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.
Bring the film to your city
Love Chaos Kin, the feature documentary about my family, is booking theaters by demand. If enough people near you want to see it, director Chithra Jeyaram can book a local screening. Tell us where you are and help fill a theater.
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
- What the Hands Know
Felix has been refusing his food. The kibble sits in his bowl untouched, so I reach for the treats he likes, the duck rounds. I… Read more: What the Hands Know
- A New Book Is Coming: Why Is My Skin Brown?
A new middle-grade novel is on the way. Sarayu is twelve, Pennsylvania-born, and about to learn that Bengaluru has its own ideas about her skin.
- Table, Menu
I was scrolling Threads on a Saturday afternoon, the fan on, a clutch of kids in the home, loud, and an orange card slid up… Read more: Table, Menu
New here? Start here. More about me on the About page. To reach me, use the Contact page.