Book Review:

 Adopting Privilege: A Memoir of Reinventing My Adoptee Narrative

by Abigail K. Hasberry, Ph.D.

reviewed by Katie Wynen

April 2025

Content warning: This review includes reference to sexual abuse.

“My story is complex and profound, both ugly and beautiful and I make no apologies for its rawness. Sugar coating may make it appear more palatable, but it doesn’t make it any easier to process. So, I won’t sugar coat this story.”

As she promises, Dr. Abigail K. Hasberry tells the full truth about her lived experience as a transracial adoptee in Adopting Privilege: A Memoir of Reinventing My Adoptee Narrative (Muse Books, 2024). Both as a transracial adoptee and as an adoption professional, I appreciated Hasberry’s focus on adoptees’ healing journey. While her personal narrative echoes the common themes of many adoption stories, what makes her memoir unique is the Reflect, Release, Reinvent (and repeat) framework she provides. A licensed therapist, Hasberry developed the “R3 Framework” to use with her clients. In Adopting Privilege, she shares it with readers and invites them to apply it to their own lives. 

Hasberry explains: “These prompts guide the reader to reflect on their past experiences, release things that are not useful to their healing, reinvent themselves and their path forward based on positivity, and remember that this is a process that we all go through over and over. We are always a work in progress.” Her prompts will resonate with the thousands of adoptees (and others) who are or were in therapy and will be a great resource for those starting to unpack their adoption experience.

In her un-sugarcoated story, Hasberry recounts experiences that are shared by many adoptees. There is sexual abuse at the hands of her adoptive family (more common than people think), racism and shame from her white adoptive family, rejection from her maternal birth family, and acceptance by her paternal birth family. 

Hasberry describes the work she had to do on her own to find, connect and experience her Black culture, because her white parents took the so-called color-blind approach, which “did not allow them to be what [she] needed them to be nor did it help [her] become who [she] needed to become. They were neither prepared nor willing to be responsible for raising a strong Black woman.” This experience of adoptees of color, raised by white parents, having to do their own work to connect to the race/ethnicity/culture/language/rituals/traditions/ancestors they lost is extremely common. It is a journey I have been on, and it’s a process I have witnessed and supported with the hundreds of adoptees I have worked with over the last twenty years, from those raised in the 1950s to young kids growing up today. Yes, well into the 21st century there are still babies of color being placed with white families who are taking the same color-blind approach Hasberry’s adoptive parents (and many others) took. They need this book! 

When I provide education around transracial adoption to parents, I repeatedly say “Your white skin will not protect your child.” Hasberry illustrates this point with stories about the middle school pool party she was uninvited to because she was Black, and the cop who pulled her over in high school and questioned her for an hour because the car she was driving was registered to a white man (her dad), as well as countless other macro- and micro-aggressions that her parents did not prepare her for, nor talk about with her when they happened. They left her alone to figure it out and fend for herself. 

As I read this memoir, I said to myself, “When people ask me why adoptees are angry, why adoptees want to abolish adoption, and why more and more adoptees are in estrangement from their adoptive parents/family, I will suggest Hasberry’s memoir (and countless others).” Hasberry’s tone is not angry, and she doesn’t use the word abolition, but her unflinchingly honest account of her experiences should make readers pause and reflect on the real, lifelong impacts of family separation.

Hasberry addresses the corrupt and illegal practices of the adoption industry from her own lived experience, and states her clear stance in favor of family preservation. Hasberry is also a birth mother, and while her adoptee identity is the focus of this memoir, we learn about her experience of placing a child in 1988 and her journey to search for and reunify with her child, during which she learned that the adoption agency lied to her and placed her child with a family she did not choose. 

Hasberry writes: “As an adoptee and a birth mother, I believe the right narrative is one that centers the adoptee and highlights all parts of the adoption experience by prioritizing adoptee-led research, listening to the lived experiences of adult adoptees and giving a voice to birth families.” I could not agree more. She concludes each chapter with an affirmation. Here are a few of my favorites: 

• I welcome the challenge of reinventing myself through growth and transformation. 
• Despite my past, I am worthy of my present and my future. 
• I boldly take up space.
• I reclaim my narrative and embrace the opportunity to fill in my missing pieces. 
• I am my parents’ child, but I am not responsible for their trauma.

This adoptee narrative should definitely be added to your reading/listening list and shared with others. Hasberry says “conversation builds connection and acceptance.” Hasberry’s contribution to the conversation is raw, honest, difficult, uplifting, profound, and reflective. There are many moments in this memoir that I am not including in this review because I want readers to experience them like I did: raw and in the moment, with the space to Reflect, Release, Reinvent. 

Katie Wynen, MSW, is a transracial, international Colombian adoptee who has worked with members of the adoption triad since 2006. She facilitates Pact’s support group for adult adoptees of color and is an Angels in Adoption 2019 Recipient from the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute.