Contents -- Introduction: Reading Transracial Adoption in American Literature -- 1. Voluntary Belonging: Historical and Cultural Contexts -- 2. Passing for Kin in Charles W. Chesnutt's "Her Virginia Mammy" and The Quarry -- 3. Unknowable Origins in Kate Chopin's "Désirée's Baby" and William Faulkner's Light in August -- 4. Integrated Families: Robert Boles's Curling and Toni Morrison's Tar Baby -- 5. Captivity and Rescue in the Fiction of Dallas Chief Eagle, Leslie Marmon Silko, Barbara Kingsolver, and Sherman Alexie -- 6. Adopting Ambivalence in the Fiction of Sui Sin Far, Anne Tyler, and Gish Jen -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index.