Don't Adopt - Until You Read This Book: Transracial adoption —from a biracial adoptee’s perspective

The truth about transracial adoption—from the one voice most often left out.What happens when a bi-racial boy is adopted into a Mexican family that never talks about race?When you're five years old and no one around you looks like you, the mirror becomes a battlefield.“Don’t Adopt (Until You Read This Book)” is a raw, unfiltered memoir told by the person at the center of the adoption triangle—the adoptee.Daniel Cruz grew up in Tucson, Arizona with a Mexican father, a white mother, and a birth certificate that read “Baby Boy Brown.” For most of his life, he had no information about his birth parents. No photos. No letters. No cultural context. Just a name, a silence, and a long list of unasked questions.On the outside, he was “well-adjusted.” Inside, he was quietly unraveling.This book is not anti-adoption. It is pro-truth.It’s a call for honesty, cultural humility, and racial literacy from those who feel called to adopt.Inside this memoir, you’ll discover:What it feels like to grow up as a transracial adoptee in a family that avoids hard conversationsThe hidden trauma of performative belonging—and the emotional cost of code-switching in your own homeHow silence around race, identity, and origins creates a deep and lifelong fractureThe true story of how the author found his birth mother and father after 40 years of not knowingThe intergenerational impact of racism, religion, and secrecy in adoption cultureWhat adoptive parents, pastors, social workers, and therapists often overlook when they talk about loveThis isn’t a clinical handbook. It’s a confession. A conversation. A mirror.It’s for anyone who has ever been adopted, has adopted, or is considering adoption—especially across racial or cultural lines.Quotes from the book:“Silence doesn’t preserve innocence. It preserves confusion.”“Every time I passed as something I wasn’t, I lost a piece of myself.”“She never named my Blackness. She only dressed me like her whiteness.”“I was adopted into a culture that didn’t adopt my culture.”This book is for:Adoptees looking for language for what they’ve always feltAdoptive parents willing to confront hard truths with loveFaith communities seeking to do better with racial and relational complexityReaders who believe that love without honesty is not enoughAbout the Author:Daniel Cruz is a bi-racial transracial adoptee, speaker, father, and advocate. He writes about the intersections of identity, adoption, race, and faith. His story has reached thousands of adoptive families and adoptees searching for truth beneath the gratitude script.Read this before you adopt.Not to discourage you. But to prepare you.Because love begins with listening—and truth makes room for belonging.“Don’t Adopt (Until You Read This Book)” will stay with you long after the last page. Read more