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  • Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism by Kim Park Nelson
  • Aeriel A. Ashlee
Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism. by Kim Park Nelson. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2016. Xii + 230 pp. $25.95 paper. ISBN: 978-0-8135-7066-2.

In her debut book, Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism, Kim Park Nelson draws from the oral histories and life stories of sixty-five Korean American adoptees to critically explore race as it is understood by Korean adoptees raised in white families as well as investigate how race is understood and produced in American society. Park Nelson's ethnography, informed by a feminist epistemology and post-modern ideology, positions the experiences of Korean American adoptees as a compelling community through which to explore "the multiplicities of Asian American identity, American race relations, U.S.-Asian foreign relations, and historical changes in the American family" (17). To introduce her book, Park Nelson provides an overview of media coverage of South Korean adoption in the United States over the past sixty years, inviting readers to consider the ways in which media representations shape and inform social and cultural perspectives. In particular, she notes three dominant tropes used to normalize and characterize Korean American adoption: the pitiful orphan, the benevolent rescuer family, and the well-adjusted, American-assimilated adoptee.

Park Nelson contends that the master narrative around Korean American adoption problematically glorifies American militarism, oversimplifies assimilation as a signifier of positive adoptive placements, and tokenizes adoptees as exemplary embodiments of U.S. multiculturalism. By purposefully and strategically centering the voices of Korean American adoptees, Park Nelson offers a much-needed counternarrative about transnational adoption to the dominant discourse that heralds transnational and transracial adoption as a "remedy for racism, or at least as evidence that racial divides in the United States are mending" (9). Through her interdisciplinary examination of transnational Korean American adoption, Park Nelson interrogates questions of racial [End Page 115] identity formation and performance, and the pervasive myth of transnational adoption as confirmation of racial harmony.

In Chapter 1, Park Nelson describes the rationale and method for her study. She articulates critical concerns about past transracial adoption research, which overly focuses on adoptive parents as the primary actors in adoption and largely interprets cultural assimilation as a key marker of adoptee success. Informed by her own experience of being misunderstood and overlooked, Park Nelson envisions her study as an opportunity to explore the unique experience of transracial adoptees' developing racial identities distinct from their cultural identities. Chapter 2 starts with the origins story of Korean adoption in the United States, beginning with the first generation of Korean adoptees in the 1950s and 1960s. Park Nelson explains how these Korean War orphans came to be regarded as exceptional people of color and ideal immigrants, specifically in terms of cultural and social assimilation. She juxtaposes Korean adoption against the backdrop of Asian exclusion practiced in the United States prior to 1965 and explores ideas of salvation and isolation, which accompanied adoptive family narratives in the early waves of Korean adoption and which persist today.

In Chapter 3, Park Nelson synthesizes transnational and transracial adoption research—primarily within social work and social policy—to examine the role of power in these early adoption discourses. She notes several characteristics common within the reviewed research, including centering adoptive parents, the use of "adjustment" as coded language to indicate racial and cultural assimilation as positive markers of adoptee success, and the minimization of reported challenges accompanying adoption in favor of the perceived benefits of permanent family placement. Chapter 4 introduces Park Nelson's oral histories project and focuses on the experiences of Korean adoptees in Minnesota, the epicenter of U.S. Korean adoption (Minnesota has the highest concentration of Korean adoptees in the United States). Park Nelson presents the complexities of participants' identity formation, specifically with regard to experiencing racism and isolation in predominantly white Minnesota.

Chapter 5, in which Park Nelson theorizes the politics of color blindness in transracially adoptive families and contextualizes Korean adoptees within a highly racialized U.S. context, is perhaps the most...

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