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| ‘Visions’ of culture, identity |
By: EMILY HARTLEY, Special to the News
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Posted: Tuesday, February 2, 2010 10:49 pm
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SEOUL, KOREA — Jane Jeong Trenka and her older sister were barely in the United States a few months when their Korean mother contacted them.
Adopted by a Harlow couple in 1973, Trenka maintained continuous contact with her Korean family while traveling between the U.S. and Korea as a twenty something until moving back to her birth country in 2004.
Now living in Seoul, she is the author of “The Language of Blood: A Memoir” (2003) and the new “Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee’s Return to Korea” (2009), as well as co-editor of “Outsiders Within: Writings on Transracial Adoption” (2006).
She will bring her stories of adoption, culture and identity to St. Olaf College on Feb. 12 in a book reading and signing event.
“Jane’s prose astonishes with its precise elegance and intimate political knowledge,” said Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, St. Olaf assistant professor of English and Korean Cultural Association adviser. “Readers viewed her first book, ‘The Language of Blood,’ about returning to Korea to reunite with her family, a stunning and heartbreaking debut, and their expectations will be surpassed by her follow-up memoir, which explores love and place with sonorous clarity.”
Kwon spoke with the News via e-mail about adoption, encouragement and “Fugitive Visions”:
Q: Why did you choose to write about the intercultural adoption experience in the form of a memoir?
A: “Write what you know” is what they say, so I was just writing about what I knew, which is my own life. I also didn’t realize that what I was writing would turn into “Language of Blood” and that it would be published, although when I finally realized that it was a book manuscript, I had a very good understanding of the importance of telling my Korean family’s story, from our perspective, as a way to start to balance the adoption literature, which was and still is dominated by adoptive parents.
Q: How do you describe your writing style?
A: I have different writing styles for different purposes. I’ve worked at a newswire agency in Seoul for over three years now, so I’ve learned how to write in a news style, which I use for editorials and my work for TRACK (Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea). For “Fugitive Visions,” I guess you could call it a thematically based stream of consciousness or collage.
Q: How is “Fugitive Visions” different than (or similar to) “The Language of Blood?”
A: “Language of Blood” extends the adoptee’s (my) timeline into the past, to connect with the Korean family. Fugitive Visions extends the adoptee’s timeline into the future, into middle adulthood. I’m saying that it’s an extension of a timeline because adoptees are usually thought of within a very short timeline — the span of time in which they live in their adoptive homes — which they only inhabit from the point of separation from their birth families or countries to young adulthood.
Q: How has the publication of your memoirs affected you? Your family?
A: I’ve been challenged to think more deeply about the issue of transracial and transnational adoption, and I have been so blessed to have come into a community that is also deeply thinking about this issue. As for my family, they are silent supporters, but because of the shame in Korea of giving up a child, my sisters do not want to be identified in public with me. My brother is more open about it because he can be, because he’s a man in a very patriarchal society.
Q: What do you think people can gain from your writing, and from “Fugitive Visions” specifically?
A: Well, I like the saying that “You don’t read a book. A book reads you.” So everyone will get something different out of books. But mostly what I hear from adoptees about LoB and FV is that they relate to parts of the story, and that the books help them to feel that they are not so alone in the world. And one adoptee — a Lebanese adoptee who has repatriated to Lebanon — blogged that “Outsiders Within” is the “the antidote to living in the fog.” I thought that was cool.
Q: Anything else you’d like to include?
A: I hope that Korean adoptees will come to Korea and try living here for a semester or a year. GOAL, InKAS, KoRoot, Inje University, Geumgang University and others have built a wonderful and supportive infrastructure for adopted Koreans to be able to live and work there. In the future, maybe we will see similar programs for adoptees from China, Ethiopia, Russia, Guatemala, Haiti, etc. That’s my hope — that we will all get to see and hear for ourselves as adoptees, independently, without others looking over our shoulders or feeding us all the information, so we can make up our own minds about how and where we fit into the world.
IF YOU GO
WHO: Jane Jeong Trenka, author of “Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee’s Return to Korea”
WHAT: Book signing and reading
WHERE: St. Olaf College, Buntrock Commons, Viking Theatre
WHEN: Feb. 12 from 7 to 9 p.m.
MORE INFORMATION: Visit stolaf.edu/calendar or jjtrenka.wordpress.com
MINNESOTA MEANING
As a Korean-born adoptee who grew up in Minnesota, author Jane Jeong Trenka will present her ideas on transcultural adoption to an appropriate audience Feb. 12.
“At approximately 15,000 overseas Korean adoptees, Minnesota has the world’s densest and largest population, and some of that community is right here in Northfield attending both St. Olaf and Carleton Colleges,” said Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, St. Olaf assistant professor of English and adviser the school’s Korean Cultural Association.
“Especially at St. Olaf, we don’t have a lot of Korean students, but we have a lot of Korean adoptees,” St. Olaf student and KCA President Jesuh Park said. “We thought it would be great for them and for the few Koreans there are here to understand what they go through.”
The event is the last of a four-part speaker series at St. Olaf sponsored by the KCA along with ARMS; The Departments of English, Social Work and Asian Studies; MACO; The President’s Office and SGA.
— Emily Hartley, a Carleton College student, is serving as a Northfield News intern. She can be reached at 645-1106 or ehartley@northfieldnews.com. |
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