Rev. of Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism by KIM PARK NELSON (review)

REVIEWS   257 it to be a helpful and important reminder, especially in a text about transracial and intercountry adoption. In the main section, there were insightful points into both the texts and the recommending body of the Fundación as gatekeepers and canon-builders. This monograph will be useful for scholars studying a wide range of topics, from intercountry adoption and immigration (especially the irregular immigrant) to canon diversification and Spanish children’s literature. Rev. of Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism KIM PARK NELSON. Rutgers UP, 2015 223 pp. $95.00 (Clothback ); 978-0813570679; $25.95 (Paperback) 978-0813570662. Hosu Kim Kim Park Nelson’s Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences , and Racial Exceptionalism provides a textured analysis of transracial adoptee identity formation based on a rich collection of adoptee oral histories. Park Nelson scaffolds the varied historical, geopolitical, and cultural contexts of Korean American adoptee experiences and locates them within the larger orbit of social forces that have shaped transnational adoption practice. The author aggregates sixty-five oral histories of transracial and transnational Korean adoptees, thereby creating links among individual experiences and establishing a unique archive of transnational adoptee voices. With the heuristic lens of “invisible Asians,” Park Nelson offers an in-depth understanding of adoptee experiences and their identity formation as transracial adoptees; both of these revolve around the idea of multiculturalism , the mechanism by which transnational Korean adoptees became and remained invisible Asians. For example, post-1970s multiculturalism served as a hegemonic fulcrum around which racial difference became cultural diversity, obscuring the former in transnational adoption discourse. In this cultural milieu, transracial adoption was appointed as an embodiment of multiculturalism. Park Nelson contests this narrative and uses her oral history collection to delineate the conditions and processes whereby transnational adoptees have remained invisible Asians in their families, local communities, and larger Asian diasporic communities. The pressing question is, under what conditions and by what mechanisms have Korean transnational adoptees been rendered invisible? The author identifies racial isolation as a key factor in adoptees’ racial identity development and as a site of convergence for adoptees’ family and life experiences. Often, adoptees grow up as the only person of color in their white families, with little meaningful exchange with Asian American communities. And yet, their immersion in whiteness and their proximity to white privilege does not immunize adoptees from racialization. Under a thick veil of “color-blind” love and earnest efforts by adoptive families 258   ADOPTION & CULTURE 6.1 to strive for sameness and homogeneity, adoptees’ racial injuries, let alone racial differences, are dismissed, isolating adoptees’ racialized experiences from their parents’ life experiences and further away from their consciousness on race. As seen in the oral histories included in Park Nelson’s volume, the impact of such isolation can be profound. The stories demonstrate that by and large, race becomes a topic that adoptees approach with caution and about which they often remain politely silent. This collectively choreographed racial neutrality gestures to “racial etiquette” that, according to the author, inscribes an unofficial code of conduct specific to transracial adoption culture. Here, racial isolation not only illuminates the conditions of their existence but also serves as the mechanism by which they learn to separate out, if not obliterate, race from their experiences and identity. In other words, racial isolation no longer refers to a material condition or a psychological response but is now realized through adoptees’ active participation in their own identity formation, which often renders their Asianness invisible to themselves. Crucial to transracial adoptee identity formation, however, is a paradigmatic shift away from racial isolation as a material condition and a self-making process. As transracial adoptees’ worlds expand beyond the immediate circle of adoptive family and community, adoptees’ encounters with people of color, such as other Asian Americans and other transracial adoptees, have served as a catalyst to develop a racial consciousness. Park Nelson describes it as a painful and dissonant process in which their lifelong efforts to not see race or their self-identification with whiteness are brought into question, evaluated, and negotiated with their racial awareness. While this crucial identity realignment could restore a sense of pride and...