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Book Review
Ten Thousand Sorrows: The Extraordinary Journey of a Korean War Orphan By Elizabeth Kim Doubleday, 2000
Reviewed by Damsel Plum
One may flinch at the stories of late-discovery adoptees, of abused adoptees, of rejection in reunion, but Elizabeth Kim's adoption story is such a compendium of horrors that the prattle of your generic whiny adoptee pales in comparison. Surely we all suffer in our own way, but if ever there was an argument for putting our personal pain in perspective, the vicarious experience of another's tragedy is known to do the trick. Such was the function of Greek tragedy, and adoptees today can reap a similar benefit from Kim's moving lament. Born the bastard daughter of a rebellious Korean peasant woman and a nameless American soldier, Kim was at the absolute bottom of the social hierarchy in her rural village. While young women were second-class, an unmarried mother was a nonentity and her child even lower, if that can be imagined. Kim's birth mother, or "Omma," was presented with the possibility of redeeming her shame by allowing her brother to sell Kim to a neighbor as a house servant. Omma refused and the next morning she was hung in an honor killing by her male family members. The two-year-old Kim watched from inside a basket where her mother had hid her for safety, instructing her to run away when no one was looking. Chilling as this is, little is said about how Kim learned so much about her early youth. We take for granted that she remembered these events, quite detailed in their description: traditional foods, Buddhist ritual, bucolic scenery, rice harvesting, the expressions on the faces of her family and village members. Did she simply have an excellent memory? Did she search and find relatives? Did she undergo regression therapy? I personally have very few memories from before the age of four, and these are mostly of a snapshot quality - encapsulated images. I do not mean to diminish the power of Kim's story, which, although extreme, is plausible. It would, however, help the reader evaluate counterclaims made by Holt regarding the conditions of its orphanages (see below) if the source of this information had been made explicit. Kim's Korean relatives found her in the basket and commended her to the Holt orphanage, which is vividly depicted as a place of utter physical squalor and emotional deprivation. During her months in the orphanage more trauma ensued in the form of being caged and experiencing the death of a baby, defining events for Kim. The sole positive experience this poor child had with a male came when a mysterious stranger (Henry Holt?) escorted her on her trip from Korea to the United States. He was patient and tender, the first person after Omma to pay attention to her as an individual. When he dropped her off at the airport with her adoptive parents he didn't look back, and she understandably felt abandoned. The story of Kim's upbringing in the home of a Christian fundamentalist preacher is another litany of horrors. One might expect after such ill-treatment at the hands of so-called Christians that Kim would be virulently anti-Christian. Throughout, and despite being a chronic victim, Kim is thoughtful and philosophical about her experiences. She does not wax political and rarely gets on a soapbox in reaction to the tragedies in her life. The courage of Kim's emotional honesty is complemented by her attempts to understand her tormentors. Never does Kim attribute her problems to adoption as an institution, and while there are pointed barbs at the institution of international adoption, never is it raised to the level of polemic. Kim's is a personal story of coping with tragedy stemming from a variety of sources, from being unaccepted in her native society, to being barely acceptable in her adopted society. There are no references to attachment disorder, although clearly Kim qualifies as a prime candidate for such a diagnosis. The genre of adoption memoir is, alas, rife with self-pity, psychologizing and blame-laying. It is refreshing to read an account of someone with real problems who doesn't generalize her particular angst to the population of adoptees at large. Of special value is Kim's account of her experiences growing up Asian in small-town white America. The skewed sense of self which comes from feeling white and being seen as foreign, the jeers and rejection of classmates, the defense and coping mechanisms devised to keep her afloat: all these draw a picture of what many Asian adoptees raised in middle America have experienced to one degree or another. Just as the perspective of relative suffering may be a lesson to those adoptees who have spent a little too much time feeling sorry for themselves, the perspective of growing up an adopted Asian in white middle America may be useful for those international adoptees growing up with culturally-sensitive adoptive parents and strong support systems. In the time of Korean and Chinese culture camps and all-adoptee playgroups it's good to remember that we're not all so lucky. And, likewise, we're not all so badly off.
Damsel Plum is a co-founder of Bastard Nation and Editor of the Bastard Quarterly. She lives in Northern California with her husband and sons. Her website is www.plumsite.com ******************************************************** (This feature appeared in the Summer 2001 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.) Copyright 2001 Bastard Nation
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