#Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom

[bookclub4m]

35 Non-fiction Graphic Novels by BIPOC Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

This Place: 150 Years Retold

Zodiac: A Graphic Memoir by Ai Weiwei with Elettra Stamboulis & Gianluca Costantini

Nat Turner by Kyle Baker

The Talk by Darrin Bell

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

I’m a Wild Seed by Sharon Lee De la Cruz

Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American by Laura Gao

Stamped from the Beginning: A Graphic History of Racist Ideas in America by Joel Christian Gill and Ibram X. Kendi

Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts by Rebecca Hall and Hugo Martinez

The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book by Gord Hill

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob

The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66 Discovering Dinosaur Statues, Muffler Man, and the Perfect Breakfast Burrito: a Graphic Memoir by Shing Yin Khor

Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook, Ryan Estrada, and Ko Hyung-Ju

In Limbo by Deb J.J. Lee

This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America by Navied Mahdavian

Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir by Pedro Martín

Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story by Sarah Myer

Steady Rollin': Preacher Kid, Black Punk and Pedaling Papa by Fred Noland

Citizen 13660 by Mine Okubo

Your Black Friend and Other Strangers by Ben Passmore

Kwändǖr by Cole Pauls

Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey by Edel Rodriguez

Power Born of Dreams: My Story is Palestine by Mohammad Sabaaneh

A First Time for Everything by Dan Santat

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

Grandmothers, Our Grandmothers: Remembering the "Comfort Women" of World War II by Han Seong-Won

Death Threat by Vivek Shraya and Ness Lee

Palimpsest: Documents From A Korean Adoption by Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom

Big Black: Stand at Attica by Frank "Big Black" Smith, Jared Reinmuth, and Améziane

Victory. Stand!: Raising My Fist for Justice by Tommie Smith, Dawud Anyabwile, and Derrick Barnes

The High Desert by James Spooner

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, and Harmony Becker

Feelings by Manjit Thapp

The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History by David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson

Now Let Me Fly: A Portrait of Eugene Bullard by Ronald Wimberly and Braham Revel

[richincolor]

Book Review: When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology edited by Shannon Gibney & Nicole Chung

Summary: There is no universal adoption experience, and no two adoptees have the same story. This anthology for teens edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung contains a wide range of powerful, poignant, and evocative stories in a variety of genres.

These tales from fifteen bestselling, acclaimed, and emerging adoptee authors genuinely and authentically reflect the complexity, breadth, and depth of adoptee experiences.

This groundbreaking collection centers what it’s like growing up as an adoptee. These are stories by adoptees, for adoptees, reclaiming their own narratives.

With stories by: Kelley Baker, Nicole Chung, Shannon Gibney, Mark Oshiro, MeMe Collier, Susan Harness, Meredith Ireland, Mariama J. Lockington, Lisa Nopachai, Stefany Valentine, Matthew Salesses, Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, Eric Smith, Jenny Heijun Wills, Sun Yung Shin, Foreword by Rebecca Carroll, Afterword by JaeRan Kim, MSW, PhD

My Thoughts: This is a much needed collection that provides an excellent collections of stories representing the adoptee experience. There are so few adopted characters in YA literature and of those few, rarely are those stories told by adoptees. I first heard about this book through Dr. Sarah Park Dahlen, who is an adoption studies scholar and was happy to finally get to read it this week.

In some of these stories adoption is a huge focus, but in some, while the main character is an adoptee, that isn’t really a major part of the plot. It’s a strength that there are such a variety of ways that the adoptees are portrayed. There is a poet, a relative of a queen, a road tripper, a person learning indigenous ways, two people on farms, someone who speaks to ghosts, and many more characters. The majority of the tales are contemporary realistic fiction, but one is sci-fi, one happens in a mythical queendom and two might be described as speculative fiction. One also has a comic format.

Each story feels distinct and unique, but there are common threads of identity, belonging, questioning, loss, anger, love, pain, and healing. Who am I? Where and who do I come from? Am I enough? Where do I fit? and so many other questions are asked and sometimes answered in these narratives. Like anyone coming of age, these teens are wondering so much about themselves, but living as adoptees adds another layer as they navigate the world and their place in it.

Recommendation: Get it now! This is a fantastic collection that many readers will connect with in many ways. It’s an excellent way for adoptees to possibly see some of their experiences on the page of a book and for others, this will be a way to possible see things from that perspective. Shannon Gibney & Nicole Chung have gathered together a talented group of authors and we’re fortunate to have this anthology in the world.

Publisher: HarperCollins Pages: 352 Availability: On shelves now Review Copy: Digital ARC

[maitejeannolin]

EXHIBITION 해외입양 70년, 뿌리의집 20년 - 70 years of Overseas Adoption, 20 years of KoRoot.

To celebrate the 20 years of KoRoot’s existence and its closing event of the guesthouse, the artworks of 20+ overseas Korean adoptee and their descendants will be on display July 7-21/2023.

Artists : Michou Amenlynck, Lia Barrett, Nari Baker, Raphaël Bourgeois, JooYoung Choi, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Florian Bong-Kil GROSSE, Lee Herrick, Maïté Minh Tâm Jeannolin, Jung, Maja Lee Langvad, Julayne Lee, kimura byol lemoine, Eunha Lovell, MehAhRi, Cathy Min Jung, Leah 양진Nichols, Mirae kh RHEE (이미래/李未來), Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, Ji Sun Sjögren, Tanja Sørensen/Heeja Kramhøft, Kim Sperling, KimSu Theiler.

Family Tree, 2023 (Color print & post-it) Maïté Minh Tâm Maeum Jeannolin

"As the child of a Korean adoptee in France, I would like to question the trans-generational impacts of international adoption through the lens of transmission. Materializing the export of children by Korean adoption agencies to western countries, the map plays with the idea of Korean adoptee diaspora as extended family or ancestry".

[downthetubes]

London's Foundling Museum announces "Superheroes, Orphans & Origins: 125 Years in Comics" exhibition

London’s Foundling Museum announces “Superheroes, Orphans & Origins: 125 Years in Comics” exhibition

London’s Foundling Museum has announced their major exhibition this summer as Superheroes, Orphans & Origins: 125 Years in Comics. It will include three new artistic commissions by comic artists Asia Alfasi, Bex Glendining and Woodrow Phoenix. New York World’s Fair Comics 1940, published by DC Comics. Batman, Robin, and Superman appear together for the first time on this cover by Jack Burnley,…

[foxandcatlibrary]

79th Book I Read in 2021

Title: Palimpsest

Author: Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom

Notes: Älskade den här boken, förstår helt varför så många kallat den för “så viktig”. Dessutom sköna lugna färger i illustrationerna.

[littleeyesofpallas]

Palimpsest (2019). Almost American Girl (2020). Made In Korea (2021).

It is both exhilaratingly refreshing, and frankly embarassing that one story a year feels like being spoiled for representation. But after a lifetime of slipping thru the cracks, only to then also live to see the rise of a grotesque fetishization of South Korea abroad, seeing my own generation telling our story feels indescribable. It's weird to think, is this just how everyone else feels all the time?

Seriously tho these comics are all great. Made in Korea is still ongoing, just 2 issues in. Ask your local comic book shop if they can order it! Robin Ha also wrote the comic cookbook, Cook Korean!

[celepom]

Palimpsest

Palimpsest: writing material (such as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased.

Thousands of South Korean children were adopted around the world in the 1970s and 1980s. More than nine thousand found their new home in Sweden, including the cartoonist Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, who was adopted when she was two years old. 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. "Be thankful," she was told; surely her life in Sweden was better than it would have been in Korea. Like many adoptees, Sjöblom learned to bury the feeling of abandonment. In Palimpsest, an emotionally charged memoir, Sjöblom's unaddressed feelings about her adoption come to a head when she is pregnant with her first child. When she discovers a document containing the names of her biological parents, she realizes her own history may not match up with the story she's been told her whole life: that she was an orphan without a background. As Sjöblom digs deeper into her own backstory, returning to Korea and the orphanage, she finds that the truth is much more complicated than the story she was told and struggled to believe. The sacred image of adoption as a humanitarian act that gives parents to orphans begins to unravel.

[subtextread]

hi! i read pachinko because i saw it here on your blog and i loved it so much, i really enjoyed reading it even if it hurt. thank you !!!! i would love to know more about the books you like because now i trust your taste :)

This is so sweet! I am really glad you enjoyed it. I love reading but I’m not a super avid reader these days.

But, in regards to Pachinko, I really do enjoy intergenerational and family/relationship-driven books. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin, The Mothers by Brit Bennett, Middlemarch by George Eliot, and White Teeth by Zadie Smith are my favorites of this stripe. You might remember the nod to Middlemarch in Pachinko - both Min Jin Lee and Zadie Smith have cited that book’s influence in their writing. I think if you’re interested in epics with a full-fledged cast of characters, it really is just such a gem, and so beautifully written, passage after passage. It’s MUCH more literary than plot driven like Pachinko though.

Min Jin Lee also has another book called Free Food for Millionaires you could try.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson is actually nonfiction about The Great Migration, but it is written in such a beautiful, narrative voice. Would highly recommend it if you’re interested in reading more epics about migration.

I am currently reading Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden which I’m ~around halfway through and finding really powerful. I’m not really a memoir person and I just bought this and started reading it on a total whim, but it’s well-written.

I like looking at what books my wonderful friend @alidee posts about often. I think, of the books she’s read that might seem resonant after Pachinko, I’d be interested in reading Palimpsest: Documents from a Korean Adoption by Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, and The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende.

[librarycomic]

Palimpsest: Documents from a Korean Adoption by Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom. Translated by Hanna Strömberg, Richey Wyver, and Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom. Drawn & Quarterly, 2019. 9781770463301. 156pp including a postscript and notes on selected panels and pages. http://www.powells.com/book/-9781770463301?partnerid=34778&p_bt

Sjöblom was adopted from South Korea by a family in Sweden in 1979. During and after the birth of her second child, she thinks about when she was born, her birth mother, and her early life when she was handed to strangers in a place she couldn't understand a word who renamed her Lisa. She does an amazing job showing how everyone tried to make her feel about her adoption and her place in Swedish society without ever asking how she felt. As her Korean-ness was erased she was constantly reminded that she didn't fit in, and even attacked. After escaping high school and moving away from home, she started looking into the story of her adoption, including what it meant and how it affected her. I'm so glad she made it through her darker moments and has produced this graphic novel, which everyone in my family is going to read.

Much of the book is a detailed account of Sjöblom and her partner trying to find out as much as they can about her past. Various agencies involved in her adoption (or in recording it) seem determined to keep documents from them because of what the documents reveal not only about shady adoption practices but about Sjöblom's biological parents. But their tenacity pays off, and they get help from unexpected government offices and agencies, and in the end they learn quite a bit. Their trip to South Korea at the end of the book is riveting.

[11ajdiaries11]

(2.27.21) Anti-Asian Hate Crimes

Since I could remember, I always knew that when my race was belittled and made fun of, it was showed as funny and even normal. In the beginning of the Pandemic, people I knew had their houses spray-painted and egged. People I knew had others scream hateful comments and slurs. I’ve had personal experiences where children in my elementary school and even middle school would walk up to me and pull their eyelids back, resembling monolids, an eye shape which is common in some Asian countries. I won’t say that when they did that, it didn’t affect me, because it really did, along with many other people who share my race. 

2021 has just begun, yet there are over 20 reports of Asian-Americans being harassed, beaten, or even killed on the streets of New York City. A lady had a caustic chemical thrown on her, leaving her with 2nd and 3rd degree burns on her face, hands, and neck and despite the hundreds of New Yorkers marching in protest, this act was not classified as a hate crime.

People who have a big platform in media would say hurtful and racist things about Asia, for example, people big in a political standpoint would call Covid-19 the “Chinese” Virus in public and barely anyone would question it. Big social media platforms like instagram and twitter are also used to spread hate and discrimination towards Asian-Americans. Thankfully, some people on social media platforms like Tik-Tok have been spreading awareness and keeping people mindful, cautious, and updated. The Korean artist and poet Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, who made the powerful illustrations of the hardships of discrimination. Even if she was adopted into a white family at a young age, she kept her culture alive and later on would make it apart of her career.

For most of my life, I would be given weird looks, I would be ridiculed and made fun of, I would be so impacted by others that I became ashamed of myself. When I started to mature, though, I learned to be proud of who I was, I learned to embrace my culture as much as I could. In this world, people have to be born into the “normal” of society, whether it be skin color, beauty, smarts, and health, if they weren’t, they would be put down and wouldn’t feel their potential worth. I won’t say that racism everywhere would one day just go away, but with the help and support of others, little by little, I keep my head up that one day, I and others would be seen as equal, seen as the person on the inside and not out.

[zeromorph]

realized I've been reading a lot lately but haven't posted about same in a while, so here's one of those:

The Gospel of Breaking (Jillian Christmas) – reflective, expansive, and gorgeously vivid poetry collection; one of my favorite things I've read so far this year. some favorite lines: "even amidst the grinding heartbreak and / the disappointing alarm clocks / there were nights of unassuming magic" (soft-bellied beast), "this world thinks me sweeter with my jaw / clenched shut [...] I keep trying to finish poems about black joy" (do not feed),"do not / hold your words tight remember, first, that love is not a lock / it is a liberating thing" (will you write it?)

Palimpsest: Documents from a Korean Adoption (Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom) – a memoir about Sjöblom's experience as a transnational adoptee and her fight for information about her birth family and early childhood. sometimes deeply painful, sometimes poignant, always honest and determined, with a quietly beautiful art style.

Are Prisons Obsolete? (Angela Davis) – this is on a lot of lists floating around right now so I don’t have much to add, but this list would feel incomplete without it. I usually struggle hard with reading theory, and didn’t here; Davis is an incredibly clear and concise writer.

The Sea Is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia (eds. Jaymee Goh, Joyce Chng) – multi-author short story anthology; imaginative, and by turns both whimsical and serious. my favorites were Alessa Hinlo's "The Last Aswang" (about a diwata and her liaison in an uncolonized Philippines receiving a visiting ambassador and her entourage) and Pear Nuallak's "The Insects and Women Sing Together" (about two Thai Khorat girls coming of age in two generations, each balancing secrets and dreams).

I bounced hard off of Consider Phlebas (Iain M. Banks), which was disappointing; I really do want to meet the weird spaceship AIs I was promised in this series, so I think I’m going to try skipping ahead to a later book (probably Player of Games or Excession) and seeing how that goes.

currently in progress: Disintegrate/Dissociate (Arielle Twist), Nameless Woman: An Anthology of Fiction by Trans Women of Color (eds. Ellyn Peña, Jamie Berrout, Venus Selenite)

[covid19racism]

A comic inspired by a real event reported in Gothenburg, Sweden, a 15-year-old girl of Singaporean descent, born and raised in Sweden, was tapped on the shoulder by a young woman who, after first mentioning the coronavirus, asked her to get off the tram, by artist Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom.

Even those of different nationalities, but of Asian descent, are targeted due to the covid-19 pandemic. This highlights the fact that discrimination does not only come in physical and verbal attacks, but in subtler actions too.

#covid19 #racism #raiseawareness #xenophobia #stopracism

[palimpsest-process]

Palimpsest: Documents from a  Korean Adoption

Who owns the story of an adoption? Thousands of South Korean children were adopted around the world in the 1970s and 1980s. More than nine thousand found their new home in Sweden, including the cartoonist Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, who was adopted when she was two years old. 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. Be thankful, she was told; surely her life in Sweden was better than it would have been in Korea. Like many adoptees, Sjöblom learned to bury the feeling of abandonment. In&nbspPalimpsest, an emotionally charged memoir, Sjöbloms unaddressed feelings about her adoption come to a head when she is pregnant with her first child. When she discovers a document containing the names of her biological parents, she realizes her own history may not match up with the story shes been told her whole life: that she was an orphan without a background. As Sjöblom digs deeper into her own backstory, returning to Korea and the orphanage, she finds that the truth is much more complicated than the story she was told and struggled to believe. The sacred image of adoption as a humanitarian act that gives parents to orphans begins to unravel. Sjöbloms beautiful autumnal tones and clear-line style belie the complicated nature of this graphic memoirs vital central question: Who owns the story of an adoption?

[mickeslibrary]

Karin Tidbeck: Amatka. Cover by Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom. Mix förlag, Sweden, 2012.

[suzylwade]

I Need A Hero From ‘Black Panther' to ‘Spider-Man’ many superheroes are inspired by foundlings, orphans, adoptees and foster children.‘Superheroes, Orphans & Origins: 125 years in comics’ explores how these early life experiences shaped the characters they became. ‘Superheroes, Orphans & Origins’ has its origins in work commissioned by the museum in 2014 from poet and performer Lemm Sissay - who grew up in care. His poem ‘Superman Was a Foundling’ was printed on the walls of the museum’s ‘Study Studio’ and was intended to draw attention to the disparity between our admiration for fostered, adopted or orphaned fictional characters and what Sissay saw as a widespread disregard for their real-life counterparts. Many of the other works going on display have been created by international artists inspired by their own experiences in care. Carlos Giménez, creator of ‘Paracuellos’ (1976), spent much of his Spanish childhood moving between the “social aid” homes created during the Franco era. Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom’s’ 2019 work ‘Palimpsest’ reflects on her status as an international adoptee. Born in Korea, she lived in an orphanage until the age of two and was then adopted and lived in Sweden. Keiji Nakazawa survived the Hiroshima bombing, but his father, brother and sister died. His mother later died of related health issues, prompting him to create the manga series ‘Barefoot Gen’. Themes of abandonment and identity are traced through comic strips to the present day. Japanese manga characters from the 1990s and early 2000s, ‘Kuro’ and ‘Shiro’ from ‘Tekkonkinkreet’, appear alongside American comic ‘Jesse “Street Angel” Sanchez’ and contemporary graphic-novel protagonists including ‘Amina’ from ‘Zenobia’, who is a Syrian refugee. ‘Superheroes, Orphans & Origins: 125 years in comics’, ‘The Foundling Museum’, April 1 - August 28, 2022. #neonurchin #neonurchinblog #dedicatedtothethingswelove #suzyurchin #ollyurchin #art #music #photography #fashion #film #design #words #pictures #love #orphan #foundling #adoptees #fosterchildren #superheroes #blackpanther #spiderman #superman #batman #lemmsissay #dccomics #marvel #xmen #foundlingmuseum #london #superheroesorphansandorigins (at The Foundling Museum) https://www.instagram.com/p/ChCEf2UM3NB/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[therealqueenk]

different but related: there's also this narrative when it comes to adoptions from other countries by western usually white families that it's giving kids a better life, but those kids were often stolen from their parents (artist Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom has work about this)