ABOUT
This guide was built by people who needed it and couldn’t find it.
How it started
This guide grew out of a first ressources collection project initiated by Amandine Gay and Manuelle Alix-Surprenant, both adopted and both researchers. They gathered hundreds of resources transracial adoption: books, articles, films, podcasts, associations.
Our collective action built on that foundation to create this guide, expanded to cover international adoption.
This collection is, above all, an act of care. We carry it forward with the same intention, and are deeply grateful to them for it.
Amandine Gay
Filmmaker, essayist and Afrofeminist activist. Born under X and transracially adopted. One of the first to name it politically.
Manuelle Alix-Surprenant
Anthropologist, author and co-founder of L’Hybridé. The first adopted person to sit on Quebec’s international adoption advisory committee.
Who we are
Our collective action brings together internationally and transracially adopted adults, people born under anonymous birth laws, and people raised through kafala, based in France.
Adoptees have grown up. We are organized, politicized, and refuse to be narrated. We face the urgency of birth mothers ageing and disappearing. We file complaints, build archives, create media, demand commissions of inquiry, and produce the knowledge we need. This guide is part of that movement.
How we name things
This guide acknowledges that international and transracial adoption is embedded in real power dynamics. Economic, racial, colonial. Naming those dynamics honestly is not a radical position. It is a condition for understanding what we are talking about.
We built this guide because adopted people deserve access to the full picture of what happened, to them and their families involved.
We made this out of care, for people who, like us, ask question at 2 in the morning. For the one who just found out their record was falsified. For the one who simply wants a name for what they have been carrying. This guide exists because we needed it, and because we believe you deserve it too.
The content is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute personal legal or therapeutic advice.
Guide governance
As a commons, this guide belongs to those who use it.
It can be enriched by anyone. Every submission is reviewed by the editorial team before being added. This filter exists to maintain coherence and to ensure that what is added centres the voices and experiences of adopted people themselves.
Shared
This guide is collectively administered. Editorial decisions are made together.
Independent
No institutional, partisan, associative or private bias influences what appears here.
Share a resource
Many resources are missing. Some languages and origins are underrepresented. Some experiences remain poorly documented. We know this and we welcome help.