Author & Speaker

“Stranger in My Own Story is a quiet, powerful book about the long work of becoming oneself when there's no blueprint. Erik Mohn writes with an honesty that never performs its own pain, revealing the uniqueness of his experience and somehow a real kinship to my own. Tender and matter-of-fact, this book moved me in places I didn't expect." ~ Cebo Campbell, screenwriter, director, and author of Sky Full of Elephants

“With candor and hard-earned perspective, and with strands of wry humor woven in, Erik Mohn shares the story of his life as a transracial adoptee growing up in an American suburb where almost no one looked like him. As we travel with Mohn from a questioning childhood to a stormy adolescence and finally to an adulthood full of hope, we see that the book's powerful observations and conjectures are universal. Stranger in My Own Story asks us all to consider what it means to be family, to belong, and even to love.” ~ Pamela Rafalow Grossman, journalist (Time, The New York Times, Salon.com) and creator of the Substack "Communally"

“Erik Mohn's debut memoir, Stranger in My Own Story, is a bold, transparent, and compelling coming-of-age account of a Black boy's heartbreaking yet redemptive journey to discover his identity. It is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the complexities, paradoxes, and trauma of love woven throughout the lived experience of transracial adoption. Through remarkable courage and generosity, Mohn has written more than a memoir—he has illuminated the impossible tensions between love, race, identity, and belonging that shape the lives of many transracial adoptees.” ~ Rhonda M. Roorda, author of Torn from the Root: A Memoir of a Black Transracial Adoptee

“A moving portrait of the power of Blackness to heal a fractured racial psyche. Unapologetically truthful, and deeply necessary in today’s America.” ~ Shannon Gibney, author of The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption

“Written with vulnerable and searing honesty, Erik Mohn takes you down memory lane, offering a nod to the hip-hop figures who created space for him to step into all that he was, while painting a vivid portrait of how his life—as a Black boy, and later as a Black man—is shaped by the intersections of being an interracial adoptee and navigating race in the United States. A coming-of-age story for twenty-first-century America, Stranger in My Own Story positions integrity as both a personal compass and a radical act in a world that often asks Black men to fragment themselves in order to belong.” ~ Tony Hynes, PhD, author of The Son with Two Moms

"This is a devastatingly honest memoir, bursting with sadness, anger, humor, hope, and love. Stranger in My Own Story should be required reading for anyone considering a transracial adoption." ~ James Collins, retired family therapist, editor, and author of In Search of the Funk