Aug 01, 2018
Hiking Toward Koreanness: An Adoptee Returns to Her Motherland
Adoption is one of those forks in the road where many of us try to glimpse through the trees to the other path, the other world.
Adoption is one of those forks in the road where many of us try to glimpse through the trees to the other path, the other world.
I never would have come to Korean if not for my adoption. The language pulled me back to it, despite the decades, cultures, and continents between us.
“I hated when attention was brought to my adoptee status. I was American, and that was all I wanted to be.”
We wanted our son to know his first mother. Was it the right choice?
I worried that my nephew considered it too late for reconnection.
“In moments like this, natural childbirth seems like magic to me.”
“I have an insatiable appetite for photographs of people who look like me.”
“I was born four years before Governor Rockefeller legalized abortion.”
“I’d wanted nothing more than to be a Korean person, to speak fluently, to adapt culturally.”
“Telling our stories often means pushing past the easy platitudes.”
