Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #176156 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 135 pages

Customer Reviews

A book that promotes healing and understanding
I bought this book for my boyfriend who is a Korean adoptee and may be unlikely to find his birth parents. This book provided him, and me, with a better understanding of adoption in Korea, and a sense of peace that perhaps the letters from these women might be what his mother would say to him. I highly recommend this book for both adoptees and the people who love them. It is helpful to understand that the cultural context of adoption in Korea.

Not for Adoptees
If you're a Korean adoptee born before 1990 (I am) and you're looking for more insight on why you were given up for adoption, this is not the book for you.

The "letters" written by the women in the book will seem contrived and form-like in nature after you have read 10 of them. I understand that these women are all in the same situation and location therefore the letters might seem similar in nature, but honestly, they did not provide any other information or emotional support for me. Perhaps, I am not the audience this book is aimed towards, however, I found it extremely disappointing.

Heartfelt but Flawed
I thought that the essays in this collection were heartfelt, to say the least -- at times gutwrenching. However, the book's editing is so unilateral as to leave me wondering just how universal the feelings presented in these essays are.

All the women who contributed to this collection were at the same maternity home. As one part of their couseling and education they were required to write a letter to the child they were placing for adoption -- [some of] the letters that were chosen for this collection. As another part of their education, they attended religious training. So, many of the letters are quite religious in nature. Most are extremely emotional -- emotional language that may not be typical of every day life nor even of these particular women, since it was part of the "exercise" to explore this in their letter writing.

In looking to read how birth parents feel, I found this book too uniform -- same facility, same training, same counseling per author -- to tell me whether or not this is indicitive of a typical birthmother response, or a typical Korean birthmother response. I'd have loved to hear from birthmothers from other institutions or hospitals, with varying religious beliefs, pre- and post- education, and at different times in the process.

It was clear to me from the introduction that the editors had a large part in conveying the birthmother experience -- the way they chose the letters, the way they organized them, how few letters were chosen from many, how they tell the reader to respond to them, and their own viewpoints plainly stated in ways that were entirely consistent with the material presented. I found the editorial comments at the start nearly too consistent with the material in the book, as it told me just how much the editors' own feelings influenced their choices.

It's unfortunate, because I think this is a stellar idea for a book. But the one thing it lacked was the precise element I sought -- How do birthmothers tend to feel? Not, How do birthmothers at Ae Ran Won who have received certain training and instruction to write their feelings tend to feel, but what is their true experience?