Book picks similar to
Lost Daughters: Writing Adoption From a Place of Empowerment and Peace by Amanda H.L. Transue-WoolstonLynn Grubb
adoption
non-fiction
feminist
psychology-and-anthropology
A Call to Arms: The Civil War Adventures of Sarah Emma Edmonds, alias Private Frank Thompson
P.G. Nagle - 2014
Raised on a farm by a father who would have preferred a son, Emma can ride, shoot, and hunt as well as any man. She defies convention to become a soldier, an army nurse, even a spy. Dangers surround her, from enemy fire in battle to the risk of discovery by her friends, which would end in court-martial and disgrace. Always she seeks to reconcile the necessity of deception with her deeply-held values, but her greatest challenge arises when her friendship with a fellow-soldier becomes so close that she is tempted to confess the truth and risk everything for a chance at love. Based on the true adventures of Sarah Emma Edmonds, who served for two years in the 2nd Michigan Volunteers as Private Frank Thompson.
Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting
Mary Gauthier - 2021
Music offered her a window to a world where others felt the way she did. Songs became lifelines to her, and she longed to write her own, one day.Then, for a decade, while struggling with addiction, Gauthier put her dream away and her call to songwriting faded. It wasn't until she got sober and went to an open mic with a friend did she realize that she not only still wanted to write songs, she needed to. Today, Gauthier is a decorated musical artist, with numerous awards and recognition for her songwriting, including a Grammy nomination.In Saved by a Song, Mary Gauthier pulls the curtain back on the artistry of songwriting. Part memoir, part philosophy of art, part nuts and bolts of songwriting, her book celebrates the redemptive power of song to inspire and bring seemingly different kinds of people together.
Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption
Jane Jeong Trenka - 2006
Most coverage focuses on the struggles of good white parents wishing to adopt "unfortunate" children of color. Some touches on the irony of Black babies in the United States being exported to Canada and Europe because of their "unwanted" status here. Some even addresses the trafficking of children (of course, it would—that's sensational). But few look at o why babies are available for adoption in the first place o what happens when they grow up and o how we come up with solutions that are humane and just Healthy white infants have become hard to locate and expensive to adopt. So people from around the world turn to interracial and intercountry adoption, often, like Madonna, with the idea that while growing their families, they’re saving children from destitution. But as Outsiders Within reveals, while transracial adoption is a practice traditionally considered benevolent, it often exacts a heavy emotional, cultural, and even economic toll.Through compelling essays, fiction, poetry, and art, the contributors to this landmark publication carefully explore this most intimate aspect of globalization. Finally, in the unmediated voices of the adults who have matured within it, we find a rarely-considered view of adoption, an institution that pulls apart old families and identities and grafts new ones.Moving beyond personal narrative, these transracially adopted writers from around the world tackle difficult questions about how to survive the racist and ethnocentric worlds they inhabit, what connects the countries relinquishing their children to the countries importing them, why poor families of color have their children removed rather than supported—about who, ultimately, they are. In their inquiry, they unseat conventional understandings of adoption politics, ultimately reframing the controversy as a debate that encompasses human rights, peace, and reproductive justice.
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race / We Should All Be Feminists / Dear Ijeawele
Reni Eddo-Lodge
Exploring everything from eradicated black history to the inextricable link between class and race, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race is the essential handbook for anyone who wants to understand race relations in Britain today.We Should All Be Feminists A personal and powerful essay from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the bestselling author of Americana and Half of a Yellow Sun.I would like to ask that we begin to dream about and plan for a different world. A fairer world. A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: we must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently.Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie's letter of response. Here are fifteen invaluable suggestions–compelling, direct, wryly funny, and perceptive–for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner, and that men can "allow" women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century. It will start a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.
The Grrl Genius Guide to Sex (with Other People): A Self-Help Novel
Cathryn Michon - 2004
Armed with the information from Cathryn's Wild Sexual Animal Kingdom research and her "Love is Important but Chocolate is Essential" Chocolate Fun Facts, her posse of Grrl Geniuses struggle with singlehood, married life, sexual preferences, widowhood, and friendship. Cathryn's journey veers from a "nails-on-chalkboard-scratchingly-awful" divorce and the botched kidnapping of her own dog, to pretending to be a lesbian, seeing her old lingerie sold on her old front lawn by her ex-husband's girlfriend, losing her job, and a tragic industrial accident-level bikini wax. And through everything, Cathryn searches for the answer to the most important relationship question of all: why are all the best men gay?If you've ever been tempted to have sex with another person, this is an essential read. If you've ever felt inadequate to a task or a failure at love or in any way anything less than a genius and you've sunk so low that even a new pair of cute shoes won't help, Cathryn Michon can show you the way to relationship happiness-all you have to do is learn from her very funny mistakes. However badly you think you've done anything, Cathryn has done it even worse, and reveals lessons learned in the wryly witty and devastatingly honest style that has made her the favorite of aspiring geniuses everywhere!
Bazi - The Destiny Code
Joey Yap - 2004
In this introductory book on BaZi or Four Pillars of Destiny, Joey Yap ventures deep into the essence of Personality Analysis to foster a more accurate and informed understanding, beyond the conventional Chinese Astrology reading. What You`ll Learn: - Plot your personal BaZi (Destiny Code) Chart - Understand your character and personality model - Determine your favourable or unfavourable career options - Analyse your Wealth potential and capacity of your life - Maximise your opportunities in life - Discover and utilise your hidden talents - Improve personal and family relationships - Optimise your performance
Adoption is a Family Affair!: What Relatives and Friends Must Know
Patricia Irwin Johnston - 2001
After all, unless you have personally experienced adoption, you may know very little about how adoption works and what it means. Are you worried that your loved one may face disappointment? Do you find yourself wondering exactly what your role is going to be in the child's life? Does the term "open adoption" confuse and concern you? Just what are the privacy boundaries for families built by adoption: what is okay to ask about? "Adoption Is a Family Affair!" will answer all of these questions and more, offering you information about who can adopt, why people consider adopting, how kids understand adoption as they grow up, and more. This short book is crammed full of the 'need to know' information for friends and families that will help to encourage informed, happy and healthy family relationships.
In on It: What Adoptive Parents Would Like You to Know about Adoption: A Guide for Relatives and Friends
Elisabeth O'Toole - 2010
One adoption professional called 'In On It' "the adoption book for everyone else"--the many individuals who are not adoptive parents themselves but seek information and insights into adoption in order to best show their love and support, positively interact with or provide services to adoptive families.
Coming home to Self: The Adopted Child Grows Up
Nancy Verrier - 2003
It is written for all members of the adoption triad: adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents as well as those who are in relationship with them, including professionals. It explains the influence imprinted upon the nuerological system and, thus, on future functioning. It explains how false beliefs create fear and perpetuate being ruled by the wounded child. It is a book which will help adoptees discover their authentic selves after living without seeing themselves reflected back all their lives.
My Fathers' Daughter
Hannah Pool - 2005
She grew up unable to imagine what it must be like to look into the eyes of a blood relative until one day a letter arrived from a brother she never knew she had. Not knowing what to do with the letter, Hannah hid it away. But she was unable to forget it, and ten years later she finally decided to track down her surviving Eritrean family and embarked upon a journey that would take her far from the comfort zone of her metropolitan lifestye to confront the poverty and oppression of a life that could so easily have been her own.
Letters from Amelia
Jean L. Backus - 2016
Inside were more than 100 revealing letters the legendary pilot wrote to her beloved mother. The first was a four-year-old's thank-you note. The last, three short lines, was written just prior to her final 1937 flight when she vanished into a Pacific mist of conjecture. Fitted together, they portray the evolution to adulthood of a warm, sensible, fun-loving tomboy who would become the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo. Amid these captivating letters, Jean L. Backus skillfully weaves accounts of Earhart and her family's joys and squabbles from an aristocratic mother who was the first woman to scale Pike's Peak to husband George Putnam who made her a media sensation, secured financing for her flights, and led her to reject any "medieval code of faithfulness." Written under all conditions - in school, on trains, at the White House - the engrossing messages show devotion, wisdom, and a hilarious talent for playing with the English language, as well as a rare ability to stand apart from her own legend. Letters from Amelia is an apt testimony to the totality of an extraordinary person.
Get Your Sleep On: A no-nonsense guide for busy moms who want to preserve attachment AND sleep through the night
Christine Lawler - 2017
People talk about it like it’s so easy. But how do you do it in a way that fits your style, protects your relationship with baby and actually works? Don’t worry, I’ll tell you. In this quick and easy guide, I’ll distill all the basics from the best resources out there on baby sleep. I skip the parent shaming and a ton of fluff that the other books are filled with, and I’ll give you the best cliff’s notes version out there so that in an hour or so you can be a sleep-expert, too. I'll explain why sleep is so important, and tell you the biggest secret out there about smooth sleep training (hint: it has nothing to do with how much crying you can tolerate). Parenting isn’t one size fits all, so I give you three solid options that can fit anyone’s paradigm and I'll walk you through a 14-day plan to revolutionize sleep for everyone. What are you waiting for? Let's get your sleep on!
The Post-Adoption Blues
Karen J. Foli - 2004
While the path to parenting through adoption is rich with rewards and fulfillment, it's not without its bumps. This compassionate, illuminating, and ultimately uplifting book is the first to openly recognize the very normal feelings of stress that adoptive families encounter as they cope with the challenges and expectations of their new families. Where do parents turn when the waited-for bonding with their adopted child is slow to form? When they find themselves grieving over the birth child they couldn't have? When the child they so eagerly welcomed into their home arrives with major, unexpected needs? Until now, adoptive parents have had to struggle silently with their feelings, which can range from flutters of anxiety to unbearable sadness. At last, Karen J. Foli, a registered nurse, and her husband, John R. Thompson, a psychiatrist, lift the curtain of secrecy from "Post Adoption Depression Syndrome" (PADS). Drawing on their own experience as adoptive parents as well as interviews with dozens of adoptive families and experts in the field, the couple offers parents the understanding, support, and concrete solutions they need to overcome post-adoption blues-and open their hearts to the joy adoption can bring.
Modestly
Dina Torkia - 2018
It’s about me as a Muslim Brit embracing dual identities, surviving the turbulent teens and transitioning from self-doubt to self-belief. There is a little bit of drama, lots of laughs, plenty of practical advice and a shedload of bold statements. You can’t get a Muslim woman in a hijab with no opinion, am I right?!' Dina x Guys, get ready. YouTuber and social media sensation Dina Torkia is giving you a never-seen-before look into her world. From advice on fashion, beauty and style, to frank opinions on family, career and faith, this is everything that Dina has ever wanted to share with you. So let Dina tell you how it really is, living and loving life as a modern Muslim Brit. @dinatokio
Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections
Sheena Macrae - 2006
Parenting adopted children requires understanding the extra layer and this book helps in that understanding. Appropriate for the newly created family or the more experienced, Adoption Parenting looks at stumbling blocks to good parenting and standard parenting practices that arent appropriate for adopted children. It looks at the core issues all members of the adoption triad face, and at how it affects standard parenting challenges like sleeping through the night, discipline, and attachment. Adoption Parenting covers specific challenges families have faced: dealing with grief and loss, FASD, Trauma and PTSD, Sensory Integration, Speech and Language delays, and ways to effectively parent a post-institutionalized child or a child who has experienced trauma in their journey to you.