Katy Robinson
Author of A Single Square Picture: A Korean Adoptee's Search for Her Roots
Works by Katy Robinson
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Gender
- female
Members
Reviews
Statistics
- Works
- 2
- Members
- 67
- Popularity
- #256,179
- Rating
- 3.5
- Reviews
- 6
- ISBNs
- 3
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The author came to the United States from Korea at the age of seven and her memories of this period convey well the chilling transition that internationally adopted children have to make when entering even the most loving of families. Katy's first months in America are confusing and frightening (and I think that in her kindness to her adoptive mother, she vastly underplays the trauma of that period). The book captures the complex cultural clashes that she runs into as a child adjusting to life in Utah and then again experiences as an adult when she attempts to reconnect with her Korean family of origin. She is straightforward and honest about the difficulties of growing up Asian in a completely white community, but also pragmatic about the life she would have led had she stayed in Korea, the daughter of a young unmarried woman.
Robinson ends up learning very little about her birth mother and is told a number of conflicting stories, all seemingly designed to keep her in the dark. This is probably the most insidious problem with adoption and with adoption agencies throughout the world. There is a shared attitude among many otherwise well-meaning people that an adoptive child's narrative is supposed to be neat and tidy and sometimes lies are told to supposedly save a child (and sometimes the adoptive parents as well) from what is seen as unnecessary grief. In fact, any adoption is messy and usually rooted in pain and avoiding or ignoring that fact seems to lead to more grief rather than less down the line. This book presents a look at one young woman's attempt to unravel her own story.… (more)