Adoption and Mothering. Edited by Frances Latchford, $34.95

ADOPTION AND MOTHERING is an international and interdisciplinary collection that examines birthmothers and adoptive mothers; it investigates debate, discourse, and the politics of adoption that surrounds them and impacts contemporary notions of motherhood as biological and non-biological kin in North American contexts. Written by authors from disciplinary perspectives in the humanities and social sciences, its essays offer critical perspectives on adoption and mothering that challenge institutionalized ideas, assumptions, pathologies, and psychologies that are used to interpret birthmothers and adoptive mothers. Its authors interrogate questions of race, gender, disability, class and sexuality as they relate to the experience, identity, and subjectivity of ‘mothers’ who are marked by the institution of adoption. It investigates historical and contemporary themes, language, law, and practices that concern mothering in closed and open adoption systems, and in transracial and transnational adoption. It critically explores the expectations, scrutiny, and liminality that birthmothers and adoptive mothers often face. It looks at imperatives that mothers be the keepers of culture, potential adversaries, and borderland mothers. In effect, it creates a productive and exciting dialogue between birthmothers and adoptive mothers to challenge traditional notions of motherhood.

Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming Our Families and America. Adam Pertman, $18.95

ADOPTION NATION represents the first comprehensive overview of adoption issues facing America, pulling together and sorting out the confusing and contradictory masses of information relating to adoption’s politics, policies, and practices. As adoption continues to shed its corrosive stigmas, ADOPTION NATION recounts the system’s long history of secrecy, shedding light on its seismic cultural reinvention over the past several decades.

As an adoptive father and a seasoned journalist, Pertman combines compelling stories with a penetrating and thoughtful analysis of the role of adoption in today’s society and its likely future impact. The brilliantly revised ADOPTION NATION is an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to learn how this crucial issue is shaping our families, our metamorphosing communities, and our growing connections to a global world.

Aski Awasis / Children of the Earth: First Peoples Speaking on Adoption. Edited by Jeannine Carrière, $18.95

The adoption of Aboriginal children into non-Aboriginal families has a long and contentious history in Canada. Life stories told by First Nations people reveal that the adoption experience has been far from positive for these communities and has, in fact, been an integral aspect of colonization. In an effort to decolonize adoption practices, the Yellowhead Tribal Services Agency (YTSA) in Alberta has integrated customary First Peoples’ adoption practices with provincial adoption laws and regulations. Introducing this unique agency, the authors outline the history of First Nations adoptions and, through an interview with a YTSA Elder, describe the adoption ceremonies offered at YTSA. Themes that emerged from interviews with adoptive parents and youth who have been adopted through this new integrated practice are also explored, and important recommendations for policy and practice in First Nations adoption are offered.

Being Adopted: the Lifelong Search for Self. David Brodzinsky, Marshall Swchecter & Robin Marantz Henig, $17.50

How does it feel to be adopted? Do you feel differently about it when you're forty years old than you do when you're thirteen? As recently as a generation ago, being adopted seemed no different from being born into the family that raised you. Now, however, studies show that being adopted can affect many aspects of adoptees' lives, from relationships with adoptive parents to bonds with their own children.

BEING ADOPTED uses the voices of adoptees themselves to trace how adoption is experienced over a lifetime, and their reflections are moving, keenly self-aware, and very personal. Replete with vital and astute analysis by the authors-who have a joint total of more than fifty-five years' experience in clinical and research work with adoptees and their families-this book offers a place to turn for thousands of adoptees who, at one time or another, have questioned the validity of their feelings but have had no one to compare their experiences with.

Born in Our Hearts: Stories of Adoption. Filis Casey & Marisa Catalina Casey, $16.50

This is an inspiring collection of true stories, written from many perspectives, of adoption. Birth parents, adoptive parents and adult adopted children all write about the challenges and rewards of this most remarkable journey.

Carried in Our Hearts: the Gift of Adoption: Inspiring Stories of Families Created Across Continents. Jane Aronson, $27.50

Over the course of the past three decades, Dr. Aronson has touched the lives of thousands of adopted children from around the world and in this inspiring book she presents moving first-person testimonies from parents (and a few children themselves) whose lives have been blessed by adoption.

Divided into thematic sections — such as  "The Decision," "The Journey," and "The Moment We Met") — each prefaced by Dr. Aronson, this book introduces readers to Claude Knobler, a writer from Los Angeles whose journey to Ethiopia to adopt his son led to an unexpectedly moving encounter with the boy’s courageous birthmother; actor Mary Louise-Parker whose older adopted son’s bond with her newly adopted baby daughter was deep and unwavering from the instant the two children met; and Lynn Danzker, an entrepreneur who set off alone to adopt her son, Cole, and in the process, met and married her husband. The authors of these testimonies range from doctors to filmmakers, from financial consultants to celebrities—all of them bound by their moving and transformative experience as adoptive parents.

The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption. Kathryn Joyce, $30.00

A compelling, sympathetic investigation into how the religious right came to dominate the child adoption "market," and the often tragic consequences for birth parents, children, and adoptive families.

THE CHILD CATCHERS is a shocking exposé of what the adoption industry has become and how it got there, told through deep investigative reporting and the heartbreaking stories of individuals who found that their own, and their children's, well-being was ultimately irrelevant in a market driven by profit and now, pulpit command.

Family Wanted: True Stories of Adoption. Edited by Sara Holloway, $18.95

Family has always been fertile ground for writers. To the usual familial themes, adoption adds its own potent elements: mystery, luck, the questing for origins, the yearning for a child, the importance (or not) of blood ties, and fundamental questions about what it is to become a parent and a family. The pieces in FAMILY WANTED reveal profound truths about identity, family, love and belonging.

A Forever Family: a True Story of Adoption. John Houghton, $16.00

John Houghton and his wife — middle class, highly educated, well-traveled — learned that they could not have children of their own. Instead they adopted three siblings, two boys and a girl, who were looking for 'a forever family', as the adoption agencies put it. What followed is all too common in adoptive families, but it is rarely talked about in public and has never been described with such transparent honesty as it is in the pages of this remarkable book. This is a story of desperate wanting, of anger and frustrated love. It is written with a kind of plain clarity that is both restrained and emotionally powerful. There is no triumphant victory over pain and loss, but there is, in the end, something like hope — a testament to the difference that two decent people can make by sustaining their commitment to an impossible situation.

The Girls Who Went Away: the Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe vs. Wade. Ann Fessler, $20.00

A powerful and groundbreaking look at the history of hundreds of thousands of young single American women forced to give up their newborn children in the fifties, sixties, and early seventies. THE GIRLS WHO WENT AWAY tells a story not of wild and carefree sexual liberation, but rather of a devastating double standard that has had punishing long-term effects on these women and on the children they gave up for adoption. Based on Fessler's groundbreaking interviews, it brings to brilliant life these women's voices and the spirit of the time, allowing each to share her own experience in gripping and intimate detail.

Insight Into Adoption: Uncovering and Understanding the Heart of Adoption, 2nd Edition. Barbara Taylor Bloomquist, $39.95

INSIGHT INTO ADOPTION emphasizes the need to help parents understand some of the potentially challenging aspects of raising adopted children so they can deal with them proactively and positively. The book provides realistic and factual insight into the world of the adoptive child, and is a valuable resource for parents, social workers, counselors and educators.

Instant Mom. Nia Vardolos, $28.99

Nia Vardalos firmly believed she was supposed to be a mom, but Mother Nature and modern medicine had put her in a headlock. So she made a choice that shocked friends, family, and even herself — with only fourteen hours' notice, she adopted a preschooler.

INSTANT MOM is Vardalos's poignant and hilarious true chronicle of trying to become a mother. With frank honesty, she describes how she and husband Ian Gomez eventually found their daughter... and what happened next. Vardalos explores innovative ways to conquer the challenges all new moms face, from sleep to personal grooming, and learns that whether via biology, relationship, or adoption — motherhood comes in many forms.

Labours of Love: Canadians Talk about Adoption. Deborah Brennan, $28.99

LABOURS OF LOVE chronicles the journeys of Canadians connected through adoption. While each account is unique, there are undeniable commonalities in these stories from birthparents adoptive parents and adoptees.

A Love Like No Other: Stories from Adoptive Parents. Pamela Kruger & Jill Smolowe, editors, $18.50

Impressive for both its breadth and its quality, A LOVE LIKE NO OTHER is a timely and heartwarming mosaic of the contemporary lives of adoptive parents and their children. In elegant prose and with refreshing honesty, these essays will introduce you to a group of families you won't soon forget.

Love, Loss, & Longing: Stories of Adoption. Carol Bowyer Shipley, $26.95

When adoptee Carol Shipley met her birthmother after fifty years of longing to know her origins, the two parts of her story-before adoption and after-finally blended. This book chronicles Carol's healing story, and the moving stories of other birthmothers and adoptive parents. Highlighting the benefits of open adoption, the right of adoptees to know their origins, and the right of gays and lesbians to adopt, this book lends support for better adoption practices and legislation.

The Lucky Ones: Our Stories of Adopting Children from China. Edited by Ann Rauhala, foreword by Jan Wong, $19.95

Since the late 1980s, as many as 7,000 Chinese-born girls have been adopted annually and now live in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe. The story of these children is a compelling narrative of hope and optimism but it may also become a story of dislocation and crisis of identity. The memoirs collected in THE LUCKY ONES grapple with this odd destiny with insight, compassion, humour and above all, love.

Make Me a Mother: a Memoir. Susanne Antonetta, $28.95

A woman unexpectedly finds her best self through a sleepy bundle handed over at the airport in this heartfelt and surprising memoir.

Mamalita: an Adoption Memoir. Jessica O’Dwyer, $20.50

This gripping memoir details an ordinary American woman’s quest to adopt a baby girl from Guatemala in the face of overwhelming adversity. MAMALITA is as much a story about the bond between a mother and child as it is about the lengths to which adoptive parents go in their quest to become parents. At turns harrowing, heartbreaking, and inspiring, this is a classic story of the triumph of a mother’s love over almost insurmountable odds.

Mother Me: an Adopted Woman's Journey to Motherhood. Zara Phillips, $16.95

For Zara Phillips, it was the experience of becoming a mother that revealed what being adopted really meant. For the first time, she gained a deeper understanding of bother her birth mother and her adoptive mother, and was able to understand her own story. Her book MOTHER ME is a very personal, compassionate look at what it means to be adopted.

The Mothers. Jennifer Gilmore, $29.99 (novel)

Jesse and Ramon are a loving couple, but after years spent unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant, they turn to adoption, relieved to think that once they navigate the bureaucratic path to parenthood they will have a happy ending. But nothing has prepared them for the labyrinthine process — for the many training sessions and approvals; for the constant advice from friends, strangers, and “experts”; for the birthmothers who contact them but don’t ultimately choose them; or even, most shockingly, for the women who call claiming they’ve chosen Jesse and Ramon but who turn out never to have been pregnant in the first place.

Jennifer Gilmore’s eloquence about the human heart — its frailties and complexities — and her razor-sharp observations about race, class, culture, and changing family dynamics are spectacularly combined in this powerful novel.

No Matter What: an Adoptive Family’s Story of Hope, Love and Healing. Sally Donovan, $18.95

This book tells the uplifting true story of an ordinary couple who build an extraordinary family — describing Sally and Rob Donovan's journey from a diagnosis of infertility to their decision to adopt two children who suffered abuse in their early life. Writing with incisive wit and honesty, Sally Donovan recounts the bewildering logistics of adoption and, after Sally and Rob are joyfully matched with siblings Jaymee and Harlee, how their joy is followed by shock as they discover disturbing details of their children's past. Determined to heal their children, Sally and Rob realize they will need to go 'beyond parenting' to give them with the help they need.

Paper Shadows: a Chinatown Memoir. Wayson Choy, $20.00

In 1995, during the publicity tour for his first novel Jade Peony, author Wayson Choy received a mysterious phone call from a woman claiming to have just seen his mother on a streetcar. He politely informed her that his mother had died long ago. “No, no. Not that mother,” the voice insisted, “Your real mother”.

The startling realization that, like many children of Chinatown, he had been adopted was the inspiration for this vivid and beautiful memoir.

The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child. Nancy Newton Verrier, $16.95

THE PRIMAL WOUND is a book which will revolutionize the way we think about adoption. In its application of information about pre-and-perinatal psychology, attachment, bonding, and loss it clarifies the effects of separation from the birthmother on adopted children. In addition, it gives those children, whose pain has long been unacknowledged or misunderstood, validation for their feeling, as well as explanations for their behavior. The insight which Ms. Verrier brings to the experiences of abandonment and loss will contribute not only to their healing of adoptees, their adoptive families, and birthmothers, but will bring understanding and encouragement to anyone who has ever felt abandoned.

slant. Laura Williams, $8.00

One Korean-American adoptee's struggle with self-image, name-calling, and the travails of eighth grade.

Somebody’s Child: Stories about Adoption. Edited by Bruce Gillespie & Lynne Van Luven, $19.95

Our quest for origin and, by extension, identity is universal to the human experience. For the twenty-five contributors to SOMEBODY’S CHILD, the topic of adoption is not—and perhaps never can be—a neutral issue. With unique courage, each of them discusses their experience of the adoption process. Some share stories of heartbreak; others have discovered joy; some have searched for closure. SOMEBODY’S CHILD captures the many unforgettable faces and voices of adoption.

Somebody’s Daughter: a Novel. Marie Myung-Ok Lee, $15.95

SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER is the story of nineteen-year-old Sarah Thorson, who was adopted as a baby by a Lutheran couple in the Midwest. After dropping out of college, she decides to study in Korea and becomes more and more intrigued by her Korean heritage, eventually embarking on a crusade to find her birth mother. Paralleling Sarah's story is that of Kyung-sook, who was forced by difficult circumstances to let her baby be swept away from her immediately after birth, but who has always longed for her lost child.

The Traffic in Babies: Cross-Border Adoption and Baby-Selling Between the United States and Canada 1930 to 1972. Karen Balcom, $35.00

Between 1930 and the mid-1970s, several thousand Canadian-born children were adopted by families in the United States. At times, adopting across the border was a strategy used to deliberately avoid professional oversight and take advantage of varying levels of regulation across states and provinces. THE TRAFFIC IN BABIES traces the efforts of Canadian and American child welfare leaders—with intermittent support from immigration officials, politicians, police, and criminal prosecutors—to build bridges between disconnected jurisdictions and control the flow of babies across the Canada-U.S. border.

Karen Balcom details the dramatic and sometimes tragic history of cross-border adoptions—from the Ideal Maternity Home case and the Alberta Babies-for-Export scandal to trans-racial adoptions of Aboriginal children. Exploring how and why babies were moved across borders, THE TRAFFIC IN BABIES is a fascinating look at how social workers and other policy makers tried to find the birth mothers, adopted children, and adoptive parents who disappeared into the spaces between child welfare and immigration laws in Canada and the United States.

Two Little Girls: a Memoir of Adoption. Theresa Reid, $17.50

Theresa Reid chronicles the long, often excruciating, and ultimately joyous journey that led her to adopt two little girls from Russia and Ukraine, in an unforgettable true story of fragile hopes and steadfast love.

Unveiling the Adoption Process: Seven Families’ Adventures & Insights. Rhonda Miller, $16.95

In UNVEILING THE ADOPTION PROCESS, readers will join seven families on their adoption journeys. Nobody's experience is identical, but they all share knowledge of the unexpected bumps along the way. There are emotional highs and lows, process changes and stressors, and reactions from others to handle, but in the end, these families all achieve the ultimate triumph — the addition of a beloved child to their family.

A Wealth of Family: an Adopted Son’s International Quest for Heritage, Reunion and Enrichment. Thomas Brooks, $19.95

This inspiring account of adoption, reunion and heritage provides a timely and provocative perspective on multicultural families and powerful insights on overcoming racism and poverty.

Wish You Happy Forever: What China's Orphans Taught Me about Moving Mountains. Jenny Bowen, $31.99

After reading an article about the thousands of baby girls languishing in Chinese orphanages, Jenny Bowen and her husband adopted a little girl from China and brought her home to Los Angeles, not out of a need to build a family but rather a commitment to save one child. A year later, as she watched her new daughter play in the grass with her friends, thriving in an environment where she knew she was loved, Bowen was overcome with a desire to help the children that she could not bring home. That very day she created Half the Sky Foundation, an organization conceived to bring love into the life of every orphan in China and one that has actually managed to fulfill its promise.

In WISH YOU HAPPY FOREVER, a fish out of water tale like no other, Bowen relates her struggle to bring the concept of "child nurture and responsive care" to bemused Chinese bureaucrats and how she's actually succeeding. Thanks to Bowen's relentless perseverance through heartbreak and a dose of humor, Half the Sky's goal to bring love the lives of forgotten children comes ever closer. WISH YOU HAPPY FOREVER chronicles Jenny Bowen's personal and professional journey to transform Chinese orphanages — and the lives of the neglected girls who live in them — from a state of quiet despair to one of vibrant promise.