Torn from the Root
A Memoir of a Black Transracial Adoptee
After decades of listening, the lens turns inward.
For more than three decades, Rhonda M. Roorda has listened, learned, written, spoken, and advocated about the complex realities of transracial adoption.
Now, in Torn from the Root, she turns the lens inward, telling the deeply personal story behind the work that has shaped her life and career.
This memoir explores identity, belonging, family, race, resilience, and what it means to find one's voice after a childhood shaped by separation and transracial adoption.
A story of identity, belonging, and voice.
Torn from the Root is the deeply personal memoir behind Rhonda M. Roorda's decades of work, writing, speaking, and advocacy surrounding transracial adoption.
It is a story about what happens when a Black child grows up in a white family, what is lost and what survives, and what it means to reclaim one's voice and understand one's own story.
Get the BookSome stories ask us to look deeper.
Torn from the Root invites readers into the intersections of identity, family, faith, race, belonging, and resilience.
Identity
What happens when the world around you sees you differently than you understand yourself?
Belonging
The lifelong search for home, connection, recognition, and a sense of being fully known.
Family
The complicated bonds between birth family, adoptive family, community, history, and self.
Race
The realities of growing up Black in a white family and a world shaped by race.
Faith
The tensions, questions, wounds, and enduring dimensions of faith across a complicated journey.
Resilience
The possibility of finding meaning, voice, purpose, and hope without denying what happened.
A memoir that opens the conversation.
“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 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 ScheeresNew York Times Best-Selling Author
“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 PavaoLecturer in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
“In this unforgettable memoir, Roorda shatters the comforting myths that have long shielded U.S. transracial adoption from honest reckoning.”Gina E. Miranda Samuels
Professor, University of Chicago
Readers are responding.
Early readers are responding to Torn from the Root with honesty, emotion, and recognition. Their responses reflect the memoir's ability to open difficult conversations about identity, adoption, family, race, belonging, and resilience.
Transracial Adoption Has Always Been Personal
Rhonda Roorda's story is compelling and deeply personal. Her journey reveals the complicated realities of being placed into a transracial adoption system.
KellyP • Verified PurchaseExcellent Eye Opening Book!
A reflection on Rhonda's journey toward healing, self-acceptance, purpose, and belonging while discovering her biological roots.
evalina • Verified PurchaseExcellent Read
Christine Adams describes the memoir as beautifully written and deeply moving, praising Rhonda's honesty, vulnerability, and clarity.
Christine Adams • Verified PurchaseA Firsthand Account of Transracial Adoption
Lonette J. Van Denend praises Rhonda's vulnerability and honesty in walking readers through her childhood and her experience as a Black girl adopted into a white family.
Lonette J. Van Denend • Verified PurchaseI Couldn't Put This Memoir Down!!
Lisa A. Klunder describes Rhonda's story as riveting, heartbreaking, and ultimately inspiring, highlighting her resilience and the mentors and godparents who helped her along the way.
Lisa A. Klunder • Verified PurchaseA Painful Beginning
“A painful beginning does not have to determine the ending.”
evalina • Verified PurchaseEvery story has another chapter.
Torn from the Root is not simply a story about where Rhonda came from. It is an invitation to consider how identity, family, race, faith, and belonging shape all of us.
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