A review by smalltownbookmom
Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related.: A Memoir by Jenny Heijun Wills

4.0

Born in South Korea, Jenny Heijun Wills was adopted by a white Canadian couple as a baby and grew up in Southern Ontario. This is a really touching, nonlinear retelling of her transracial experience growing up in Canada and her return journey to Korea when she was in her 30s to find and reconnect with her birth family and culture. She was lucky that records still existed and was able to find both parents (she was the result of an affair between her mother and her married father, and it is through her that they themselves reconnect for the first time after 30 years) and some siblings. She ends up developing a strong bond with one sister, who follows her back to Canada. Told in a series of disjointed vingettes, the story at times is hard to follow but her writings about the bonds of family, the struggle to fit in growing up and her experiences with racism are deeply moving. I definitely recommend this memoir and especially loved reading about Jenny’s own journey to motherhood and the deep and abiding bonds of love that form between mother and child.

TW: rape, domestic abuse and microagressions.