Palimpsest

Who owns the story of an adoption?Thousands of South Korean children were adopted around the world in the 1970s and 1980s. Throughout her childhood she struggled to fit into the homogenous Swedish culture and was continually told to suppress the innate desire to know her origins. More than nine thousand found their new home in Sweden, including the cartoonist Lisa Wool-Rim Sj blom, who was adopted when she was two years old.

Like many adoptees, Sj blom learned to bury the feeling of abandonment.In Palimpsest, an emotionally charged memoir, Sj blom's unaddressed feelings about her adoption come to a head when she is pregnant with her first child. "Be thankful," she was told; surely her life in Sweden was better than it would have been in Korea. When she discovers a document containing the names of her biological parents, she realizes her own history may not