Adoption Authors

Adoption Stories and Books- Birthmother Memoirs to Adoptee Information

While everyone seems to love an adoption story; whether it be adoption horror stories or adoption reunion stories, adoption success stories  or adoption stories gone wrong – these seem to capture the interest of the general public who want to peek into our lives like adoption voyeurs. However, not all books about adoption are stories about adoption. Though the adoption memoir has a place, there are many more informational books about adoption that should also be well known and on everyone’s books shelves.

A Relevant Adoption Book List

There are many MORE books about “how to adopt a child” or even “adoption books for kids”; those will NOT be my primary focus, but some will be included here even if only to even out the lists and also for SEO purposes. I’m going to do my best here to break adoption books down via categories.  Obviously some books will be relevant across the board and serve to meet more than one need.  The books that I HAVE read myself will be so noted, but obviously I have not read them all.


Losing a Child to Adoption Leaves a Hole in the Heart

By Mirah Riben Lorraine Dusky is an accomplished journalist and author. She has made a career of writing, a career which led her to meeting the father of her daughter. It is also a career which contributed to her feeling the need to hide the shame of her “out of wedlock” 1960s pregnancy and then to hide the evidence born of that illicit affair by placing her daughter for adoption….


Adoption Creates a “Split at the Root”

By Mirah Riben In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future. Alex Haley I am not a fan, in general, of adoption memoirs perhaps because I have read too may. Most are elongated, detailed blog posts. Split at the Root: a memoir of love and lost identity stands head and shoulders above the run-of-the-mill adoption memoir. If Oprah was still on their air,…


 “Hole in My Heart” Lorraine Dusky’s New Adoption Memoir

“Hole in My Heart” isn’t light reading, but it is compelling and necessary. Perhaps it is best described as s strong dose of medicine; a strong antidote to adoption mythology, and a injection of raw honesty wrapped up in a riveting story of a life uncommon to most, much like a spoonful of sugar. The truth goes down smooth leaving needed ethical questions emerging as an aftertaste.


Voices From AdoptionLand

By Mirah Riben “I feel like a stolen heart from a corpse, trapped in a foreign body.” Sunny Jo “This is not something that gets better over time. Because as you get older, as you live, you learn more and more about what’s been taken away from you. And you learn more and more about the enormity of what’s been stolen.” Cameron Horn “I feel like a ghost, invisible to…


Kate Mulgrew Comes Out as a Birthmother

I have to say quite clearly; Birthmother and actress Kate Mulgrew’s new memoir “Born with Teeth” is NOT an adoption book. It’s really a memoir of an actress who is a birthmother. The adoption story part of it is very true to the experience and very real, very raw and one will find themselves totally “getting it”. There just isn’t nearly as much “adoption” as one might think based on the press coverage. Like she really goes into way more and, in some ways much deeper and better, with the interviews. Granted she does write about the relinquishment, but after that, until the VERY end, it’s more of an undercurrent of sorts that doesn’t really get addressed all that much, but referred to in passing. If you are looking for birthmother validation, then you might be disappointed.


The Paradox of Adoption Grief

By Laura Marie Scoggins It has been 15 years since I found out my birth mother died of breast cancer. My story had a lot of twists and turns until two years later I was able to walk into the office of Catholic Charities and obtain her true identity. How those events unfolded and why it took so long is a long story. Search, reunion and even the post reunion…


Finding Family Truths and Roots

By Mirah Riben Review of the book, Finding Our Families: The first-of-its-kind for donor-conceived people and their families by Wendy Kramer and Naomi Cahn, J.D. Finding Our Families is a treasure trove of compassionate advice designed to help those raising the more than an estimated million people who were conceived using so-called donor* sperm, the tens of thousands whose lives began with eggs of contributors, and thousands who were “adopted”…


Adoption Book Review: “Birth Mother” by Denise Emanuel Clemen

What I love the most about Denise Emanuel Clemen’s memoir “Birth Mother” is that it is ONLY the pregnancy and immediate adoption experience that she tells. Just as the reader has so many unanswered questions and wonders, the birthmother is left always wondering about her child and the child is left wondering about the mother. It is that complete separation that makes this story so powerful.


The Highs and Lows of The Birthmother Chapter

Whats More Evil? The word “Birthmother” or the fights caused over it? So, while I hate, hate, hate, the adoption terminology wars and refuse to participate in them, I’m going to break my rules because I also hate, hate, hate assumptions and all the rest too. And since I was literally forced to deal with this today, rather than just enjoying the printed thrills of having my book come in the mail, I’m going to go there.




Summer of Love

The setting is unmistakably Hawaii, and Shelley and I, classic 1968: blond and tan in our stylish mini-dresses, the telltale bulges of early pregnancy thus far absent from our slender frames. We were girls waiting to become women, my friends and I — eighteen years old, but girls nonetheless — on the verge of grown-up lives that we could not yet envision.


Surrender and Subordination: Birth Mothers and Adoption Law

This article analyzes the provisions in a collection of birth mother surrender documents assembled by the author—seventy-five mid-twentieth century documents executed in twenty-six different states. In order to establish the significance of the surrender document provisions with respect to these claims, the article first relates depictions by birth mothers of a journey from silence to legislative advocacy. The article then examines the conflicting claims about birth mothers that pervade legislative contests over adult adoptee access to original birth certificates. Finally, the article analyzes the provisions of the surrender documents. The analysis of the provisions definitively supports birth mother advocates’ reports that women were neither offered a choice of nor guaranteed lifelong anonymity. Their opponents’ contentions to the contrary, whether motivated by concern for birth mothers or other interests, reinscribe an earlier culture of shame and secrecy, subordinating women’s own wishes and silencing their newly raised voices.


Gazillion Voices

Gazillion Voices will be an adoptee-led magazine focusing on topics and issues important to the adoption community and beyond. Currently, while Kevin teases us with posts and excerpts from the inaugural issue, there is a KickStarter campaign going to defray the costs of creating a real magazine! I was thrilled and did not hesitate at all when Kevin asked me if I would consider being part of the LGA team.