Scan barcode
emeelee's review against another edition
5.0
palimpsest (n): a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.
An utterly gripping and very informative graphic memoir following Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom's search for her Korean birth parents. I grew up with my mother's unfailingly positive perspective of her own adoption, but as an adult I've learned that this is not the experience of most adoptees. Especially in the cases of interracial and international adoption, the practice is rife with racism, corruption, and lack of accountability. When Sjöblom began the search for her origins, she ran into brick wall after brick wall of murky bureaucracy and outright falsehoods from the very agencies that traded her and other children across borders. At every turn authorities seemed to prioritize maintenance of the prevailing adoption narrative (adoption is a blessing that gives children a better life, most parents who give their children up for adoption were unable/unwilling to care for them, its healthier for adoptees to forget their pasts and focus on their present) over the lived feelings of adoptees. For example, at one point Sjöblom is falsely told that her birth father is dead, which she later finds out was a lie fabricated to give her closure while hiding the fact that her father didn't want contact with her. But Sjöblom didn't want a pretty, simple story to tell herself--she wanted the truth, messy and nuanced and hurtful as it might be. She describes the sadness, anger, and frustration she felt at repeatedly being shut down when she asked questions about her past, being guilt-tripped into silence and expected to feel grateful for her circumstances. Palimpsest is full of documents, transcripts, and roundabout conversations that illustrate the hoops she had to go through just to get the simplest answers. While this might seem dry to some readers, I found Sjöblom's journey completely fascinating and I learned a lot about illegal adoption. I'm so glad to have read this.
TW: suicide, racism, gaslighting, child trafficking and kidnapping
⭐2022 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge⭐
49. Two books set in twin towns, aka "sister cities"(1)
nini23's review against another edition
emotional
informative
5.0
International adoption was established as the practice we know today after the Korean War. Children are moved from the global South to the political West, where they are placed in white families, renamed, and have their mother tongue replaced. The demand for adoptable children outgrew the supply. Adoption became more about childless adults who wish to create a family, than orphans in need of protection. As large sums of money are involved, there's a strong incentive to illegally supply the market with what it needs: adoptable children, as young as possible. p 41
The children are supplied with documents claiming they're orphans - laundered like money and transformed into legal "paper orphans." With the adoption comes a fabricated back story that the children were anonymously abandoned, maybe found on the footsteps of a church, at a police station, or outside a hospital. Or there's an emotional story about a loving single mother with no choice in a patriarchal world, and who made the ultimate unselfish sacrifice a mother can make: giving up her child so they can have a better life. One could easily assume that the global South is overflowing with parents abandoning their children. p41
Critical adoptees are brushed aside as angry, bitter and ungrateful. Our yearnings for our original families and our pursuits for answers about severed biological ties are dismissed as only of interest to adoptees with mental issues, misfits, people who haven't "successfully" attached, people not capable of receiving the love offered to us. P47
In Sweden I’m at home, but I feel like a stranger. In Korea I’m a stranger, but feel at home. P84
Many adoptees sink one by one. Many of us take our own lives. Many of us have tried. Many of us have been abused, some even murdered by our own adoptive parents. Many of us are rejected, abandoned again for not fitting into our new families. Many of us are so, so lonely. P 109
It's too late for us to be mother and daughter. And the language barrier makes it impossible to close. p109
I can't help but thinking that taboo thought, that a life in an orphanage in my own country wouldn't have been worse than life in a foreign one. The lives of these children are depicted as horrific, and are used as examples of why an orphanage isn't a home. But who decides that? Who decided that it's better for a child to lose everything - including their name - and be sent to the other side of Earth with their past erased? p141
There is a word in Korean culture - 한 /HAN - which describes the sorrow people feel after an enduring suffering, after having been wronged, persecuted, and oppressed. 한 is a part of Korea's cultural identity, and it comprises hope, despair, acceptance, and a resilient desire for revenge. At this very moment, another vulnerable family is currently being torn apart, another child is being dispatched to a distant country with faked papers, under false pretenses. For them we must bear witness. p152
Addendum December 2022: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/09/1141912093/south-korea-adoptees-fraud-investigation-western-families
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/08/south-koreas-truth-commission-to-investigate-dozens-of-foreign-adoptions
The children are supplied with documents claiming they're orphans - laundered like money and transformed into legal "paper orphans." With the adoption comes a fabricated back story that the children were anonymously abandoned, maybe found on the footsteps of a church, at a police station, or outside a hospital. Or there's an emotional story about a loving single mother with no choice in a patriarchal world, and who made the ultimate unselfish sacrifice a mother can make: giving up her child so they can have a better life. One could easily assume that the global South is overflowing with parents abandoning their children. p41
Critical adoptees are brushed aside as angry, bitter and ungrateful. Our yearnings for our original families and our pursuits for answers about severed biological ties are dismissed as only of interest to adoptees with mental issues, misfits, people who haven't "successfully" attached, people not capable of receiving the love offered to us. P47
In Sweden I’m at home, but I feel like a stranger. In Korea I’m a stranger, but feel at home. P84
Many adoptees sink one by one. Many of us take our own lives. Many of us have tried. Many of us have been abused, some even murdered by our own adoptive parents. Many of us are rejected, abandoned again for not fitting into our new families. Many of us are so, so lonely. P 109
It's too late for us to be mother and daughter. And the language barrier makes it impossible to close. p109
I can't help but thinking that taboo thought, that a life in an orphanage in my own country wouldn't have been worse than life in a foreign one. The lives of these children are depicted as horrific, and are used as examples of why an orphanage isn't a home. But who decides that? Who decided that it's better for a child to lose everything - including their name - and be sent to the other side of Earth with their past erased? p141
There is a word in Korean culture - 한 /HAN - which describes the sorrow people feel after an enduring suffering, after having been wronged, persecuted, and oppressed. 한 is a part of Korea's cultural identity, and it comprises hope, despair, acceptance, and a resilient desire for revenge. At this very moment, another vulnerable family is currently being torn apart, another child is being dispatched to a distant country with faked papers, under false pretenses. For them we must bear witness. p152
Addendum December 2022: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/09/1141912093/south-korea-adoptees-fraud-investigation-western-families
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/08/south-koreas-truth-commission-to-investigate-dozens-of-foreign-adoptions
teenytinylibrary's review against another edition
3.0
I learned a LOT about international adoptions (especially from Korea) through this book. The author recounts her attempts to learn about her past, her birth mother, her family, her roots after she was adopted from Korea to a Swedish couple. It's eye-opening.
sally_vinter's review against another edition
5.0
Horrified by how exploitative the adoption I N D U S T R Y is, and the struggles and lies adoptees have to face, from the erasure of their first culture, to their history and past.
Reading about all the lies, and the corruption, I felt like I was going insane just reading it. Having that be your lived experience and knowing these people are all lying to you to suit their own ends...painful and exhausting.
Reading about all the lies, and the corruption, I felt like I was going insane just reading it. Having that be your lived experience and knowing these people are all lying to you to suit their own ends...painful and exhausting.
mikhe's review against another edition
5.0
Wow. Bara wow.
Vill säga att detta är en av 2016 viktigaste böcker, på riktigt.
Det är en otroligt känslosam och svår läsning om hur det är att bli adopterad till ett annat land. Rotlösheten, att vara främling, ångesten, allt. Så otroligt ärlig och fantastiskt känsloladdad.
Alla borde läsa denna, för att få en inblick om hur det är att vara adopterad. Ett citat som fastade extra för mig som sammanfattar lite av boken är följande:
"Korea.
Jag är tillbaka i landet där jag föddes.
Tillbaka i landet där jag övergavs.
Korea,
landet som sålde mig"
Vill säga att detta är en av 2016 viktigaste böcker, på riktigt.
Det är en otroligt känslosam och svår läsning om hur det är att bli adopterad till ett annat land. Rotlösheten, att vara främling, ångesten, allt. Så otroligt ärlig och fantastiskt känsloladdad.
Alla borde läsa denna, för att få en inblick om hur det är att vara adopterad. Ett citat som fastade extra för mig som sammanfattar lite av boken är följande:
"Korea.
Jag är tillbaka i landet där jag föddes.
Tillbaka i landet där jag övergavs.
Korea,
landet som sålde mig"
terraforming_mishap's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.5
readwithneleh's review against another edition
5.0
This graphic memoir is an honest look into an adoptee’s difficult journey of finding their birth parents. Lisa Woo-Rim Sjöblom, adopted into a Swedish family, has always wondered about her parents, her heritage and her home country of South Korea. And as she begins her search for her birth parents, she is met with lies and deceit at every turn from the institutions that were set up to help her.
As Sjöblom compresses her trauma into muted artwork and succinct text, she manages to pack each illustration and word with all of her frustration, confusion and grief. It is powerful, enlightening, and beautiful. Before this book, I was completely ignorant about the dark side of international adoption — the illegal selling and taking of children, the fabrication of documents and the conspiracy to cover up any illegal activity. While this book does bring to light the struggles of an adoptee, it is a deeply personal account of Sjöblom’s experience which makes this painful to read, but also extremely rewarding.
As Sjöblom compresses her trauma into muted artwork and succinct text, she manages to pack each illustration and word with all of her frustration, confusion and grief. It is powerful, enlightening, and beautiful. Before this book, I was completely ignorant about the dark side of international adoption — the illegal selling and taking of children, the fabrication of documents and the conspiracy to cover up any illegal activity. While this book does bring to light the struggles of an adoptee, it is a deeply personal account of Sjöblom’s experience which makes this painful to read, but also extremely rewarding.