"You Should Be Grateful"

Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption

De: Angela Tucker

Narrado por: Angela Tucker

An adoption expert and transracial adoptee herself examines the unique perspectives and challenges these adoptees have as they navigate multiple cultures

“Your parents are so amazing for adopting you! You should be grateful that you were adopted.”

Angela Tucker is a Black woman, adopted from foster care by white parents. She has heard this microaggression her entire life, usually from well-intentioned strangers who view her adoptive parents as noble saviors. She is grateful for many aspects of her life, but being transracially adopted involves layers of rejection, loss, and complexity that cannot be summed up so easily.

In “You Should Be Grateful,” Tucker centers the experiences of adoptees to share deeply personal stories, well-researched history, and engrossing anecdotes from mentorship sessions with adopted youth. These perspectives challenge the fairy-tale narrative of adoption, giving way to a fuller story that explores the impacts of racism, classism, family, love, and belonging.

©2023 Angela Tucker (P)2023 Beacon Press

Reseñas de la Crítica

“A captivating memoir that also offers an important counterpoint to voyeurism and saviorism in the adoption process.”—Kirkus Reviews

“This deeply personal story is also a passionate call to rethink the way we manage and talk about adoption in America.”—Booklist

“Tucker’s story and the stories of the adoptees she features gives readers access to thoughts adoptees have but might too afraid to tell others or what they talk about amongst themselves.”—International Examiner

Eye opening

Thank you for this wonderful insight. I am enriched buy your story that I will carry with me.

This incredible book gives voice to the voiceless.

As a transracial adoptee, with a closed adoption, I know too well the journey Angela shared. Truly heartening to hear I’m not alone in my vast emotions for my birth and adopted family.

Riveting Autobiography of a Trans Racial Adoptee

Everyone and their grandmother should read this book. A consice yet thoughtful exploration of the stories that connect us all interweaving realities of poverty, disconnection, and the small steps it takes to bring us closer to healing.

You SHOULD read this

Eye opening, heart opening, mind opening look into adoption. Centering the adoptee and birth mother while shining a light on a system that needs recalibrating. Angela’s story and scholarship is a master class in humanity.

This is a 5 Star Book

Angela has such depth and honesty when speaking about her adoption journey. She has a wealth of knowledge and experience which I am able to utilize as an adoptee and an adoption professional. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I finished feeling as though I know Angela personally. She also narrated her book which is a huge plus for me. This is a five star read and I look forward to reading more of her books in the future. Assuming she will be writing more.

amazing

I shared so many emotions and deep-rooted feelings with this book and the story's author. Thank you for writing this.

Perspective

Please listen to this transracial adoptee! Angela’s lived experience documented in this bold memoir will help bring awareness to the complexities of adoption as well as to the additional struggles a transracial adoptee must learn to navigate.

I’m also an adoptee. There were many similarities of Angela’s story to mine. One being that my birth/first mother was also not forthcoming about the details of my adoption when I met her, nor was she about the identity of my birth father. What I misinterpreted to be her resistance, was actually her unresolved trauma that had “frozen” her in time. She honestly didn’t remember.

Another similarity was Angela’s mention of her closed adoption and how much time she spent in her “ghost kingdom” while growing up, I, too, spent an inordinate amount of time fantasizing about who my mother was—instead of being given the chance to deal with life on life’s terms. To see my birth mother as a real person instead of needing to make up a fantastical one. Angela writes about how the closed adoption system damaged her by denying her access to her medical history, pertinent background information, and to her biological family.

Being a same race adoptee, it was important and enlightening to me to learn of the many additional layers a transracial adoptee must face. Thanks to Angela, I now have a deeper level of understanding.

Emma Stevens aka Linda Campbell Pevac
Author of “A Fire Is Coming” and “The Gathering Place: An Adoptee’s Story”

A mind opening book

As an adoptive mom of a transracial adoptee, this book gave me so much insight and thought provoking dialog for my family. I believe this will make my daughters life a bit less challenging.

phenomenal.

As a transracial adoptee and an adoptee in reunion in my 20s this is so spot on. So much I found words for and relatable on different levels. So intricately and beautifully written.

Unexpectedly Healing

As a transracial adult adoptee, raised without the resources to process my experience, I didn’t know what to expect from this. Not only did I uncover the intricacies and complexities of feelings I never knew how to describe but found new agency to explore my journey. After reading this I found some resources for BIPOC adoptees raised by white families and feel like maybe as a 29 year old, I finally have the chance to meet people like me. Thank you Angela.