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Feb 09, 2019DorisWaggoner rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
I had a hard time getting into this memoir. It's not that I don't know adoptees, even transracial ones. But the beginning just didn't catch my interest, in spite of Nicole's obvious writing skill, and the issues she had to deal with. Until she started school, she was wrapped in a cocoon of her adoptive parents' love, even though in her small Oregon town hers was the only Korean face. Her parents made no secret of her status as an adoptee. But when she began school--a Catholic school, yet--she was hassled and bullied on the playground, and as much as her classmates could get away with, even in the classroom. For some reason, the attorney handling the adoption didn't warn her parents about this issue, so they just told her to ignore it. Ignoring it was pretty hard to do. She was fairly obsessed from an early age at knowing who her other family was, but didn't actively search until she and her white husband were expecting their first child, in their late 20s. The conjunction of the birth of Abigail and learning the basics of her family was mind-blowing, especially as they weren't at all what she expected. This is the point at which the book became, for me, a real page turner. I'm not adopted, but I think almost anyone could identify with the issues she brings up, especially these days. We all think to some degree of our own and others' identity, especially racial identity, immigration, what it means to be family, chosen or biological. Nicole chooses to continue to belong to the family that chose her all those years before, and can't help but to choose some of her biological family who are so much like her and influence her so much as adults. They'll never know everything about the missing years, but they choose a future together, including to raise their children as cousins.