This is a new book, concerning the author’s transracial adoption. Tucker is African-American, and her adoptive parents are white. She is the founder of the Adoptee Mentoring Society, and has worked in adoption at several levels for some years. She is the host of the podcast The Adoptee Next Door, and CEO of The Adopted Life LLC, offering regular consulting for agencies, media outlets, and adoptive families. She hosts monthly Adoptee Lounges for adult adoptees, and spends her weekends mentoring adopted youth. She has a B.A. in psychology from Seattle Pacific University and lives in Seattle with her husband.

The title refers to the comments often made to adoptees by outsiders, that the adoptee should be grateful for being adopted. As she points out, non-adopted people are not constantly reminded by others, especially strangers, that they should feel grateful to their parents for raising them. This phrase is particularly offensive to adoptees, to many adoptive parents (not all—some also tell their adopted sons and daughters they should always feel grateful to the adoptive parents), and is offensive to birth parents, who did not relinquish their offspring hoping they would always feel the burden of gratitude. This attitude of expecting adoptees to feel constant gratitude for being adopted is multiplied in the case of transracial adoption. It is a commonly held attitude that white folks who adopt children of color are being magnanimous, perhaps saintly, by “taking in” these supposedly unwanted or less-than-desirable children. The same attitudes are expressed when the adopted person is Native American, Hispanic, Asian, older than infancy, or from an unfortunate situation and/or foster care. These attitudes place a burden not only on the adoptee, but on the adoptive family, and on birth parents and family who had hoped for a better situation for their children. When birth parents hear comments about how adoptees should feel grateful for being adopted, it is painful, because the implication is that the birth parents are unworthy, unfit, or shameful, and by extension, that all birth parents are less than decent, honorable people. “You should be grateful” is a shaming statement. This book is much needed in our society.

Tucker offers her life story, her career journey, and her personal experiences in searching for and ultimately finding her birth family, and in dedicating her life to helping others. She is wise beyond her years, and the reader will wish it were possible to have her as a personal friend. She is still a young woman, so she will no doubt be an influential person in the adoption world for a long time yet. She has been interviewed by Anderson Cooper and was in a documentary on Netflix called Closure, among other things. She was adopted by a white family who did not experience fertility problems, but, she says, “felt compelled by the teachings of Zero Population Growth” (now known as Population Connection), which advocated adopting rather than having one’s own biological children. They adopted seven children and had one “homemade,” her dad likes to say, and also had numerous foster children. She states that they held onto five core principles that they desired for all of these individuals. They wanted all their children to be voters, readers, high school graduates, travelers, and kind.

They adopted their first child in 1982. Angela was adopted in 1986. She had access to the agency’s home study, with large parts whited out or otherwise redacted. She was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but raised in Bellingham, Washington, which had been a “sundown town” in the 1940s, meaning no Black person was to be there after sundown. It is now considered a very liberal town with people of all colors and backgrounds, and has a state university, but it does have that history, and so she grew up with nearly all white classmates, neighbors, doctors, and teachers. Consequently, she often felt like an outsider no matter where she was, as a Black child with white parents, and no real connection to her Black and southern roots. In working in the adoption field as a young woman, she began to see how lopsided the whole situation was, with mostly white families wanting to adopt, and most available kids being Black or Brown or older, and already traumatized.

When Tucker was a child herself, strangers would ask her mother, “Where did you get those kids?” To which her mother would reply, “My kids entered the world just as we all do. Are you asking if they’re adopted?” Then they would say “Why didn’t her real parents want her?” and her mother would say, “Your question isn’t one we typically discuss with strangers. But she has given me permission to share that she actually has three sets of real parents. Me and my husband, her foster parents, and her birth parents. That’s quite something, huh?” Then the clerks would gush that she was a saint for adopting them, which made Angela feel like a charity case.

She addresses the fact that sentimental poems about adopted children growing in the adoptive mother’s heart feel demeaning to the adopted children, especially when they don’t have information about their birth families, let alone any contact. One child said it “makes me feel like I’m a backup kid.” Books and phrases like “The Chosen Child” cause adoptees to feel like they were merchandise, and can make non-adopted kids feel like they were not chosen or maybe not wanted.

When Angela begins to search for her birth family, she runs into many brick walls of misinformation, lack of information, and difficulty locating her birth parents. Her adoptive parents encouraged and supported her search. She actually found her birth father first, although he had no idea he had ever fathered a child. He was excited, as was his extended family. Her birth mother had led a very traumatic life, and she was reluctant to meet Angela. She had other children, some raised partially by her, and some hardly raised at all. After she did meet and become acquainted with them, and their extended families, her birth father died, and later, she and her birth mother came to terms with their own relationship.

Although this is not a long book, it is crammed with information and personal stories. When I first saw the title, I was uneasy about the “grateful,” but reading a short review, I realized the author also detested that common phrase. I ordered the book, and when it arrived the very next day, I sat down and read the whole book before the day was out! Tucker brings up so many issues, from various points of view, that the reader gains a great deal of insight into not only the author’s story, but the experiences of many adoptees, adoptive families, and birth families. It is one of the best books to come along in a long time in adoption literature, and one of the most honest and thought-provoking.

Look for it in your local bookstore, or order it on Amazon; it’s still too new to be available on Thriftbooks or other such sites.