No one ever told me what it meant to be Asian American. I did my best to figure it out.
Journey of an Adoptee – Part III
Young P, adoptee and oblivious. I don’t mean to say you’re oblivious in a negative context. As a young child, you’re not readily processing the fact that you’ve been removed from your birth country, birth parents, and birth culture. You aren’t thinking about how people look at you differently or how those differences are already being packed away in the … Read More
Journey of an Adoptee – Part II
#AdoptedTerritory by Eleana J. Kim has had a profound impact on my life. From these pages, two terms really stuck with me: adoptee kinship & contingent essentialism. Adoptee kinship is the unspoken bond that adoptees, transracial and transactional especially so, share with each other. A quote from an unnamed adoptee sums it up best: “It’s a bittersweet thing to know someone … Read More
Journey of an Adoptee – Part I
As another step forward on my journey, I want to briefly share some thoughts and some never before seen photos: These pictures were taken at the “Maternity Delivery Clinic” where I was born in Seoul. According to documents that I’ve been going through, I was named Kim Yung Jin by one of the nurses or social workers after I was … Read More