Narrative kinning in contemporary memoirs of Korean adoption

This paper explores the connection between life writing and kinship in a number of narratives by adoptees from South Korea to the US and Sweden. I propose that these texts are examples of narrative kinning; an exploration and creation of kinship through and between texts. The first aspect of narrative kinning occurs as the memoirs create a discursive space in which alternative modes of identity and kinship are envisioned and embodied. Narrative kinning through text highlights the relational, textual and transnational nature of Korean adoptee identity. The second aspect of the term, narrative kinning between texts, is seen in the similarity of the memoirs’ formal features. Tracing similarities of voice, structure, theme and tone between American and Swedish narratives of transnational/transracial adoption, I consider the Korean adoptee memoir as a genre-in-progress. The dominant discourses of the clean break; predestination; colorblindness, and happiness form a framework within which the two types of narrative kinning occur, and the paper explores how the Korean adoptee memoirs challenge and critique these discourses in significant ways.