I get asked for book recommendations every few weeks. From hopeful parents at the start of an adoption journey. From therapists building reading lists. From writers working on essays. From friends whose children have just started asking questions the friends do not know how to answer.
Below is the list I send them. It has grown over fifteen years of reading, and it will keep growing. I have organized it into four sections so you can start wherever you are standing. If you are new to the topic, the adoptee memoirs come first for a reason. Read those before you read anything written by an adoptive parent, including me.
A note on what is not here: I have kept this list to books I have bought or wanted to buy after research. There are many other worthy titles. Consider this a doorway, not a census.
Start With Adoptee Voices
The most important books on this list. Read these first.
All You Can Ever Know, by Nicole Chung
A transracial Korean American adoptee’s memoir of searching for her birth family. Essential. If you read only one book on this list, read this one.
You Should Be Grateful, by Angela Tucker
Angela Tucker, a transracial Black adoptee, names the assumptions her white adoptive family never questioned. A generous, unsparing, necessary book for white adoptive parents.
The Language of Blood, by Jane Jeong Trenka
A Korean American adoptee’s memoir that helped open the field of adoptee-authored writing in the early 2000s. Formally inventive. Emotionally unflinching.
What White Parents Should Know About Transracial Adoption, by Melissa Guida-Richards
A Colombian American transracial adoptee writes directly to the white parents raising children of color. Practical, firm, and built from years of community work.
In Their Own Voices: Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories, by Rita Simon and Rhonda Roorda
An oral history of Black adoptees raised by white parents. A foundational text that should be in every adoption agency’s waiting room.
For Adoptive Parents
Books for the parents themselves. Read them after the adoptee-authored work above, not before.
Inside Transracial Adoption, by Beth Hall and Gail Steinberg
The most useful single volume I have read for white and non-Black parents of children of color. Detailed, practical, and rooted in decades of community work at Pact, An Adoption Alliance.
Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew, by Sherrie Eldridge
Dated in places, but the twenty things still hold. A good starting book for hopeful parents who want a framework before they start the real work.
Beyond Good Intentions, by Cheri Register
A short, clear-eyed book on the common mistakes adoptive parents make when they mean well.
Picture Books for Children
The books I read to my daughters, and the books I now give at adoption showers. Not all of these are explicitly about adoption. All of them hold space for families like ours.
The Color of Us, by Karen Katz
A mother and daughter walk through their neighborhood naming the many shades of brown they see. Written after Katz adopted her own daughter from Guatemala.
Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born, by Jamie Lee Curtis
A child asks her parents to tell her the story of her adoption one more time. A tender classic that does not shy away from the hospital and the phone call.
A Family Is a Family Is a Family, by Sara O’Leary
A kindergartener hesitates when her class is asked to describe their families, and then learns that families come in many shapes. Adoptive, step, foster, single parent, and everything in between.
Happy Adoption Day, by John McCutcheon
A picture-book version of McCutcheon’s song celebrating the day a family comes together. We read this on Gotcha Day for years.
The Red Thread, by Grace Lin
A king and queen in a faraway land follow a red thread until they find the child waiting for them. Based on an East Asian folk legend about families tied together before they meet.
I Wished for You: An Adoption Story, by Marianne Richmond
A gentle conversation between a mother bear and her adopted cub. Good for the years when the questions start arriving and the child wants to hear their story again and again.
My Own Work on This Subject
I write as an adoptive parent and as the Tamil American mother of twin daughters of Navajo descent. These three books are the ones where this work lives on my own shelf.
The Smudged Hyphen, by Lakshmi Iyer
An essay collection on hyphenated identity, motherhood across color lines, and the ordinary work of belonging. Published 2025. More about the book.
Why Is My Hair Curly?, by Lakshmi Iyer
A picture book for young children about the question I had answered a thousand times before I finally wrote it down. For kids whose hair does not match their parents’ hair, and the parents who love them. More about the book.
Why Is My Skin Brown?, by Lakshmi Iyer (forthcoming)
The companion book to Why Is My Hair Curly?, for the next set of questions that come later. Forthcoming from the same publisher.
If you have a book I should add, write to me. I update this list a few times a year.