A feminist historian and an adoptive parent, Laura Briggs gives an account of transracial and transnational adoption from the point of view of the mothers and communities that lose their children.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NBCC John Leonard Prize Finalist Indie Bestseller “This is a book people will be talking about forever.” —Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed “Ford’s wrenchingly brilliant memoir is truly a classic in the making. The writing is so richly observed and so suffused with love and yearning that I kept forgetting to breathe while reading it.” —John Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author One of the most prominent voices of her generation debuts with an extraordinarily powerful memoir: the story of a childhood defined by the looming absence of her incarcerated father. Through poverty, adolescence, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley C. Ford wishes she could turn to her father for hope and encouragement. There are just a few problems: he’s in prison, and she doesn’t know what he did to end up there. She doesn’t know how to deal with the incessant worries that keep her up at night, or how to handle the changes in her body that draw unwanted attention from men. In her search for unconditional love, Ashley begins dating a boy her mother hates. When the relationship turns sour, he assaults her. Still reeling from the rape, which she keeps secret from her family, Ashley desperately searches for meaning in the chaos. Then, her grandmother reveals the truth about her father’s incarceration . . . and Ashley’s entire world is turned upside down. Somebody’s Daughter steps into the world of growing up a poor Black girl in Indiana with a family fragmented by incarceration, exploring how isolating and complex such a childhood can be. As Ashley battles her body and her environment, she embarks on a powerful journey to find the threads between who she is and what she was born into, and the complicated familial love that often binds them.

In this poignant and heart wrenching true story, Regina Louise recounts her childhood search for connection in the face of abuse, neglect, and rejection. What happens to a child when her own parents reject her and sit idly by as others abuse her? In this poignant, heart wrenching debut work, Regina Louise recounts her childhood search for someone to feel connected to. A mother she has never known--but long fantasized about-- deposited her and her half sister at the same group home that she herself fled years before. When another resident beats Regina so badly that she can barely move, she knows that she must leave this terrible place-the only home she knows. Thus begins Regina's fight to survive, utterly alone at the age of 10. A stint living with her mother and her abusive boyfriend is followed by a stay with her father's lily white wife and daughters, who ignore her before turning to abuse and ultimately kicking her out of the house. Regina then tries everything in her search for someone to care for her and to care about, from taking herself to jail to escaping countless foster homes to be near her beloved counselor. Written in her distinctive and unique voice, Regina's story offers an in-depth look at the life of a child who no one wanted. From her initial flight to her eventual discovery of love, your heart will go out to Regina's younger self, and you'll cheer her on as she struggles to be Somebody's Someone.

With the narrative force of an epic novel and the urgency of first-rate investigative journalism, this important book delves into the daily workings and life-or-death decisions of a typical American family court system. It provides an intimate look at the lives of the parents and children whose fate it decides. A must for social workers and social work students, attorneys, judges, foster parents, law students, child advocates, teachers, journalists and anyone who cares about our nation's children.

They are America's forgotten children, the hundreds of thousands of child prostitutes who walk the Las Vegas Strip, the casinos of Atlantic City, the truck stops on interstates, and the street corners of our cities. Many people wrongly believe sex trafficking involves young women from foreign lands. In reality, the majority of teens caught in the sex trade are American girls--runaways and throwaways who become victims of ruthless pimps. In Somebody's Daughter: The Hidden Story of America's Prostituted Children and the Battle to Save Them, meet the girls who are fighting for their dignity, the cops who are trying to rescue them, and the community activists battling to protect the nation's most forsaken children. Author Julian Sher takes you behind the scenes to expose one of America's most underreported crimes: A girl from New Jersey gets arrested in Las Vegas and, at great risk to her own life, helps the FBI take down a million-dollar pimping empire. An abused teenager in Texas has the courage to take the stand in a grueling trial that sends her pimp away for 75 years. Survivors of the sex trade in New York, Phoenix, and Minneapolis set up shelters and rescue centers that offer young girls a chance to break free from the streets. &“The sex trade is the new drug trade,&” says one FBI special agent, and Somebody's Daughter is a call to action, shining a light on America's dirty little secret.

This book is an ethnographic study of China/U.S. adoption, the largest contemporary intercountry adoption program.

An unforgettable memoir about one woman’s story of overcoming neglect in the U.S. foster-care system and finding her place in the world. Drawing on her experience as one of society’s abandoned children, Regina Louise tells how she emerged from the cruel, unjust system, not only to survive, but to flourish . . . After years of jumping from one fleeting, often abusive home to the next, Louise meets a counselor named Jeanne Kerr. For the first time in her young life, Louise knows what it means to be seen, wanted, understood, and loved. After Kerr tries unsuccessfully to adopt Louise, the two are ripped apart—seemingly forever—and Louise continues her passage through the cold cinder-block landscape of a broken system, enduring solitary confinement, overmedication, and the actions of adults who seem hell-bent on convincing her that she deserves nothing, that she is nothing. But instead of losing her will to thrive, Louise remains determined to achieve her dream of a higher education. After she ages out of the system, Louise is thrown into adulthood and, haunted by her trauma, struggles to finish school, build a career, and develop relationships. As she puts it, it felt impossible “to understand how to be in the world.” Eventually, Louise learns how to confront her past and reflect on her traumas. She starts writing, quite literally, a new future for herself, a new way to be. Louise weaves together raw, sometimes fragmented memories, excerpts from real documents from her case file, and elegant reflections to tell the story of her painful upbringing and what came after. The result is a rich, engrossing account of one abandoned girl’s efforts to find her place in the world, people to love, and people to love her back. Praise for Someone Has Led This Child to Believe “Regina Louise’s childhood ordeal and quest to find true family are enthralling and ultimately triumphant. I cheered her every step of the way.” —Julia Scheeres, New York Times–bestselling author of Jesus Land “Revealing and much needed.” —Booklist “Her story had a distinctly raw edge to it, as she chronicled . . . how she was deemed mentally disturbed and incorrigible for wanting what so many children from intact families took for granted, and how she triumphed over unbelievable odds.” —Kirkus Reviews “There’s pain and beauty in Louise’s vulnerability and her willingness to evict personal experience from the singular realm of self and take it into the world.” —Foreword Reviews

An anonymous valentine changes the life of the unsociable Mr. Hatch, turning him into a laughing friend who helps and appreciates all his neighbors.