Tag Archives: Adoptee Memoir

After five years, it’s time to adjust prices for inflation

Rudy Owens’ memoir on the American adoption experience

After five years, I will be slightly increasing the price of the paperback and e-book versions of my memoir, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are: An Adoptee’s Journey through the American Adoption Experience.

This week, Amazon, the monopoly that controls the world of self-publishing, informed KDP account holders that it was changing its fee structure. Amazon told those who sell on its platform costs were going up: “During this time, we’ve kept our printing fees the same, despite increasing costs of materials and labor over the past six years. On June 20, 2023, we’re changing our fees to better align with today’s cost to print books. We have not taken this decision lightly, and have reduced printing costs where possible.”

Inflation has hit all of us, and my prices have not kept up since I first published my memoir in May 2018. My book remains an entirely self-funded effort focused on reforming discriminatory adoption secrecy laws and raising awareness about adoption as a public health issue and gross legal injustice to millions. What I make from publishing my book is used entirely to fund the publication of my website with research related to my book and resources to help adoptees, particularly adoptees denied basic legal equality in my birth state of Michigan.

Starting in late May, customers looking to buy my book will see the following prices changes:

EBook:
Former list price on Amazon: $7.99
New list price on Amazon: $8.99

Paperback:
Former list price on Amazon: $15.99
New list price on Amazon: $16.99

Other platforms where I sell my book online, such as IngramSpark and Smashwords, will also reflect the new pricing scheme as well.

Thanks again to every reader who has supported my story and my vision to reform how this nation continues to treat all adoptees inequitably solely because of their status at birth. I could not have done this without all of you!

The right season for a new book-reading adventure

It is that time of year where I live when the rains fall, the sun sets early, and getting cozy with a good book makes for a perfect indoor adventure.

For those not familiar with my writing, may I recommend my first-of-its-kind, public-health-centered adoptee memoir. My work, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are, provides insights into my own journey and those of nearly 3 million others like me born in United States the boom adoption years after World War II, through the late 1970s.

I intentionally wrote my story to provide as many facts as possible, and a detailed bibliography, to challenge the all-powerful myth that post-1940s U.S. adoption has become. My untangling of that venerated myth reveals how poorly understood the U.S. adoption experience remains, even as adoptees globally continue to publish personal accounts that remain largely dismissed and ignored by the public, by lawmakers, and by the media from all political spectrums.

If you are a reader who enjoys a challenge, who may not be afraid of the truths that are carefully concealed by powerful systems of myth-making and even our own natural desires to prefer myth to the complexity of truth, you may be ready for joining me on my adventure.

Here is how Gonda Van Steen, Kings College professor and writer who exposed the shameful chapter of the Greek overseas adoption experience, described my work in her review on Goodreads: “This is a one-of-a-kind adoption book written by an American born in Michigan in 1965. With clinical precision, the author, Rudy Owens, walks the reader through the 1960s mentalities, systems, laws, and networks that keep the adoptee apart from his or her early life history. The author does not mince words and speaks with precision and without sentimentality about what needs to be done–and urgently– to abolish the discriminatory place in society in which the adoptee who does not have access to birth and adoption records is still held. This book lays out a method for how to search, how to ask for documents, how to process setbacks, and how to come out stronger–for the collective, not just for oneself. Very warmly recommended!”

A great story: the perfect holiday gift

Books remain one of the best passports to understand others and the world around us.

The stories we remember are those that tell us something new and also something universal. My tale, as an adoptee who spent decades reclaiming my past and seeking justice, is as old as humanity. It mirrors the archetypal myth of the orphan/adoptee/hero, who overcomes impossible odds to complete a perilous quest.

The hero’s journey is also the larger story of millions of adoptees in the United States, like me. Through my own story, I also tell the larger tale of the U.S. adoption experience in the decades after World War II.

My book, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are, is a perfect gift to show others this hidden world and how it impacts those who are forced to travel through it, throughout their lifetime. My memoir about my adoptee journey, from my birth in one of the largest maternity hospitals that promoted adoption to finding justice more than five decades later, is accessible to all, even readers who know little about this uniquely America system.

Buy the book online on Amazon, in paperback and as an e-book for your Kindle reader.

Please consider sharing my book website with a friend, and tell them about this story addressing the universal quest for justice, truth, and living a meaningful life. Happy holidays!

An adoptee may never be family in kin networks

This shot was taken during a visit with some of my adoptive relatives. With some, it was the last time I ever saw them, and this image is nearly four decades old.

When I wrote my memoir on the U.S. adoption experience and my family story, I knew that I would have few fans among my adoptive and biological family members.

In fact, I wrote this in the introduction to my memoir, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are: “Some families may feel aggrieved by an adoptee sharing family tales. Some may feel deep anger. Adoptees risk harming those relations by helping others know about this experience that touches nearly all Americans through their personal, work, and community relations. Adoptees know they could disrupt their family ties forever.”

A year after I self-published my book, I learned that more people in my family network had read my book than I had thought. Some did not tell me they had until I learned by accident in unrelated communications. Of those who read it, none have genuinely reached out to me to discuss it, except two cousins, on either side of my adoptive families. I am happy for these conversations.

One likely barrier is my history with my extended adopted family. Some of us never really communicated for decades. In my book I explain how not being biologically related as distal kin is a major factor why there is this undeniable communications gap. My book makes this point, and none have reached out to explore this with me.

My adoptive father’s many failures, as a father and more, is another complicating factor. He was an alcoholic, and I only briefly touch on how that addiction forever shaped my family’s history and my life in ways I still think about on those dark, cloudy days. His very existence represents a shameful family secret, not to mention what he did as a husband and father.

From those who read my book, I did not receive any words of support about issues I addressed, such as the immorality of state laws and adoption systems that hide people’s identity. It is as if the issues I made clear at the individual and societal level did not matter, even when they had this true-life story connected to them personally. I never heard one communication that showed empathy.

By contrast, I have received many thoughtful comments from readers, who are strangers and who I have known throughout my life. Their words have been reassuring that the story I wrote touched on themes that are universal to the human experience.

In the end, the mostly cold shrug I received from my adoptive and even my biological family networks has made me all the more happy I wrote my book. And maybe my story will really only will connect with adoptees and just those who see them as equal persons in the eyes of the law. 

(Author note: My memoir does not mention any family member by first or last name, nor do I provide any clues that might reveal their identities.)

More praise from my readers

My memoir on the U.S. adoption experience is available on Amazon and your favorite online bookseller.

Happy New Year, everyone. I hope all of you had a great holiday and have special memories of times spent with family and friends. For my followers, I want to thank those of you who last year purchased my book, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are. Your support means a great deal to me.

This also marks the first holiday season where I promoted my book and when I heard back from more of you. In December, some of my readers wrote reviews on Amazon for the paperback version of You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are. Here are a few of those comments:

Shawna
Of all the adoption related books I have read, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are resonates with me the most, on so many levels. It’s a difficult task to make folks understand what discrimination looks like for adoptees in this country.

Lazarus
You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are is an outstanding, heartfelt, and eye-opening memoir of its author, Rudy Owens, as an incredible 30-year journey to his birthright. It is essential, exhaustive, and compelling reading to those of us who have been passed through this exceptionally misguided, agonizing, and flawed system and for all those otherwise.

Click on my photo to see my video.

Thomas
The subject has always been intriguing to me, but before reading this book I had no idea the depth of issues that could be involved. It successfully tells a very compelling story but also reveals details of the legal roadblocks to adoptees getting the information they are entitled to. Highly recommended.

Please Share Your Reviews:
If you have purchased either an ebook or paperback version of  my memoir, my New Year’s video is for you, encouraging you to join Shawna, Lazarus, and Thomas by sharing your thoughts.

A reader’s most trusted source is his and her fellow reader. I hope to see your names in the comments section soon.

For the months ahead, I am still seeking opportunities to speak and do readings and share the information I wove within my own tale with people who know little about the system that still impacts millions of people in the United States. It can be challenging finding partners willing to host an author who wants to talk candidly and honestly about the history of U.S. adoption and adoption secrecy laws. I’ll share news of future events here.