When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology

"An emotion-filled collection." --Kirkus Reviews

A CCBC 2024 Choices for the Fiction for Young Adult category!

Two teens take the stage and find their voice . . .

A girl learns about her heritage and begins to find her community . . .

A sister is haunted by the ghosts of loved ones lost . . .

There is no universal adoption experience, and no two adoptees have the same story. This anthology for teens edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung contains a wide range of powerful, poignant, and evocative stories in a variety of genres.

These tales from fifteen bestselling, acclaimed, and emerging adoptee authors genuinely and authentically reflect the complexity, breadth, and depth of adoptee experiences.

This groundbreaking collection centers what it's like growing up as an adoptee. These are stories by adoptees, for adoptees, reclaiming their own narratives.

With stories by:

Kelley BakerNicole ChungShannon GibneyMark OshiroMeMe CollierSusan Harness Meredith IrelandMariama J. LockingtonLisa NopachaiStefany ValentineMatthew SalessesLisa Wool-Rim SjöblomEric SmithJenny Heijun WillsSun Yung ShinForeword by Rebecca CarrollAfterword by JaeRan Kim, MSW, PhD

Sun Yung Shin was adopted from Korea and was raised in the Chicago area. She is an award-winning multigenre author or editor of nine books for adults and children, including Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, coedited with Julia Chinyere Oparah and Jane Jeong Trenka. Her latest books are Where We Come From, a picture book coauthored with Diane Wilson, Shannon Gibney, and John Coy and illustrated by Dion MBD; The Wet Hex (poems); and the essay anthology What We Hunger For: Refugee and Immigrant Stories about Food and Family. She lives in Minneapolis with her family.

Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom was born in Busan, South Korea, and adopted to Sweden at age two. She is a comic book artist and illustrator and has published two graphic novels: Palimpsest (2016), an autobiographical account of the search for her Korean family, and The Excavated Earth (2022), which follows Chilean adoptees who were stolen and sold for adoption to Sweden. She is a vocal adoptee rights activist and a Swedish Korean Adoptees' Network member, fighting for truth and justice for adoptees and first parents. Lisa lives in Aotearoa, New Zealand, with her partner, two children, and a cat. Follow her on Instagram at @chung.woolrim.

Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of See No Color and Dream Country, young adult novels that won Minnesota Book Awards, as well the picture book Sam and the Incredible African and American Food Fight and the memoir/novel The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption. She coauthored the children's picture book Where We Come From. Gibney teaches writing in the English department at Minneapolis College. Visit her on Instagram @shannonelainegibney and Twitter @GibneyShannon.