Leah Griesmann at The Quarterly Conversation:
Mixed Korean: Our Stories, published by Truepeny Press, is an anthology featuring forty mixed Korean authors, and while not limited to Korean adoptees, adoptee voices feature prominently in the collection. In “Half Korean: My Story”, author Tanneke Beudeker writes about growing up half-Korean and half-African American in an adoptive Dutch family in the Netherlands, her childhood joy destroyed when white kids at her Christian school ostracize her for her race. “My parents tried to support me by talking to the teacher, and they did what most parents would do: they kept telling me sticks and stones may break by bones but words will never harm me. But they did, words broke my heart.” Though Beudeker eventually finds a meaningful career working with mentally challenged children, she still finds as an adult, “Even the slightest thing can trigger that old, familiar feeling of not being part of the herd.”
more here.