Information about our new book ONCE THEY HEAR MY NAME: Korean Adoptees and Their Journeys Toward Identity is below. If you’re interested in receiving a desk copy, let me know.
Marilyn Lammert
Marilyn Lammert MSW.ScD
301-951-9645
www.marilynlammert.com
Relationship issues - Living with illness - Cross-cultural issues
Finding personal meaning - Adoption identity and search
“Once They Hear My Name” is a step forward in our collective understanding of the cultural hurdles international adoptees tackle every day. In their own words, the nine Korean adoptees of “Once They Hear My Name’’ talk about how they became the adults they are today, speaking candidly about acceptance and rejection, about life struggles and successes, about experiences unique to each yet connected by common threads. At their core these stories chronicle adoptees’ ongoing, and often difficult, quests to discover who they are. Growing up, they initially viewed themselves as typical American kids at home with baseball, pizza, playing with dolls and the rest. But often their peers - and sometimes members of their own families - saw them as strangers, good targets for ugly stereotypes. Many of the nine adoptees chronicle their trips as adults back to Korea to find their roots and, in some cases, their birth families. These journeys yield mixed emotional results. The narratives illustrate the wide variety o f ways all adoptees, not just those from Korea, and all Americans with cultural roots in Asia, wrestle with identity issues.
By Ellen Lee, Marilyn Lammert and Mary Anne Hess.
ISBN: 978-0-9793756-0-6 (Paper)
978-0-9793756-1-3 (Hardcover)
LOC CONTROL NO. : 2007937159
PUBLICATION DATE: September 2, 2008
PAGE COUNT: 200
PRCE: $14.95 (Paper)
$20.95 (Hardcover)
Tamarisk Books
P.O. Box 3006
Silver Spring, MD 20918
tamariskbooks@aol.com
www.tamariskbooks.com
Authors:
Marilyn Lammert (www.drmarilynlammert.com) is a psychotherapist and healer in private practice and a former university professor. She has taught at Washington University, the University of Maryland, and the Catholic University of America. She and her husband, Paul Carlson, adopted their son, Adam, from Korea in 1983. Adam is one of the book’s nine contributors.
Ellen Lee is a licensed clinical social worker. Korean-born, Ms. Lee came to the U.S. with her family at the age of 10. Her interest in Korean adoptees began when she met Marilyn Lammert and her adopted son, Adam, and became involved in their search for Adam’s birth family in Korea. Thoug h not adopted, Ms. Lee can relate to the adoptees ‘ sense of disconnect from their birth country, loss of language, culture and identity confusion.
Mary Anne Hess is an award-winning freelance writer and editor. During her 35 years of professional experience, she has specialized in education and family issues. Her work has appeared in newspapers and education and parenting publications across the United States.
REVIEWS:
Christian Science Monitor
Once They Hear My Name
Korean-American adoptees talk about their experiences growing up in a predominantly Caucasian world.
By Terry Hong | September 30, 2008 edition
Once They Hear My Name: Korean Adoptees and Their Journeys Toward Identity, Edited by Ellen Lee, Marilyn Lammert, and Mary Anne Hess
“When I got to college I said I was adopted, right off the bat,” says Todd Knowlton, a 33-year-old Korean-American adoptee. “It doesn’t bother me, but once they hear my last name, people always ask uncomfortable questions.” The new collection, Once They Hear My Name: Korean Adoptees and Their Journeys Toward Identity edited by Ellen Lee, Marilyn Lammert, and Mary Anne Hess, echoes Knowlton’s sense of the disconnect shared by many transracial adoptees. In the 1950s, long before Angelina Jolie and Madonna put transracial adoption in the headlines, Korean children were already arriving on US shores to join predominantly Caucasian families. According to various estimates, some 100,000 to 120,000 Korean adoptees reside in the United States alone, with a 50-plus-year history of becoming Americans. According to the US Census Bureau, even with the rise in adoptions from China, Vietnam, Guatemala, and Ethiopia, Korea remains the largest single-country source of foreign adoptees under the age of 18.
The nine voices represented here are all those of adults, with ages ranging from 25 to 53 and a variety of backgrounds and chosen professions. Regardless of individual circumstances, certain similarities are clear.
For adoptees, growing up without access to a Korean- or Asian-American community can be problematic. Even in the most nurturing families, an adoptee’s sense of being jarringly different from the rest of his or her family may be thrust upon them in the form of racial slurs or even violence. Then, ironically, even as adoptees fight that prejudice at home as a result of their “forever foreign” faces, they are still recognized as typically “American” when they travel abroad. For some adoptees, however, traveling to Korea can bring a sense of relief at no longer being the minority.
This book potentially serves two purposes: For adoptees, it offers a sense of community, a feeling that, “I’ve been there, I’ve felt that.”
For adoptive parents, it can serve as a guide to the growing number of resources to help families teach transracial adoptees to celebrate rather than regret the cultural riches that come with their backgrounds.
In addition to “Once They Hear My Name,” here are other collections to consider adding to the family library: “Seeds from a Silent Tree: An Anthology By Korean Adoptees,” edited by Tonya Bishoff and Jo Rankin; “Voices from Another Place: A Collection of Works from a Generation Born in Korea and Adopted to Other Countries,” edited by Susan Soon-Keum Cox; “I Wish for You a Beautiful Life: Letters from the Korean Birth Mothers of Ae Ran Won to Their Children,” edited by Sara Dorow; and “Outsiders=2
0Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption,” edited by Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah and Sun Yung Shin.)
Terry Hong is media arts consultant at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program.
San Antonio EXPRESS-NEWS 9 -14-08
Longing To Fit in Part of Life for Korean Adoptees
By SUZANNE STRUGLINSKI
.2008 Hearst Newspapers
“Once They Hear My Name: Korean Adoptees and Their Journeys
Toward Identity.”
Edited by Ellen Lee, Marilyn Lammert and Mary Anne Hess.
Tamarisk Books, 178 pages $14.95
Nine Korean adoptees tell their stories of growing up in American, white families in “Once They Hear My Name: Korean Adoptees and Their Journeys Toward Identity.”
Among the cultural stereotypes to overcome: “is he yours?” asked of a white mother walking with her Asian child, to playground taunts of “slanted-eyes” and unfair assumptions about being good at math.
As children, the book’s featured adoptees, now ranging from age 25 to 53, said they did not need to look too hard to figure out
they were different from others in their families. How they dealt with the differences - and the experiences these divisions produced
while growing up - varied widely from person to person.
When Marilyn Lammert, an adoptive mother, traveled to Korea to meet her son’s biological family in 1996, she met other American
adoptees searching for their birth families along with some who had moved back to Korea to work or go to school.
As Lammert and Ellen Lee, a Korean-American friend who traveled with her, heard their stories, they sensed a common theme of
longing for an identity and a strong desire to know more about their Korean roots. The visitors were amazed by the different paths
that the adoptees took to get them to that point.
The two decided to interview Korean adoptees and collect life-experience stories that might help other adoptees through the
struggle of being born into one race or culture but raised in another. Mary Anne Hess edited the taped interviews into the
first-person accounts that make up the book. The editors note that there are more than 100,000 Korean adoptees in the United States. The oldest are now senior citizens and the youngest are still babies.
“They are part of the largest group of children ever adopted cross racial, cultural and geographic lines,” according to the
book. The oldest came home with American soldiers stationed in Korea after the Korean War (1950-1953); the youngest are infants
babies still coming over today.
Some adoptees’ parents went out of their way to teach their children about Korean culture, either through books, Korean food,
special camps or trips to their home country. On the other hand, at least one adoptee “never had a bowl of rice.”
Some had adopted brothers or sisters while others had siblings who were the biological children of their parents, creating an
entirely different complication. Some families talked openly about adoptions while others did not really discuss it. Some families
stayed together while others were separated by divorce or death of a parent.
Beyond examining how the mere knowledge one is adopted (and of a different race) affects day-to-day life, the book also explores the adoptees’ decision of whether to seek out their birth families.
Two in the book, including Lammert’s son Adam Carlson, whose story makes up the first chapter, found their birth parents, while
others have either come up empty or did not choose to begin an intense search.
Someone reading this book either thinking about adoption or parenting an adopted child of a different race may read between the
lines as to what worked and what didn’t with the book’s nine adoptee contributors. But the overall lesson is that what works for
one child may not work for another.
The book itself can be uncomfortable - and thought-provoking - particularly when reading about the outright discrimination or
stereotypes that the adoptees endured on top of their struggles to fit into their own families. The stories help answer questions that
would normally be too hard or perhaps too rude to ask.
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