Customer Reviews

Somebody's Daughter: A Novel

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I'm all about supporting KA authors, as a Korean American myself. But try as I might, I simply can not get engaged in this book. I even read it a second time hoping that I'd get something that I didn't get the first time. I am not an adoptee. Nor am I an adoptee's parent. That said, I do have several friends who are Korean adoptees. I would NEVER dare claim to know what it is like for them, and I would never dare write from their point of view because I openly admit I could not do justice to their experiences. I think a lot of people out there are looking only for generalizations and don't want to know about the real and profound pain that many adopted persons feel. If that is the case for you, then this is probably a story you'll enjoy.

In my humble opinion, the parts of this book written fro m Sarah's perspective barely even start to scratch the surface of what life is like for aKorean adoptee. My adopted friends who read this book were split. Half of them said they thought this book was fine, and that they were glad that at least it's out there because it's better than having no fictional literature at all that addresses Korean adoptees. The other half said they were repulsed by this book because the author trid to assumed THEIR voices, attempted to speak more or less on their behalf. Without having been through anything close to their experiences herself.

I think the author accomplishes at least sounding sincere when it comes to the parts of the book that go back in time to tell the birth mother's story. Very, very little about the character of Sarah struck me as sounding anything like the adoptees I have come to know and love and respect as friends. I was hoping to read something that would prove that at least the author had paid her dues by interviewing Korean adoptees from many different backgrounds and personal experiences. I think it shows that she probably only fell back on secondhand knowledge rather than getting up close and truly personal with adoptees who have been through what Sarah was supposed to be going through. Needless to say I won't be attempting a third pass at this book.

I've been meaning to share my thoughts on this book for some time now but just managed to finish the last few chapters last weekend. I'll go a step further than the other adoptee reviewers here and give this booka mere 1 star. 1 star for parts of the mother's storyline that seemed relatively genuine and sensitive to what real birth mothers might have gone through. No stars for the lack of real substance behind Sarah's storyline. I have been to Korea and searched for my birth parents myself. Like Sarah I did not find what I had set out to search for. But I am unlike Sarah in just about every other way. I struggled through this book over the course of about 5 months. I just could not get into it, try after try. Wasn't a book that I just couldn't put down. In fact I put it down after just about every other page. Was it because the protagonist was a chick? I don't think so. I think it was because everything about Sarah struck me as contrived. From the way she mentioned her adopted family almost in passing to the way she stopped short of really getting to the heart of her pain and grief as an adopted Korean. I know a few other adopted Koreans who never finished this book. The ones who did said it was forgettable, and it didnt't seem special to them. I would have to agree. I didn't take away any nuggets of truth from this story nor did I identify with the characters like I associated with the experiences of fellow Minnesotan adopted Korean Jane Trenka in her memoir The Language Of Blood. I might not have reunited with my birth family, but there are certain feelings and experiences in an adopte Korean's life that seem more or less universal amongst adoptees that I didn't get at all in Somebody's Daughter.

I really loved both the mother and the daughter in the book. Sarah and Kyung-Sook are so very real and so easy to identify with. I have never been to Korea but reading this book I could smell the aromas and feel what Korea must feel like to an American visiting for the first time. I had to read passages out loud to my youngest Korean born daughter. At some we laughed together and other ones made us cry. My daughters both are anxious to read it next. I didn't want the story to end yet I was so anxious to finish it.

The descriptions are so rich and the characters so alive. I am giving this book as presents to everyone I know who has connections to Korea or to adoption. This is a book I will read many times in the future and each time I have no doubt I will find something new to think about.

Somebody's Daughter is the first book I've read on Korean adoptees where the voice and perspective of the birthmother is so clear and comprehensible. Often in a predominantly patriarchical, conservative, Confucian value rooted society like Korea, it is hard grasp what it must have been like for a birthmother to have to make difficult choices about her baby. Somebody's Daughter tells a beautiful story of two women who struggle through this society at different time periods, one seeking answers, the other seeking a life. Marie Lee does a superb job painting the backdrop of Seoul in all time periods as well as developing her characters to the point you think they are real people.

I enjoyed this book overall but was somewhat frustrated with the main character, Sarah, throughout. I'm not an adoptee, nor am I Korean, so I can't comment on that experience. However, Sarah's emotional response to the story's events just weren't always believable. Her extreme ambivalence toward her white adoptive family didn't always ring true, and her connection to Korea seemed to be at one end or the other of a wide ranging spectrum. She resents her adoptive family, yet the idea of returning to Korea never occurred to her? Sarah also seemed very immature, more like a 16 year old than a college student. I most enjoyed the portions written about (SPOILER) Sarah's birth mother. I sympathized the most with her character, and I liked reading about Korean culture from the perspective of a Korean.

And here's something that bothered me throughout. Sarah comes from the Minnesota town of Eden Prairie. Throughout the book, this is spelled EDEN'S PRAIRIE. Whether this is the author's mistake or the publisher's, I don't know. But I just kept thinking, the author got a Fulbright to travel to Korea to interview birth mothers, but she couldn't flip open an atlas to get the name of a town right?

I just finished reading Somebody's Daughter, by Marie Myung-Ok Lee, and it was amazing. What a beautifully-written, honest book.

It was truly one of those books where I felt as if I'd stepped into someone else's life for a little while, and was able to personally experience some of Sarah and her birth mother's life.

To be able to write such a book is a gift.

Lee doesn't sentimentalize the idea of international adoption -- she faces it head-on, with a sense of truth and honesty and reality. So often, all we see are the cute babies from abroad with their glowing new parents, but the story of how that happens can be a tragic or difficult one. And the story of what happens later can also be difficult.

Lee deftly handles both stories, and weaves together the saga of Sarah's birth mother, and Sarah herself, and how their lives parallel and where they go in different directions.

The ending was a surprise, and after I thought about it, quite appropriate in many ways.

It's not only a great book purely from the standpoint of a good read, but it has particular resonance for anyone affected by adoption -- whether a birth mother, an adopted child, or parent of an adopted child.

I highly recommend this book.

"Somebody's Daughter" is tremendous in its unflinching portrayal of Korea, adoption, the relationships between mothers and daughters, and the relationship to one's self. Lee's prose is gorgeous, poetic, precise, and compelling. I finished this book in one sitting and was left breathless at the end.

Lee's talent as a writer is evident in all aspects of this book. Well-researched and well-rendered, "Somebody's Daughter" should be on every reader's bookshelf.