Ten Thousand Sorrows

The Extraordinary Journey of a Korean War Orphan

Author: Elizabeth Kim
ISBN: 9780385496339

They called it an "honor killing," but to Elizabeth Kim, the night she watched her grandfather and uncle hang her mother from the wooden rafter in the corner of their small Korean hut, it was cold-blooded murder. Her Omma had committed the sin of lying with an American soldier, and producing not just a bastard but a "honhyol--a mixed-race child, considered worth less than nothing. Left at a Christian orphanage in postwar Seoul like garbage, bleeding and terrified, Kim unwittingly embarked on the next phase of her extraordinary life when she was adopted by a childless Fundamentalist pastor and his wife in the United States. Unfamiliar with Western customs and language, but terrified that she would be sent back to the orphanage, or even killed, Kim trained herself to be the perfect child. But just as her Western features doomed her in Korea, so her Asian features served as a constant reminder that she wasn't good enough for her new, all-white environment. After escaping her adoptive pare

Publisher: Doubleday
Publish Date: 2000

Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Women, Family & Relationships / Adoption & Fostering, Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Cross-Cultural Center (Location: Biography (BIO))