I’m Lakshmi G. Iyer, a Tamil American children’s book author, novelist, and 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.
As heard on NPR’s The Takeaway and BBC Asia · In The Hindu and Huffington Post · Subject of Love Chaos Kin (2025)
New · Middle Grade · Out July 20, 2026
Why Is My Skin Brown?
Sarayu is twelve, American-born, and about to spend four months with cousins in Bengaluru, which has its own ideas about her skin.
From Red Panda / Westland Books.
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
Why Is My Skin Brown? · 2026
Why Is My Hair Curly? · 2020
The Smudged Hyphen · 2026
A Star Keeps Its Distance · 2026
Hindsight · 2024
Recent Essays
- Prasna: For the Seeker In Me
From the yellow-tinted jadagams of a Chennai childhood to a tool on my own desk that reads both zodiacs: what fifty years with the quality of time built.
- On Becoming a Writer
From the treadmill call that started Why Is My Hair Curly? to the week before Why Is My Skin Brown? launches: on writing from memory, writing toward hope, and the label she finally let herself claim.
- The Twain Shall Meet
Pattu plonks down on the reading cushion I have, conveniently next to a charger, phone already plugged in. Felix whines from the next room. “Ondaa…”… Read more: The Twain Shall Meet
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.
New here? Start here. More about me on the About page. To reach me, use the Contact page.