs, eds. International Adoption: Global Inequalities and the Circulation of Children. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
Arissa H. Oh, To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption Stanford University Press, 2015.
Pamela Anne Quiroz, Adoption in a Color-Blind Society. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007.
Dorothy Roberts, Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families and how Abolition can Build a Safer World Basic Books, 2022.
Gretchen Sisson, Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2024.
Winslow, Rachel Rains. The Best Possible Immigrants: International Adoption and the American Family. 1st ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.