Hear from Rhonda Roorda
Torn from the Root — A Memoir of a Black Transracial Adoptee
Torn from the Root is a compelling memoir that tells the powerful story of a Black girl who, after being separated from her birth mother, is transracially adopted into a white Evangelical family in the early 1970s. She embarks on a journey to discover her true identity, reconnecting with her roots, and inspiring readers with her brave quest for belonging.
Available Spring 2026 — Temple University Press
Pre-Order Now — Save 25% with code 26BKSAbout Rhonda M. Roorda
Rhonda M. Roorda, M.A., is a nationally recognized speaker, author, and consultant on transracial adoption whose insights have been featured on Good Morning America and ABC News, in People magazine, and in the Emmy Award–winning television series This Is Us. A transracial adoptee, she is the author of the acclaimed In Their Voices: Black Americans on Transracial Adoption, recognized as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title, and the coauthor of a groundbreaking trilogy on transracial adoption. Through her writing, research, and speaking, Roorda has become a leading voice exploring identity, belonging, and the lifelong impact of adoption across racial and cultural boundaries.
Editorial Reviews
“In Torn from the Root, Rhonda Roorda delivers a searing meditation on family and belonging, boldly probing the complexities of transracial adoption and identity with raw honesty and deep love.“
Julia Scheeres, New York Times best-selling author of Jesus Land: A Memoir
“Despite her own [disturbing] experiences as a transracial adoptee, Roorda highlights how such arrangements can sometimes work, particularly when adoptive parents respect the backgrounds of their children. Roorda has transformed her difficult journey into a teachable one.”
Publishers Weekly
“In this unforgettable memoir, Roorda shatters the comforting myths that have long shielded U.S. transracial adoption from honest reckoning. Writing with rare courage and moral clarity, she traces her journey as a Black adoptee raised in a white evangelical family, exposing the spiritual, racial, and psychological costs of colorblind love. More than a memoir, Torn from the Root is a clear-eyed indictment of systems that silence adoptee truths―a bold reclamation of voice, history, and the right to forgive. Urgent, illuminating, and transformative, this book demands to be read by parents, practitioners, policymakers, and anyone committed to epistemically just family practice.”
Gina E. Miranda Samuels, Professor at the University of Chicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice; Faculty Director at the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture; and Director of the Black Adoption Project/Roots Unbound: Returning Our Stories to Us
“Rhonda Roorda masterfully weaves her personal search for identity with powerful scholarship. As an adoptee approaching eighty years of life, I know what it means to be ‘ripped from the root’ and grafted elsewhere. For transracial adoptees, the challenge deepens―growing up unseen and unmirrored in one’s own home. Torn from the Root is a brave and necessary book about loss, resilience, and identity―and the enduring question of what it costs to belong.”
Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao, Lecturer in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
Rhonda M. Roorda, MA 