Biography Adoption

Son of My Soul - The Adoption of Christopher is not just about the joys of motherhood, but is also a self-help audiobook about breaking the circle of child abuse. The author considers her childhood as "boot camp" and uses the lessons learned from her own abuse to help her beloved son through many surgeries and therapies to correct cleft lip and palate.

Abandoned as a baby to the British care system, Alex Wheatle grows up with no knowledge of his Jamaican parentage or family history. Later, he is inexorably drawn to reggae, his lifeline through disrupted teenage years and the challenges of living as a young Black man in 1980s Britain. Alex's youth was portrayed in Oscar Award-winning director Steve McQueen's "Small Axe" series (2020). In Sufferah, he tells his own story urgently, vividly and unsentimentally. His award-winning fiction - and this memoir - are a call to never give up hope.

The story begins with her early years spent in El Salvador with her mother and grandmother, Rosa Eva and Mamita Ines. Anna was eight years old when she set out to immigrate to the US on foot; from that point on, she moved from one foster home to another. The struggles she faced, the people she met along the way, the relationships that came together and fell apart—they have shaped and transformed Anna into the woman she is today.

She never imagined the pursuit to parenthood would involve the emotional assault of an adoption agency's flexible morality or invasive surgical procedures that brutalize both their bodies - but it did. Lauri M. Velotta-Rankin and her husband were sent overseas by an unscrupulous adoption agency to chase the ghosts of children they'd never bring home. After turning to in-vitro fertilization (IVF), a life-threatening diagnosis sent them reeling with fear and to the brink of emotional collapse.

It is the 1960s; a sixteen-year-old girl is in a mother and baby home; her heart is breaking as she prepares to give up her baby for adoption. Shunned by society, she has no choice. That baby was me. Join me on my life’s journey through the letters I have written to everyone who has shared my unique story. Follow me as I find the courage to share this story, from my birth to my unhappy adoption to getting married and becoming a mum and granny.

Sally grew up in a dilapidated house by the sea where men were forbidden, her childhood world filled with mystery and intrigue. Hippies trailed through the kitchen looking for God - their leader was Aunt Di, who ruled the house with charismatic force. When Sally’s baby brother vanished from his pram, she became suspicious of the activities going on around her. What happened to Baby David and the woman called Poor Sue? And where did all the people singing and wailing prayers in the front room suddenly go?

Cuong was born during the Vietnamese war and was transported in a cardboard box, by soldiers, to Australia where he was adopted. Other children objected to his exotic appearance, so different from that of his curly-haired, blue-eyed family, but his adopted family always reassured him and his brother stuck up for him against bullies. Through Cuong's eyes, children can learn about the pain of being different and the joy of being loved, by people who adopt, adore and stand up for him.

Born in 1938 and adopted soon after, Kate Foley grew up in London during WWII. The Don't Touch Garden explores what it is to be adopted, both for the child and the adoptive parents, through a wide range of poetic styles and complex emotions.