Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants ~ By SunAh M. Laybourn
(New York University Press, New York, 2024, ISBN #978-1-4798-1478-7)
Review by Alice Stephens (Spring 2024)
As the demographic age of Korean adoptees becomes older, they have assumed control of their own narrative, producing literature, media and works of art in which their own identify is defined. They have also taken control of their group’s critical legal and human rights issues, lobbying for a law that would protect adoptees’ citizenship even when adoptive parents failed to secure that citizenship as children.
These creative and self-aware activities by what is now a mature and established U.S. immigrant group are described in depth by sociologist (and Korean adoptee) SunAh M. Laybourn in her recent book Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants.
As a Korean-born person in a white, American family, I have spent a lifetime grappling with being a transracial, intercountry adoptee, but there was one part of my identity that I habitually ignored. It was not until my 40s that I recognized how being Korean is part of my heritage, and that another piece of my identity is that of an immigrant. I could perhaps efface that part of my story and identity because my father was an American soldier, making U.S. citizenship part of my birthright. But the reality is that he abandoned me in South Korea. If I had not been adopted, I would not have been eligible for U.S. citizenship.
Adopted in 1968, I was naturalized in 1971, and among my adoption documents are my naturalization certificate, a welcome letter from Richard Nixon, and a pamphlet explaining my rights and responsibilities as an American. It was not until Adam Crapser’s deportation case hit the news in 2017 that I became aware that the American government had no laws in place to guarantee citizenship to all children adopted from abroad.
Laybourn explores the “exceptional belonging” experienced by Korean adoptees and the impact it has on their identity construction. The author explains in the introduction,
I define ‘exceptional belonging’ as the condition for being extraordinarily equipped for inclusion through culturally constructed narratives of deservedness while also being routinely identified for exclusion whether through formal policies, informal practices, or interpersonal interactions.
Through the lens of exceptional belonging, the author closely scrutinizes the unique place that Korean adoptees occupy in the American continuum of hierarchy, with whiteness as the apex.
In the course of her research, Laybourn gathered information from an online survey, in-depth interviews, Korean adoptee events, and analyses of adoptee-centered films. The majority of those interviewed were adopted into white families and were in their 20s to early 30s in 2016, when the interviews were conducted. Some had been long involved in the adoptee community, while others were new to it.
The popular American immigrant story usually depicts loss, struggle, and self-sacrifice. But the typical challenges of immigration — such as gaining entrance to the U.S., assimilating to a new culture and language, establishing financial security — do not apply to the infant or toddler adoptee. Through proximity to whiteness, they are not subject to the usual indignities of being a fresh-off-the-boat newcomer.
Growing up, it is not unusual for the Korean adoptee to identify as white, and to deny or reject their Korean origins. Laybourn claims that for adoptees “it was within their family that they first encountered positive feelings associated with being American (i.e., white) and negative feelings associated with being Korean.” Socialized to view themselves in a white racial frame, Korean adoptees then encounter resistance from others in society, and even from within their own families, who may engage in overtly racist language, or convey a more subtle form of othering through comments like “We don’t see you as Asian.”
Once the Korean adopted person is separated from the protection of their family, it becomes clear that they are not allowed the benefits of being white. They are asked insensitive, probing questions such as “Where are you from really?” and “Do you want to look for your real parents?” They are held to the stereotypes of the Asian model minority — hardworking, obedient, good at math — and the girls and women are subject to sexual fetishization — exotic, eager to please, sexually knowing.
They experience the same garden-variety racism of racial epithets, jeers, and casual or explicit discrimination experienced by every other Asian in America. This can be perplexing to the adoptee. “Transnational transracial adoptees confuse the ‘us’ and ‘them’ of in-group/out-group boundaries. Korean adoptees raised in white families are one of ‘us’ — white family members — and one of ‘them’ — Asian foreigners — conflicting racialized positions,” the author observes.
This idea of being a foreigner despite proximity to whiteness has manifested itself into frightening reality for some intercountry adoptees who, upon reaching adulthood, discover that their adopters never obtained American citizenship for them. Adulthood, according to Laybourn, transforms Korean adoptees from “adoptable orphans” to “deportable immigrants.” Laybourn uses the example of Adam Crapser’s deportation to South Korea as testament to the transformation of a child in need of saving to a foreign adult with criminal tendencies.
Twice adopted into abusive families who neglected to get him naturalized, Crapser was a catalyst for adoptee activism, as numerous intercountry adoptees began to discover that their parents, too, had abrogated their responsibility to naturalize them. The adoptee community was outraged that Korean children could be separated from their families in order to complete an American family, then left with no legal protection when their adoptive parents failed in their duty to make them American citizens.
“The irony was that for undocumented adoptees this better life [that adoption purportedly offered] was similar to the life they may have had in their home country. They existed on the fringes of society, unable to partake in the benefits as citizens,” the author writes.
The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 rectified the situation for intercountry adoptees under 18 years old, but does not cover adoptees who were older than age 18 at the time the act became law in 2000. Galvanized by this issue, adoptees began to organize and advocate for themselves, creating groups such as the Adoptees Right Campaign and Gazillion Strong to promote passage of the Adoptee Citizenship Act (ACA), which would bestow automatic citizenship on people adopted by U.S. citizens.
“Advocacy for the ACA was distinct from previous adoptee citizenship legislation, as it was primarily spearheaded by adoptees for adoptees rather than by adoptive parents or adoption agencies,” the author points out. While trying to move away from the image of adoptee as child, ACA advocates found that “legislators could be moved by thinking about white interests more than immigration interests just as they were at Korean adoption’s inception.”
Therefore, it was more efficacious to emphasize the protection of white family interests, and to emphasize that adoptees were “good” citizens who were in this situation through “no fault of their own,” distinguishing them from “bad” undocumented immigrants, who have been subject to increasing vilification in this time of extreme political polarization. Though iterations of the bill have been introduced multiple times in Congress, the ACA has yet to be passed, leaving an untold number of adoptees in jeopardy of being deported from the only country they have ever known. Meanwhile, immigration laws have only become more draconian and the naturalization process more fraught.
From the collective identity of adoptee activism, Laybourn then examines individual identity formation, which typically happens well into adulthood, once the adoptee is somewhat autonomous of their adoptive parents and fully cognizant of the micro-aggressions and othering that happen within society, friend groups, and their own families. Often, they begin to reclaim what was denied to them, such as Korean culture and Asian solidarity. They no longer avoid thoughts of their birth families for fear of being disloyal or ungrateful to their American parents. That change in perspective often leads to their engaging in active searches, including trips back to Korea. They find validation and support by being in community with adoptees, no matter class, religion, sexual orientation, and other differences.
Creative works that seek to capture the Korean adoptee experience have sprung from adoptee efforts to define themselves in society, and Laybourn plays close attention to the film documentaries Twinsters and aka Seoul, which she explains as “two contemporary mainstream adoptee cultural productions created by adoptees, as sites of disidentification, where adoptees rework the normative meanings of adoptee, adoption, family, race, and citizenship.” Taking a fine-tooth comb to the documentaries, the author makes an argument for how these films reframe the Korean adoption narrative by giving adoptees control of the story and making the broader public aware of the global community that is manifested in meetings like the International Korean Adoptee Association’s tri-annual Gathering in Seoul.
She also dissects the controversy around the non-adoptee-directed movie Blue Bayou, which was perceived as using Crapser’s story without his consent, and not going far enough in promoting adoptee citizenship rights, resulting in a disavowal by adoptees, meant to be its target audience.
Events are moving fast in Korean adoption studies, and Out of Place does not include recent news such as South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation investigation of adoption, Sweden’s halting of Korean adoptions following claims of malfeasance, and Denmark’s commitment to end Korean adoption for the same reason, all of which were instigated by adoptee activism. Popular movies such as Joy Ride and Return to Seoul, while not adoptee-directed, are moving the adoptee narrative away from sentimentalized savior stories. And within the last five months, three critical adoption studies by Korean adoptees have been published, including this one.
Though this is a scholarly work, the writing and concepts are accessible to the general reader. Through terms like “exceptional belonging,” “public racialization,” and “adoptable orphan, deportable immigrant,” Laybourn gives a vocabulary to that peculiar niche Korean adoptees inhabit in their own country, whether citizens or not.
