Transracial and Transnational Adoption Books for Adults

Beyond Good Intentions
by Cheri Register
$18.95
Cheri, the white mother of two adult daugthers adopted from Korea, has written ten essays about pitfalls that well-meaning parents like herself can easily slip into. Each essay begins with an exaggerated version of an adoptive parent's perspective, and then explores the difficulties that perspective can create in the relationship between parent and child. The author's advice is based on her own experience of raising her daughters, her daughters' reflections on their childhoods, and the experiences of many other adult international adoptees.

Pact says: These essays offer a thoughtful, candid look at the intersection between parental feelings and expectations and the adopted child's emotional needs.
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Black Baby White Hands: A View from the Crib
by Jaiya John
$17.00
Transracial adoption remains a potent and charged idea in American social life. Now, the children of these adoptions are coming of age as adults. Dr. Jaiya John, through his honest memoir, presents us with a voice from deep within the heart of this cultural and psychological phenomenon. The first Black child in the history of New Mexico to be adopted by a white family, John's story is a landmark.

Pact says: John's adpotive parents taught him how to love; hence, he could readily accept and envelope his biological family. Had he been denied unflinching love as a child, there might have been bitterness and resentment toward his biological parents for their absence in his life. The reader meets an emotional healthy person who successfully evolves from a darkness into the light of love.
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Brown Babies, Pink Parents
by Amy Ford
$14.95
Brown Babies Pink Parents is a practical guide for Caucasian parents who are raising Black children. Author Amy Ford is the adoptive mother of three African American daughters. With firsthand experience in facing the challenges of Transracial adoption, she addresses a multitude of concerns from basic skin and hair care, racial socialization, accepting white privilege, and ways to celebrate the diversity of your family.

Pact says: Despite an unfortunate title that appears to trivialize race, this really is a helpful book with an upbeat, but realistic tone.
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Colours In Me, The
Edited by Perlita Harris
Gives voice to the thoughts, feelings and experiences of adopted children, this book is skillfully organized by Perlita Harris (who also edited In Search of Belonging: Reflections by Transracially Adopted People), into a beautiful collection of poetry, personal stories, interviews and artwork by children and young adults ages five to twenty. The majority of the children were adopted from foster care, often well past their infancy. There is a lot of writing about the experience of being moved between foster carers, memories of being removed from biological family, and the feelings they had upon meeting their new parents for the first time. Many other children in the book were international adoptees; there is a section about the experience of visiting their birth countries.

Pact says: This book a wonderful gift. Reading what these children have to say is moving, challenging and thought-provoking. We highly recommend it. Pact CANNOT carry this book because of the cost involved in international shipping but if you can get it we recommend it highly.
http://www.baaf.org.uk/res/pubs/books/book_coloursme.shtml

Daughter of the Ganges
by Asha Miro
$14.00
Daughter of the Ganges is a moving, 2-part account of the author's search for her roots in India, from where she was taken as an almost 7- year old to be adopted by a loving couple from Barcelona, Spain. The first part of the book details her first trip back to India, as a 27 year old, yearning to find the missing pieces in what little information she has about her first seven years of life and the second part of her book, details her return to India and her search for biological family.

Pact says: Miro writes eloquently about the importance to her of searching and finding that connection, of seeing herself reflected in biological family members and of finally being able to imagine what her life would have been like had her circumstances been different.
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Dim Sum, Bagels and Grits: A Sourcebook for Multicultural Families
by Myra Alperson
$15.00
Alperson will take you on a thoughtful, provocative and cheerful personal journey into the identity issues of multicultural adoptive families through her own experience of adopting her daughter Sadie from China as a single mother. This fascinating introduction to the diversity of approaches and attitudes among such families is enriched by voices not often heard from. Including lively stories from transracial adoptees and adoptive parents along with the author's own straightforward views.

Pact says: Alperson's approach provides a wonderful jump start to the thinking of anyone considering transracial adoption.
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In Search of Belonging: Reflections by Transracially Adopted People
Edited by Perlita Harris
In Search of Belonging is a collection of work by transracially adopted people who were raised in the United Kingdom. There are writings (essays, letters, poetry), as well as photos of sculpture and other works of visual art. The contributors explore the theme of transracial adoption in all its complexity. The variety of experience and feelings reflected in this anthology is remarkable. Editor Perlita Harris has organized the book into several sections: Separation and Loss; Childhood; Who am I?; Reconnection; Search and Reunion; Life Stories and Living with Transracial Adoption

Pact says: In Search of Belonging is a valuable contribution to the adoption world, and should be read by adoptees, by adoptive parents, and by adoption professionals. Pact CANNOT carry this book because of the cost involved in international shipping but if you can get it we recommend it highly.
http://www.baaf.org.uk/res/pubs/books/book_transadopted.shtml

In Their Own Voices
by Rita Simon & Rhonda Roorda
$27.50
In this collection of interviews conducted with black and biracial young adults who were adopted by white parents, the authors present the personal stories of twenty four individuals who hail from a wide range of religious, economic, political, and professional backgrounds. How does the experience affect their racial and social identities, their choice of friends and marital partners, and their lifestyles? In addition to interviews, the book includes overviews of both the history and current legal status of transracial adoption.

Pact says: This book should be in the library of every transracial adoptive family.
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In Their Parents' Voices
by Rita Simon and Rhonda Roorda
$27.50
In this collection of interviews conducted with the parents of black and biracial young adoptees who were interviewed for In Their Own Voices. In addition to interviews, the book includes overviews of both the history and current legal status of transracial adoption.

Pact says: This book offers some good insights from experienced parents who discuss their experience and their children's from the long view of having completed the task of raising their children. Another important contribution to the literature on transracial adoption.
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In Their Siblings Voices
by Rita J. Simon & Rhonda M. Roorda
$24.50
Plot Summary: In this collection of interviews conducted with the parents of black and biracial young adoptees who were interviewed for In Their Own Voices. In addition to interviews, the book includes overviews of both the history and current legal status of transracial adoption.

Pact Says: This book offers some good insights from experienced parents who discuss their experience and their children's from the long view of having completed the task of raising their children. Another important contribution to the literature on transracial adoption.
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Inside Transracial Adoption
by Gail Steinberg & Beth Hall
$24.95
Inside Transracial Adoption moves beyond the debate to offer real solutions to real challenges. Steinberg & Hall's moving personal stories are encouraging and supportive and reinforce the message that race matters, racism is alive, and families built transracially can develop strong and binding ties by embracing rather than fearing their differences. A good read, filled with warmth and humor, this book offers families and professionals insight into the experience of multiracial adoptive families. Whether through domestic or international adoption the authors offer direction for building close, loving, and very real families consisting of individuals who are proud and culturally competent members of differing races.

Pact says: If a book could realistically carry a thirty-odd word title, then this book's might be something like How to Get to the Place Where It Feels Almost Fun to Let People Wonder How You and Your Kids Could So Clearly Belong to One Another When You Look So Different!

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Lucky Girl
by Mei-Long Hopgood
$23.95
Mei-Ling Hopgood has written a wonderful memoir, Lucky Girl, about her reunion with her birth family in Taiwan. With her clear prose and journalist's eye for detail, she creates a compelling story of how the relationship begins and how it develops over the years through visits and letters.

Pact says: One of the strongest aspects of Lucky Girl is the way Hopgood captures the complexity of reunion. As their relationships develop beyond first impressions, she learns some of the secrets and painful events that have shaped her birth family and the lives of her siblings. This evolution is inevitable and takes her readers along on a rollercoaster ride of joy and sorrow, disillusionment and acceptance.
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Once They Hear My Name
edited by Marilyn Lammert and Mary Anne Hess
$14.95
Nine adult Korean adoptees ranging in age from twenty-five to fifty-three speak in interviews about their struggles growing up and how they've chosen to navigate the complex journey towards identity acceptance. Each adoptee's story appears to be transcribed verbatim from oral interviews. Phrases spoken out loud such as "I don't think...I forget exactly...kind of..." are fine in conversation, but translated to paper they sometimes weaken the story's impact although we appreciate the editors trying hard to let the adoptees (literally) speak for themselves.

Pact says: For a person who is new to the experiences of transracial adoption, this book is certainly worthy.
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Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption
Jane Jeong Tranka, Julia Chinyere Oparah and Sun Yung Shin, Editors
$20.00
Although transracial adoption is generally considered win-win, it has too often exacted a heavy toll on children when white parents approach it from a color blind or child-saving mentality. Through gripping essays, poetry and are, transracially adopted writers and artists from around the world carefully explore explore this most intimate aspect of globalization.

Pact says: Experts on their own experience, the writers of Outsiders Within offer an illuminating and provocative glimpse in to the world of transracial adoption that will make many of us uncomfortable but validates the lives of those children currently placed for adoption across racial and cultural lines. A must read!
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Red Dust Road
by Jackie Kay
$24.00
From the moment when, as a little girl, she realizes that her skin is a different color from that of her beloved mum and dad, to the tracing and finding of her birth parents, her Highland mother and Nigerian father, the journey that Jackie Kay undertakes is full of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions. Taking the reader from Glasgow to Lagos and beyond, Red Dust Road is revelatory, redemptive and courageous, unique in its voice and universal in its reach. It is a heart-stopping story of parents and siblings, friends and strangers, belonging and beliefs, biology and destiny, and love.

Pact says: Jackie had wonderful adoptive parents who did everything to support their daughter's identity, racially and in adoption - this book underscores the reality that adoption is truly a lifelong issue. Susan Ito says, "Red Dust Road is the best adoption memoir I have ever read!"

Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender and Kinship
by Sara Dorow
$23.00
Dorow provides an honest and intriguing look at hard topics in language that's sometimes painfully direct. In discussing the children who are available for adoption, for example, Dorow describes how the "industry" of adoption encourages the invisibility of special-needs children, while the "healthiest," and thus most "salable" children, get the best care in orphanages. She addresses institutional racism, gender and class issues in the specific context of US-Chinese adoptions, but her analysis has much broader applicability.

Pact says: There's no denying that this is a challenging read, both intellectually and emotionally--Dorow brings her sociologist's sensibility to this academic text, and her conclusions may make the reader uncomfortable. She insists that we look at the whole truth, including who benefits and who is served when adoptions happen.
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Transracial Adoption and Foster Care: Practical Issues for Professionals
By Joseph Crumbley
$18.95
This book describes specific ways practitioners can work with transracial families to ensure that children develop positive racial and cultural identities. Dr. Crumbley also addresses such concerns as cultural competence and recruitment of adoptive and foster parents of color. Case studies and "myths" of transracial adoption provide valuable background information for child welfare professionals as well as adoptive parents.

Pact says: Joe Crumbley is one of the adoption world's clearest thinkers about transracial placements. Informed by his expertise as a clinician and his experience as a Black American, he has created an important book for anyone interested in the identity development of adopted children of color.
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Voices from Another Place
edited by Susan Soon Keum Cox
$12.00
A collection of poetry, fiction, memoir, essay, photography and artwork, created by adopted Koreans after adulthood. Their diverse and unmistakably honest voices cast light on issues common tto those who were internationally adopted in particular and to Koreans who have grown up in American or European cultures.

Pact says: The importance of connecting to one's full identity, including culture and country of origin is made clear through their open sharing of works expressing their deepest experiences. Highly recommended.

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