Harvard Book Store welcomes Rhonda M. Roorda—acclaimed speaker, author, and consultant on transracial adoption—for a discussion of her new memoir, Torn from the Root: A Memoir of a Black Transracial Adoptee. She will be joined in conversation by Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao—Lecturer in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
About Torn from the Root
A powerful journey of identity and belonging.
As a Black child adopted out of the New York foster care system as a toddler and raised by white evangelical parents, Rhonda Roorda had to learn how to walk in two different worlds. She often questioned “whether my skin was too dark” and if she “acted too white.” She recalls being haunted by feelings of shame and not being enough. Torn from the Root is her illuminating story of identity, belonging, and purpose and lays bare the deep pain she felt navigating life as a vulnerable Black girl and how she healed herself.