Book Review: Somebody’s Daughter

Somebody’s Daughter by Marie Myung-Ok Lee just secured itself on my Top Ten favorite books list. That’s a lofty statement for adoption fiction which usually tends to do nothing other than tick me off. However, this book is a must read for so many variations of people.

Sarah Thorson was adopted by her family when she was eighteen months old from Korea. Told that her Korean birth family died in a car crash and never given the opportunity to embrace her heritage, Sarah felt left out in her family who just so happened to conceive a blonde-haired baby just after they brought Sarah home. The story follow Sarah to Korea, much against her parents wishes, where she joins the Motherland Program where she is supposed to learn Korean. Put in the “easy” class because she doesn’t know anything about the language, she meets a friend and some enemies.

Shortly after her stay begins, she decides to seek information regarding who her birth family was and to find out if she has any living relatives. After all, one of the American students in Korea has made fun of her American name (Sal-ah, in Korean, means “child for purchase”) and she has no inkling of what her Korean name might be. With some help, she locates the adoption agency, Little Angels Adoptions, and finds out some shocking information: her parents were not killed in an auto accident.

The search the begins for her biological mother, which includes a trip to a Korean television studio. Along the way, a love story with another student in the Motherland Program is blossoming. I refuse to spoil the ending. Though I will let you know: it didn’t satisfy my personal need for closure, leaving a lot of story lines open to question.

What makes this book so special is how it simultaneously follows the birth mother’s journey, during the time that Sarah is in Korea and, in Part II, a flashback to 1972, so we can understand the reasoning behind the abandonment and subsequent adoption of this native Korean child. While reading, I was awed by the descriptions of the expectant/birth mother’s feelings, during pregnany and many years later as well as the addition of others’ feelings regarding the taboo subject, including the birth mother’s husband, society at large and her own family. I wondered how the writer got such an amazing insight. Then I read the “Author’s Note” which follows the last page of the book.

…but no matter what I did, the stories didn’t gel as either a collection or a novel. Slowly, I began to realize that another voice was struggling to be heard: Sarah’s birth mother. I ignored this call for quite a while, because I knew inevitably that I’d need to go to Korea. And beyond the usual hassles of planning and funding such a trip, finding a place to live, etc., I’d also somehow have to find some birth mothers, get them to agree to talk to me about the most traumatic experience in their lives, and I’d have to learn Korean well enough to talk to them!

She goes on to explain how she applied for the Fulbright Fellowship, calling her project “Silent Mothers: The Story of Korean Birthmothers.” She was awarded the scholarship which included funding plus other support for one full year in Korea. She explains her experiences with Korean birth mothers:

None of the birth mothers who spoke to me imposed restrictions on what I could ask, and they all freely offered so many brave and unsparing glimpses into their hearts (one woman even let me read her diary) that I can never thank them enough for this gift. They all said – independently – that part of their motivation for agreeing to speak with me, despite the stigma and secrecy that still exists, was that they hoped some fragment of their love would pass into the book and be understood by their birth children.

That love is passed into the pages of this book. As I said, not knowing the research that was thrown into this fictional novel prior to reading it, I was simply blown away by the emotional descriptions of both past and present. I was moved to tears at various time. Again, it brings up the fact that we’re often so concerned with how adoption is flawed in our own country (rightly so, because, simply put, it is) that we sometimes forget to stop and think about the injustices, stigmas and general poor conditions that birth mothers around the world are living in and dealing with along with the universal grief and loss.

Beyond that, the book is extremely well-written. The depictions of Korea are so beautiful that I mentioned to Josh that I’d like to travel there someday. Visual descriptions of the changing seasons while Sarah visited. An intriguing look into the life of Korean students, their prejudices against Americans and the military as well as a look at the culture, both food and beauty. I simply couldn’t put the book down. I wanted to devour every word and description and feel and see it all in my heart and my mind.

I think that the back and forth story-telling between Sarah and her birth mother give this book a unique tone that I haven’t seen elsewhere in adoption fiction. The fact that it was so thoroughly researched, as well, puts it leagues above any competitors. For me, above the emotional aspect, was the fact that I was learning about my sisters in birth motherhood in another country. I felt strangely connected to this fictional character. Smooshed in amongst all of that “goodness” is Sarah’s evolving reaction and her memories of being an adoptee. Her emotions range from anger to sadness to peace and the writer’s depiction of each emotion hits on so many adoptee issues at once that all who read this book will be challenged.

In short: get this book. Go to your library. Go to a store. Order it online. This book offers so much to so many varities of people (adoptees, adoptive parents, birth parents, artists, musicians, scholars, travel bugs, etc) that it should simply just be on your “Must Read” list.

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For More Adoption Book Reviews by Jenna, check out:

3. The Girls.
2. Singing Bird.
1. The Tummy Mummy, a children’s book.

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