Who owns the story of an adoption?
Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom is an illustrator, a cartoonist, and a graphic designer living in Auckland, New Zealand, with her partner and two children. She has a master's degree in literature from Södertörn University and has studied at the Comic Art School in Malmö. Palimpsest is her first graphic novel. She is an adoptee rights activist.
"Beautiful... Palimpsest: Documents from a Korean Adoption by Lisa
Wool-Rim Sjöblom, in which the author, who now lives in New
Zealand, tells the story of the search for her birth
parents."--Guardian Best of 2019 "This powerful graphic novel
explores the boom of adoptions of children of South Korean children
during the 1970s and 1980s."--Ms. Magazine "With help from her
husband and a Korean-raised friend, she begins an investigation
into her origins that reveals the dark history of foreign
adoption....The participating institutions, meanwhile, do their
best to dismiss, obfuscate, and gaslight Sjöblom as she
investigates. An unflinching indictment of foreign
adoption."--Publishers Weekly "Palimpsest paints an
intergenerational umbilical cord whose cutting we mourn throughout
our lives."--Mutha Magazine "A powerful and political read telling
a much-needed tale of the adoption experience. It shows the vivid
emotions that are universal among adoptees seeking to learn more
about their lives while facing stark bureaucracy."--Blogcritics
"While anyone interested in adoption should appreciate the memoir,
it is particularly revealing of the abuses of the transnational
adoption system that not only obscured her history when she was a
child, but continued to resist her attempts to find the truth as an
adult."--Popmatters "Palimpsest is as much a detailed and
convincing argument for change as it is a personal testament of
self."--Comics Beat "Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom has quietly conveyed the
maddening, meandering path that a transracial, immigrant adoptee
must take in order to discover her own history. She detangles lies,
bureaucracy, and the unwillingness of others, even as she unravels
questions of her own identity: what does it mean to be a mother? To
be Swedish? To be Korean? As an American child of Korean
immigrants, I found familiarity in her search for solid footing
within herself, amid complicated notions of race, cultural
heritage, and nationality, and I was devastated to learn hard
truths about international adoption and the adoptee experience
within the Korean diaspora. Palimpsest is an honest, and sometimes
painful, record of Sjöblom's experience, as well as an important
document and guide for others in search of their own story."
--Hellen Jo, cartoonist, and translator of Uncomfortably Happily
"Sjöblom's beautifully crafted graphic novel about being a
transnational adoptee of color in Sweden is not just pioneering but
also functions as a powerful reparative act. Palimpsest highlights
previously subjugated and silenced experiences that might appear to
be uncomfortable but nonetheless have to be told to accomplish
truth and reconciliation for all partners involved in adoption.
Through Palimpsest, Sjöblom helps to break the taboo in Sweden
surrounding the all-too-numerous corrupt adoptions."
--Tobias Hübinette, PhD in Korean studies and a critical race
studies researcher, Karlstad University "Sjöblom offers a searing
first person account of her journey. Thoughtfully told and
beautifully illustrated, her memoir is sure to resonate with many
readers. Palimpsest provides an important voice."
--Elizabeth Raleigh, author of Selling Transracial Adoption:
Families, Markets, and the Color Line "Ms. Sjöblom's story is her
own, yet it represents the many adoptees who discover their
documents have been falsified, destroyed in a fire/flood, or simply
made up by social workers to create a more adoptable
baby--transforming Wool-Rim into case #79-167 into Lisa. Through
the opening lens of giving birth to her own children, Ms. Sjöblom
documents her relentless search for her birth family despite being
told repeatedly that they cannot be found. This is a story about
searching and finding, yearning, but never really reuniting."
-Oh Myo Kim, PhD, Assistant Professor of Practice, Counseling,
Developmental &
Educational Psychology, Boston College "Palimpsest is not only a
dramatic and riveting story of a Korean adoptee's search for her
origins. It is also a window onto the abuses that are all too
common in transnational adoption, and too often glossed over as
insignificant. Through beautiful images and compelling prose,
Sjöblom captures how adoption entails the systematic erasure and
rewriting of names, relations, and cultural belonging, and thereby
brings into powerful focus the indelible psychic traces that
remain."
-Eleana Kim, author of Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean
Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging "Palimpsest is a beautifully
rendered and emotionally gripping graphic novel that underlines the
multitudes of losses transnational adoptees experience. In telling
her story, Sjöblom illustrates the violence adoptees experience as
a result of being denied access to their own histories. Palimpsest
artfully captures the personal struggles of transnational adoptee
birth searches, as well as the inequities and injustices embedded
within the history of the international adoption industry."
--Kim Park Nelson, author of Invisible Asians: Korean American
Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism
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