Somebody's Daughter: A Novel [Hardcover]

Marie Myung-Ok Lee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2005

Somebody’s Daughter is the story of nineteen-year-old Sarah Thorson, who was adopted as a baby by a Lutheran couple in the Midwest. After dropping out of the University of Minnesota, she decides to study in Korea for a summer, more by happenstance than actual design, but as the summer progresses she becomes more and more intrigued by her Korean heritage and eventually embarks on a crusade to find her birthmother. Paralleling Sarah’s story is that of Kyung-sook, who was forced by difficult circumstances to let her baby be swept away from her immediately after birth, but who has always longed for her lost child. The two stories are told side by side: Kyung-sook’s is the remembrance of her childhood involvement with an American who eventually abandons her when she refuses to have an abortion, while Sarah’s is the contemporary story of her deepening involvement with the culture and language of Korea, with Doug, her Korean American classmate, and with her search. These two narratives converge in one poignant moment, when the two women literally pass each other like ships in the night.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Young adult novelist Lee (Finding My Voice, etc.) explores a Korean-born girl's complicated journey to define her identity in her poignant adult debut. Adopted by a white Minnesota family who tried to quash any curiosity Sarah Thorson might have about her homeland, the directionless 20-year-old drops out of college and enrolls in a Korean-language program in Seoul. As she struggles to fit in, she recognizes her desire to learn about her birth family, and she's shocked to learn that she was abandoned as a baby (she'd been told her parents died in a car accident). With the help of her new boyfriend, Korean-American Doug, who educates her about her homeland and its citizens ("Cut open a Korean and... you'll find: salt and hot red peppers," he tells her over a meal of spicy soup), she goes on a Korean TV show dedicated to finding missing persons. When a woman comes forward, the two begin to form a bond, but a DNA test proves them unrelated. Meanwhile, Lee spins out the parallel story line of Sarah's birth mother: Kyung-Sook had dreams of pursuing a career in Korean folk music, but she fell for an American hippie who abandoned her once she became pregnant. Now 50, Kyung-Sook sees Sarah on TV and comes to Seoul to find her. Lee sidesteps a tender emotional reunion, though, in favor of an honest portrayal of a mother's sacrifice and a daughter's growth. (Apr.)
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From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–Nineteen-year-old Sarah was raised in Minnesota but born in Korea. She struggles with the reality of having two mothers: the one who gave her away and the one who adopted her. She enrolls in a yearlong exchange program at Chosun University in Seoul to learn Korean and discover her roots. In alternating chapters, readers learn about her birth mother, and about the circumstances surrounding Sarah's birth and adoption. The stories eventually converge, but the main theme of the novel is how mother and daughter each struggle with grief and acceptance. The most interesting parts of this book are the descriptions of Korea as told through Sarah's first-person narrative. Nothing has prepared her for how truly foreign she would find the country. Doug, another student, introduces her to the foods and customs of Korea and joins in her search. He also becomes her lover. Somebody's Daughter will appeal to teens with an interest in multicultural issues, especially cross-racial adoption. But it can also be read for its vivid portrait of the country. Lee's portrayal of rural villages, a bustling modern city, and the people who have preserved their heritage in the face of civil war is strong and memorable.–Sheila Janega, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (April 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807083887
• ISBN-13: 978-0807083888
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,487,900 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lopsided and somewhat unauthentic, November 13, 2005

By 

KKJ (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Somebody's Daughter: A Novel (Hardcover)

As a Korean adoptee who has "been there," I can say with a fair amount of authority that although the author---a Korean-American but not an adoptee---is a skillfull writer, she is not doing adoptees a favor by assuming the voice of Korean adoptee Sarah, the main character, before doing her research. This is not to say that Somebody's Daughter is poorly researched, on the whole. On the contrary, from what I've heard (from reading interviews, visiting the author's own blog, and from attending one of her readings in person), Lee dedicated an admirable amount of her time speaking firsthand with birth mothers in Korea. Overall this lends the story of Kyung-Sook (the Korean woman whose history is dispersed throughout the book, alternately with Sarah's story) a relatively genuine and heartfelt degree of authenticity.

Unfortunately Lee's efforts to research the experiences and point of view of Korean adoptees falls short. Rather than speaking extensively with adoptees such as myself and my friends, who have all undergone the life changing experience of going to Korea and searching for birth parents, Lee instead says when asked that she relied on her firsthand understanding of the Korean-American experience, as well as the secondhand experience of having a relative who is an adoptee.

This is where I find fault with her "research." Knowing an adoptee, even being related to one, does not give a person license to speak on behalf of an adoptee, to assume to understand the complex nature of being adopted and growing up as an outsider in white American society, and also, to understand the feelings of loss at being a complete stranger to your own birth culture.

The Korean-American experience is unlike the adoptee experience in too many ways to enumerate. Suffice to say, that while growing up as a Korean-American, one certainly might be immersed in white American culture---yet at the end of the day, you can look at your Korean-American family and find familiarity and solace in your place in your family unit and the Korean-American community at large. Growing up as an adoptee and person of color in a white family and white community, I struggled on a daily basis with defining my identity in the family spectrum and the community at large, and I least of all identified with the Korean-American community.

The sections of this book narrated by Sarah reflect this lack of understanding and are hardly typical of the adoptee experience, much less the adoptee experience in Korea. Having lived abroad in Korea for a year and been through an emotionally grueling birth family search, I cannot relate to Sarah's story beyond the superficial. Readers who look to this book, thinking that Sarah's experience is a genuinely rendered account should be reminded that this story is fictional in more than one sense of the word.

Criticisms aside, I do feel that Kyung-Sook's story is told with admirable grace and sensitivity, and if you read the book for nothing else, then you will not necessarily have gone wrong choosing Somebody's Daughter. Look elsewhere (The Language of Blood by Jane Jeong Trenka, Unforgotten War by Thomas Park Clement, A Single Square Picture by Katy Robinson) , however, for a more authentic and honest representation of the Korean adoptee experience.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Choppy format, succumbs to cliche, February 6, 2006

By 

Tammy (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Somebody's Daughter: A Novel (Hardcover)

I really, really wanted to like this book, since I'm a Korean adoptee and enjoyed other Marie Lee books like Finding My Voice and Saying Goodbye. I got so distracted though by the format of the story, going back & forth between Sarah's and Kyung Sook's narratives. I couldn't get into either of their stories only one chapter at a time. There were too many flashes back in time in Kyung Sook's story line for me a believeable story arc to develop.

I was disappointed that the writing fell victim to overdone stereotypes and cliches. The mother's story seemed like an Amy Tan knockoff, and the daughter came across as a selfish, shallow, immature. I especially hated the way that Marie Lee played into the prostitute cliche, in the scenes with Doug and again to a certain degree when she has some weird episode of something like pity sex with her Korean friend. I got the feeling she was trying to give the story a more "raw" edge, but it fell totally flat for me. HUGE turnoff.

It's no wonder that I couldn't relate to Sarah at all as an adoptee. Sarah came across about as deep as a mud puddle alongside a gutter. I was looking for so much more from her character as she made what should have been a meaningful & poignant journey (meaning her stay in Korea and her search for her birth mother). I was looking for something to grab hold of and say, "YES!! This is how it feels! This is a part of my life! I see myself reflected in this character." But I never found it. Sarah's experiences were too general and not specific whatsoever to the adoptee experience. Not mine, not any of my friends, or any other adoptees I've spoken with about this book. Contrary to what the previous "reviewer" wants people to believe, not all adoptees loved this book. (I don't think copying & pasting a review from some other Web site really qualifies as an Amazon review by the way.) I think it's important for ALL opinions to be heard, even the ones of disent, not just the glowing ones from adoptive moms and one or two assimilated adoptees.

I've come across several interviews with the author and message board postings by her as well. None of them really address the question of where she gathered her research on Korean adoptees' personal experiences. She skirts the issue by saying that she did extensive research with birth mothers while on a fellowship in Korea, which is much more obvious and believable in her writing than her limited knowledge of Korean adoptees. I have beef with the statements that she has made regarding her artistic license, comparing writing from an adoptee's point of view to a man writing as a female character. This is SO not the same. She had a whole international community of Korean adoptees at her disposal to interview and involve in her writing process. Simply having an adoptee as a relative, and attending some Korean adoptee social functions over the years does not grant a person the understanding and insight that it takes to do justice to our experiences. You can't absorb an adoptee's point of view by osmosis. I felt slighted that this book really didn't do more than scratch the surface.

I think that being a Korean-American, as Marie Lee is, and being a part of a Korean-American family can blind a person to what it really is like to grow up as a Korean kid in a white family, Korean in a white community, Korean in a white society. This is why I think her Korean-American charcters in previous books have come through with more authenticity than Sarah does in this one. It's too much of a stretch. We adoptees are Korean on the outside but we are often not included in the Korean-American community. There is a distinct possibility for overlap in many of our experiences (discrimination, racism, growing up the only Asian kid in the suburb), but there is also a distinct limit to the common ground, one that someone who is not adopted could never understand and could simply never capture or do justice to in a book like this.

This book isn't the real deal.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Authenticity and Artistry, February 9, 2006

By 

fact or fiction (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Somebody's Daughter: A Novel (Hardcover)

I'm not Korean American or an adoptee, so I can't pretend to comment with the same degree of background knowledge as some of the other reviewers on this site. Personally, however, I think it's somewhat inappropriate to read any novel sociologically--that is, as pretending to capture the entire diverse range of experiences that Korean adoptees and birthmothers experience. No novel, of course, can do this, and so it seems to me to be a bit unfair to accuse SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER of not capturing all the particularities of any other person's experiences.

What SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER does do a wonderful job at, I think, is getting at the tensions between mothers and daughters, between personal goals and societal expectations that run through the heart not only of adoption but much of the human experience. This--particularly in its sense of lost or unrealized connections--made reading SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER a deeply moving experience for me.

I'm not denying that others might have a different response to the book. But I would urge that everyone read the book for themselves and make up their own minds. Furthermore, I think it is important to underscore that this work is quite clearly sold as a work of fiction (notice the title in Amazon), so whatever debate there may be about the book, it is clearly a quite different case than fake memoirs such as James Frey's MILLION LITTLE PIECES.