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March 25, 2005
Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune ... a search for roots:
"Somebody's Daughter" by Marie Myung-Ok Lee (Beacon, $23.95)
Nineteen-year-old Sarah Thorson was adopted by a cheerful Lutheran couple in Minnesota shortly after her birth in Korea. Never feeling as though she fit in - rather than "Mom and Dad," she calls her adoptive parents Ken and Christine - Sarah drops out of college and goes to Korea to find her birth mother.
Her decision isn't surprising; Korea was a dirty word in Sarah's Minnesota household, and her true background was always shrouded in mystery.
After asking yet again about how her parents died, Sarah describes Christine's answer: "'We really knew nothing about her. I'm your mommy. Let's not talk about this any more, it makes me sad.' She made little crying motions, pretending to wipe away tears, the same thing she did when I was bad, to show how I had disappointed her."
"Somebody's Daughter" alternates between Sarah's narrative and the story of Kyung-sook, a Korean woman haunted by memories of the child she was forced to give up many years ago.
Author Lee spent a year in Korea taking oral histories from Korean women who had given up their daughters, many of whom were eventually adopted by Caucasian American parents.
"They hoped some fragment of their love would pass into the book and be understood by their birth children," Lee writes.
Posted by marielee at March 25, 2005 8:43 PM
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