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Autobiography/Memoir An Australian Son Gordon Matthews 1996 An Australian Son (1996) is a memoir by former Australian diplomat, Gordon Matthews (b. 1952). Gordon Matthews was adopted at birth into a white middle-class family. That he had dark skin was a source of confusion about his identity until it was suggested that he apply for a Commonwealth Aboriginal grant at university. From then, Matthews identified as Aboriginal Australian, until he found out his father was a Sri Lakan man who had married Matthews' mother and gone on to have another three children. External Website

Behind the Scenes Sean Geoghegan ​ ​ Sean Geoghegan is of mixed Irish and Scots parentage. His mother was a 16 year old runaway. Due to family breakdown, Sean was placed in voluntary care in 1964. He is the eldest of four brothers. He was placed in a large village style children’s home in the countryside and experienced a brutal institutional life until 1970 when community care was introduced. Sean Geoghegan describes himself as a 'Trailblazer' in the rights movement for children in care. Developed & Advised NAYPIC 1979-86. Writer & Film/TV maker. Lecturer & Mentor. Media Assessor. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography Walter Isaacson 2011 Walter Isaacson's biography of adoptee and computer entrepreneur, Steve Jobs, is based on over 40 interviews Isaacson undertake with Jobs' family members, friends and enemies. Jobs' need for control, his passion and artistry are all talked about, yet Jobs did not ask for control over the book Isaacson wrote. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Almost half of children in care fear stigma Louise Hunt 2009 Almost half of children in care fear being stigmatised because of their background, according to a report published today by the children’s rights director for England. External Website

Authors G The Orphan in Fiction and Comics since the 19th Century ➝ Back to Top

Behind the Scenes Angela Shelton ​ ​ Angela Shelton (b. 1972) is an American actor and screenwriter. She was in the foster care system as a child and in 2001 was inspired to make a documentary for which she interviewed 40 women, many of whom had experienced domestic violence. Search for Angela Shelton won 12 awards and the May of Asheville proclaimed April 29, 2005, Angela Shelton Day. Shelton's memoir about surviving sexual abuse was released in 2007. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Mixed Blessings from a Cambridge Union Dame Elizabeth N Anionwu 2016 Dame Elizabeth Nneka Anionwu DBE FRCN (born Elizabeth Mary Furlong; 1947) is a British nurse, health care administrator, lecturer, and Emeritus Professor of Nursing at University of West London. In 1947 Elizabeth's mother, from a sheltered Catholic, Liverpool Irish working class heritage is studying Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge. She is the first one in her family to go to university – and then she discovers that she’s pregnant. The father is also a student at Cambridge, studying law. And he is black. Elizabeth spent just over two years living with her mother, a relationship that ended when her stepfather, who did not accept her and drank heavily, started to physically abuse her. She was placed in a catholic children's home where she was cared for by nuns, including several years in the Nazareth House convent in Birmingham. Often harshly punished and humiliated for wetting the bed. In her memoir she recalls, that later in life when working as a health visitor, "I made sure to keep up-to-date with more humane treatments for bedwetting". Nonetheless, she grieved leaving the convent to go and live with her mother. Shortly before her 25th birthday she suddenly found her father: barrister and former Nigerian Ambassador to Italy and the Vatican, Lawrence Anionwu. She was to visit Nigeria frequently and later changed her surname to Anionwu. In 1979, Anionwu became the United Kingdom's first sickle-cell and thalassemia nurse specialist, helping establish the Brent Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia Counselling centre with consultant haematologist Milica Brozovic. In 1998, by then a professor of nursing, Anionwu created the Mary Seacole Centre for Nursing Practice at the University of West London. She holds a PhD, was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN). She retired in 2007, and in 2016 she published her memoirs, Mixed Blessings from a Cambridge Union. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Tell Me Why: The Story of My Life and My Music Archie Roach 2019 Archie Roach: b. 8 January 1956-d. 30 July 2022. A powerful memoir of a true Australian legend: stolen child, musical and lyrical genius, and leader. Roach was only two years old when he was forcibly removed from his family. Brought up by a series of foster parents until his early teens, his world imploded when he received a letter that spoke of a life he had no memory of. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Why Richard Kingsmill is is My God Davida Bache 2015 Davida Bache moved around in foster care as a child and as a consequence her schooling was disrupted. She entered university as a mature age student, doing a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the University of Adelaide. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Motherless Child: The Definitive Biography of Eric Clapton: Paul Scott 2016 When he was 9, Eric Clapton found out that his parents were actually his grandparents and his sister was his mother. This early trauma affected Clapton's later relationships with women. This biography explores Clapton's childhood along with his rise to fame in the 1960's and his struggles with and against alcohol and drug addiction. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Love that Remains Susan Francis 2020 After twenty years spent searching for her biological parents, 52-year-old adoptee, Susan Hull, unexpectedly meets the great love of her life - a goldminer named Wayne Francis. Two years later, they throw in their jobs, marry and sell everything they own, embarking on an incredible adventure, to start a new life in Granada, where they learn Spanish and enjoy their adventure. Until a shocking series of events alters everything. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Inconvenient Child: An Abandoned Australian Child Struggles to Survive and Find her American Father Sharyn Lewis Killens et al. 2009 It is 1948, Sydney, Australia. Pretty, blonde Grace discovers she is pregnant to a black merchant marine who has sailed back to America. The White Australia Policy is in place and society's judgment matters; so what will Grace do with this baby? Rescued from neglectful foster care by an American champion boxer, the baby is taken to live in a party house in Sydney's red light district of Kings Cross. Her absent, elegant mother then abandons Sharyn in a convent-orphanage, at age five. By fifteen, discrimination within her family, resentment and clashes over her father's undisclosed identity see the troubled teenager running away to the streets of Kings Cross where she's arrested and sentenced to notorious juvenile detention centers. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Norma Jean: My Secret Life With Marilyn Monroe Ted Jordan 1989 A personal account of the author's twenty-year relationship with the iconic Marilyn Monroe who was in foster care, children's homes and kinship care as a child. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles A Conversation with Daniel Ingram-Brown Daniel Ingram-Brown ​ Daniel Ingram-Brown is the author of The Firebird Chronicles series for children aged 9-12, published by Our Street Books. He is the recipient of the Taner Baybars award for original fiction in the field of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Magical Realism, awarded by the Society of Authors Authors’ Foundation. Daniel is currently undertaking a PhD at Leeds Beckett University exploring adoption through creative writing and is also part of the university’s Storymakers Company, who seek to develop creative, artistic, child centred learning opportunities for young people through story making in educational and community settings. Aimed at a young adult readership, Bea’s Witch is adoption fiction crossed with magical realism and historical fiction. On the eve of her twelfth birthday, Beatrice Crosse runs away from her adoptive home only to encounter the ghost of England’s most famous prophetess. The witchoffers her treasure, but can she be trusted? Bea must wrestle her past to discover the witch’s secret and find her way home. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles 7 Novels about Orphans Elizabeth Brooks 2019 From Cinderella to James Bond, via Moll Flanders and Tom Sawyer, there is something about an orphan that appeals to storytellers regardless of era, culture or genre. Perhaps this is because an orphan engages our sympathies before the story even begins: we just have to root for a character (especially a child) who has suffered … External Website

Autobiography/Memoir If Everyone Cared: Autobiography of Margaret Tucker, M.B.E. Margaret Tucker 1983 This is the life story of Margaret Tucker "Lilardia" or Aunty Marg. It describes her family background and stories of life in the Murray-Murrumbidgee area; early childhood at Moonahculla Mission and Cummeragunga; Cootamundra Girls Home; domestic service; importance of religion and singing in Margaret's life; on Aborigines Welfare Board. The book photographs of family members and is dedicated to Margaret's mother, Theresa Clements née Middleton. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Harriet Jacobs 1861 Harriet Jacobs (b.1813 or 1815 – March 7, 1897) was an African-American writer whose autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is now considered an "American classic" Enslaved from her birth in 1813 in North Carolina, Harriet Jacobs was taught to read and write by her enslaver. But when her enslaver died, young Jacobs was left to a relative who treated her far worse. When she was a teenager, her enslaver made sexual advances toward her. Finally, one night in 1835, she sought freedom. She did not get far and wound up hiding in a small attic space above the house of her grandmother, who had been set free by her enslaver some years earlier. Incredibly, Jacobs spent seven years in hiding, and health problems caused by her constant confinement led her family to find a sea captain who would smuggle her north. Jacobs found a job as a domestic servant in New York, but life as a free person was not without dangers. There was a fear that those seeking to capture freedom seekers, empowered by the Fugitive Slave Law, might track her down. She eventually moved to Massachusetts. In 1862, under the pen name Linda Brent, she published her memoir "Incidents in the Live of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself." External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Charles Dickens: A Life Claire Tomalin 2012 A biography of one of the world's most famous and beloved writers, Charles Dickens, by award-winning biographer Claire Tomalin. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Prettiest Horse in the Glue Factory: A Memoir Corey White 2019 Corey White was a golden child. He knew this because his father would hit his mother and his sisters but not him. And his mother adored him so much she let him drop out of primary school. After losing his father to jail and his mother to heroin, he became a target for cruelty and dysfunction in foster homes. A scholarship to a prestigious boarding school lifted him out of foster care and awakened a love of learning and reading for him, but this was soon overwhelmed by a crushing depression and drug addiction.The Prettiest Horse in the Glue Factory is a memoir of trauma and survival that will break your heart and then show you how to rebuild it. It is a powerful, lyrical and darkly funny debut from one of Australia's brightest young comedians. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Jack Charles: A Born-again Blakfella Jack Charles 2019 Stolen from his mother and placed into institutional care when he was only a few months old, Uncle Jack was raised under the government’s White Australia Policy. The loneliness and isolation he experienced during those years had a devastating impact on him that endured long after he reconnected with his Aboriginal roots and discovered his stolen identity. Even today he feels like an outsider; a loner; a fringe dweller. In this honest and no-holds-barred memoir, Uncle Jack reveals the ‘ups and downs of this crazy, drugged up, locked up, fucked up, and at times unbelievable, life’. External Website