Demystifying Feng Shui (Feature) Landmark APA Legal Team Demands Commissioner’s Ouster (in National News) FBI Busts Korean American Sex Trafficking Ring (in Bay Area News) Ultimate Diversions: ‘Warcraft III’: Blizzard Does it Again (in Business) Easy Transition to Big Red Country (in Sports) Tricks of the Trade (in A&E) Emil Amok: Not Going To Do It (in Opinion)

Journey to the East

Katy Robinson’s search for her family in ‘A Single Square Picture’

By Terry Hong
Special to AsianWeek

A single Polaroid captures the day that Katy Robinson’s life changed forever. Her mother’s worried face, her grandmother’s stoic grimace and Katy’s childishly silly smile mark the day that Katy Robinson left Seoul, South Korea. In 1977 at the age of 7, Kim Ji-yun left Kimpo Airport and arrived in Salt Lake City to become Catherine Jeanne Robinson.

Twenty years later, Robinson returned to Korea in search of her birth mother. When she arrived in Seoul, she found not only answers, but endless questions as well. While the whereabouts of her mother remain a mystery — she might be in Seoul, she might have passed away, she might even be in Chicago — Robinson is in contact with her birth father and half-siblings. She poignantly captures her journey in A Single Square Picture: A Korean Adoptee’s Search for Her Roots, available this month. Already garnering glowing reviews, the title was just chosen by the Chicago Tribune for its summer reading club nonfiction selection.

AsianWeek: Are you still searching for your birth mother?

Katy Robinson: I’m not actively searching for my birth mother now, but am leaving all options open for the future. After the emotionally draining year in Korea, I decided to stop searching for a while. I did, however, leave all of my current contact information with the orphanage in Korea, and feel like I’ve left enough footprints so that my mother can easily find me when she is ready. I have a fantasy of picking up the phone and hearing her voice on the other end. I have no doubt that we will meet one day.

AW: How do you maintain contact with your Korean family?

KR: The language barrier makes it difficult, but my dad and I write letters back and forth through a translator, and sometimes he calls just to hear my voice. I regret that my Korean is not good enough to communicate on the phone, and I tend to choke up whenever he calls, forgetting even the most basic phrases. I communicate with my Korean brother and his wife by e-mail, which works out pretty well.

KR: My American family is very supportive and excited for me. My mom loved the book and especially liked a review that described her as “spunky.” My Korean family will wait to read the book until the Korean translation comes out, which hopefully will be next year. But they know that I have been working on the book, and they have read reviews and articles about the book in Korean newspapers.

I do worry about my Korean family’s reaction to the book because it is so against the Korean culture to bare one’s soul to the public. I feel very protective of my Korean family, especially my dad. But ultimately, I think they will be supportive and understand that I am writing from the perspective of an adoptee that grew up in America. My dad is very proud of the fact that I am a writer, and I think reading the book will help him to understand me better.

AW: Are you and your husband John thinking about starting a family in the near future? Do you think you might ever adopt?

KR: Yes, we are definitely thinking about starting a family soon. I would like to experience pregnancy, but we also have talked about adopting a child from Korea. Either way, we can’t wait to teach our child about Korean culture and take him or her back to Korea to meet my family.

AW: You grew up in a predominantly white community with little exposure to your Korean roots. And yet now, you’re very active in the Asian Pacific American community, speaking on transracial adoption issues especially. But not all adoptees have such an opportunity to explore their ethnic background. Is that a problem?

KR: If anything, my experience in Korea has given me a deeper appreciation for the emotional complexity of adoption — for each member involved. I am very happy I was adopted — I wouldn’t change anything about my life. But I also think my adoptive parents were not at all prepared to deal with the issues that come with a transracial adoption. It was like my Korean identity and past were wiped away when I landed in America, and I had to do all of the questioning and searching on my own as an adult. A lot has changed in the 25 years since my adoption, but many adoptees still grow up feeling ethnically and culturally isolated, and that can be a problem. The whole journey of questioning one’s identity, sense of culture and definition of family is something I think every adoptee has to go through in varying degrees. It just comes with the territory.

AW: That’s the one thing you would tell prospective transracial adoptive parents? And what’s the most important thing you think those adoptive parents should teach their adopted child?

KR: I would tell parents that the process or journey doesn’t end when they bring home the child of their dreams. No matter how much they feel like the child is “theirs,” a transracial adoptee has a history, culture and identity that preceded the adoption, and it is important for adoptive parents to recognize this without feeling threatened. The best that parents can do is to try and incorporate their child’s culture into the natural fabric of family life and encourage the child to explore his or her past when the need arises.

AW: How did you end up in Idaho, where you’re living now? Most importantly, can you find good kimchi nearby?

KR: That’s what my Korean father wanted to know too! My husband, John, grew up in Boise and still has family here. After teaching English in Mexico for a year and traveling until our pesos ran out, we ended up at his parents’ house in Boise while we looked for jobs. I landed a job as a reporter for The Idaho Statesman, and here we still are. Actually, it’s a great place to live and write, and we have a great Korean restaurant downtown. We are friends with the owners, and even wrote and designed the menu. They supply us with a steady dose of kimchi.