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Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race: Korean Adoptees in America, by Mia Tuan and Jiannbin Lee Shiao. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011. 213pp. $35.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780871548757.
What influences a Korean adoptee's selfidentification? What is it like to grow up as a racial minority (Korean) within a racial majority (white) household? Mia Tuan and Jiannbin Lee Shiao's study on Korean adoptees systematically examines the role of family, social, and institutional factors throughout the various stages in life. These multiple influences affect whether an adoptee encompasses an active or non-active exploratory role in their cultural and ethnic self-discovery. The authors' central finding is that while Korean adoptees have options in determining the degree of salience that ethnicity plays in their private lives, they do not have this flexibility with their racial identity in the public sphere. Thus, regardless of acculturation, this study shows that race, and the processes of racialization, continues to be highly salient for Asian Americans in the public sphere.
The authors draw the data for this comparative study from two sample categories: Korean adoptees and Asian American nonadoptees. The larger Korean adoptee subsample includes 59 adult respondents, with the mean age of 35.9. This subsample, which includes 12 adoptees from biracial (white and Korean) backgrounds, derives from one adoption agency. The smaller subsample includes 29 non-adoptee Asian Americans recruited through snowball sampling and word of mouth. All 88 respondents in this study grew up in California, Oregon, or Washington between 1950 and 1975. This is ambitious research compared to previous studies and is unique on multiple levels. First, the central focus of this study is the understudied Korean adoptee experience. The authors compare the earlier "pioneer"...