Rudy Owens holds his completed memoir.
I am an adoptee who proudly owns his birth heritage as a bastard and a life-long advocate for the full civil and legal rights for all adoptees in the United States. My personal story about discovering my biological identity as an adoptee ultimately offers a deeper meditation on finding meaning from one of life’s most profound experiences. By asking life’s most essential question, “Who am I,” and telling my adoptee’s journey of discovery, my writing sheds light on how adoption profoundly impacted the lives of millions of Americans. It is an experience shaped by historic prejudice, legal discrimination, and outcomes best understood as a public health issue. Ultimately, my story on finding myself and challenging authorities who control critical identity records for millions of Americans who were adopted is as old and as powerful as that Moses—an abandoned baby, famed prophet, and universally known adoptee.
(Also see my advocacy goals for writing my book.)