I’m Lakshmi G. Iyer, a Tamil American essayist. I write about open transracial adoption from a side the shelf usually skips: the Indian American adoptive parent. I’m a brown mother raising white children, in contact with both birth families since 2010, and most of what I write begins in that gap between how a family looks and what it carries.
Where to Begin
- Transracial Adoption & Parenting: sixteen years of raising children across color lines, from the adoptive parent’s side.
- Indian American Adoptive Parent: the brown mother’s side of transracial adoption, a lane almost no one writes from.
- Indian American Identity: Tamil American life in the diaspora, and the work of living inside the hyphen.
- All Essays: the full archive, by thread.
Books
- The Smudged Hyphen (2026). Essay collection on transracial adoption, Tamil American identity, and belonging.
- A Star Keeps Its Distance (2026). Novel following a K-pop music journalist.
- Hindsight (2024). Novel, set between Coimbatore and Pennsylvania.
- Why Is My Hair Curly? (2020). Middle-grade chapter book about identity and family.
Recent Essays
- The Long Count
Nithya Raman is closing the gap one counted ballot at a time. On the slow, invisible labor of the women still waiting to be seen, and the work that outlasts the wait.
- Hindsight is $2.99 This Weekend — Montgomery County Book Fest eBook Sale
Hindsight is $2.99 on Kindle June 5 through 7, part of the Montgomery County Book Fest eBook Sale — eleven local authors, three days.
- Who Carries the Blame
Felix pulls toward a blowing leaf and my friend says it without lowering her voice. She is unhappy. She has been for a while. The… Read more: Who Carries the Blame
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