YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation
Date and Time
Nov 2, 2025 5:00 pm
Location
Brookland
625 Monroe St NE, Washington, District of Columbia, 20017
Nov 2, 2025 5:00 pm
Brookland
Join us to learn about the unique perspectives and challenges of transracial adoptees with adoption expert Angela Tucker and MSNBC host Jen Psaki
An adoption expert and transracial adoptee herself examines the unique perspectives and challenges these adoptees have as they navigate multiple cultures
“Your parents are so amazing for adopting you! You should be grateful that you were adopted.”
Angela Tucker is a Black woman, adopted from foster care by white parents. She has heard this microaggression her entire life, usually from well-intentioned strangers who view her adoptive parents as noble saviors. She is grateful for many aspects of her life, but being transracially adopted involves layers of rejection, loss, and complexity that cannot be summed up so easily.
In You Should Be Grateful, Tucker centers the experiences of adoptees to share deeply personal stories, well-researched history, and engrossing anecdotes from mentorship sessions with adopted youth. These perspectives challenge the fairy-tale narrative of adoption, giving way to a fuller story that explores the impacts of racism, classism, family, love, and belonging.
Angela Tucker is joining us on the Busboys stage alongside host of MSNBC's Inside with Jen Psaki and former White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, to dive deeper into this “passionate call to rethink the way we manage and talk about adoption in America” (Booklist). Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Tucker and Psaki will be signing following the program.
This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of Tucker’s book,YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL, and Psaki’s book, SAY MORE, will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person and will not be livestreamed.
We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books
Angela Tucker is a Black transracial adoptee. She is the author of You Should Be Grateful: Stories of Race, Identity and Transracial Adoption. Her book was published in April 2023 by Beacon Press. Angela's search for her biological family is featured in the documentary CLOSURE which premiered on Netflix in 2015. In 2022, Angela founded the non-profit, the Adoptee Mentoring Society to provide virtual mentorship for adoptees world-wide. With 15 years in child welfare, she has appeared on CNN, The Red Table Talk, The New Yorker, and more, advocating for adoptees.
Angela lives in Seattle with her Emmy-award-winning spouse, Bryan Tucker.
Jen Psaki is the host of MSNBC's “The Briefing with Jen Psaki,” which airs Tuesday through Friday at 9pm ET on MSNBC. Psaki also previously served as the thirty-fourth White House Press Secretary under President Biden until May 2022. Over the course of her twenty years in public service, Psaki also served as White House Communications Director under President Obama, as the spokesperson for the State Department under then Secretary of State John Kerry, and worked on three presidential campaigns. She lives in Virginia, with her husband and two children.
BOOK DETAILS
You Should Be Grateful
Stories of Race, Identity and Transracial Adoption
By Angela Tucker
January 30, 2024 | Paperback, 208 pages, $17.95
Say More
Communicating at Work, at Home, and in the World
By Jen Psaki
April 29, 2025 | Paperback, 240 pages, $18.99
