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
- 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
- Openness as a Practice: On WGBB’s After the Kids Move In (2026 Transcript)
A June 2026 radio conversation with AFFCNY’s Pat O’Brien and Chester Jackson: infertility grief, open adoption, and learning to hold children lightly.
- The Color Sanguine
This week I have been hard at work plumbing the depths. I sifted through years of correspondence, pored over pictures, marinated in memories from over… Read more: The Color Sanguine
New here? Start here. More about me on the About page. To reach me, use the Contact page.