Product Description
Contemporary Sculpture Exhibit Catalog of at the Chicago Public Library Cultural Center, October 2 - November 11, 1989 ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Kim(berley) (Elizabeth) Caraher, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thomson Gale. The length of the entry is 471 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Book Description
Comedic film actress Kay Kendall, born to a theatrical family in Northern England, came of age in London during the Blitz. After starring in Britain's biggest cinematic disaster, she found stardom in 1953 with her brilliant performance in the low-budget film, Genevieve. She scored success after success with her light comic style in movies such as Doctor in the House, The Reluctant Debutante, and the Gene Kelly musical Les Girls.

Kendall's private life was even more colorful than the plots of her films as she embarked on a series of affairs with minor royalty, costars, directors, producers and married men. In 1954 she fell in love with her married Constant Husband costar Rex Harrison and accompanied him to New York, where he was starring on Broadway in My Fair Lady. It was there that Kendall was diagnosed with myelocytic leukemia.

Her life took a romantic and tragic turn as Harrison divorced his wife and married Kendall. He agreed with their doctor that she was never to know of her diagnosis, and for the next two years the couple lived a hectic, glamorous life together as Kendall's health failed. She died in London at the age of 32, shortly after completing the filming of Once More with Feeling!, her husband by her side.

The Brief, Madcap Life of Kay Kendall was written with the cooperation of Kendall's sister Kim and includes interviews with many of her costars, relatives and friends. A complete filmography and numerous rare photographs complete this first-ever biography of Britain's most glamorous comic star. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Dark Allegory
Eve Golden is one of the best writers about Hollywood and about screen acting that we have.If I had my way, she would be declared a national treasure.I think of her as an American writer, but she has been able to get the gist of Anna Held's mysterious European origins and now she turns her gaze onto Kay Kendall, the epitome of postwar UK chic, and she comes up with another winner.

Kay Kendall's life, and especially her death, made her a legend in the late 1950s, and if she is pretty much forgotten nowadays it is not due to a lack of ardent fans who love her, like I do.Once more of her films are released on DVD perhaps we will have a revaluation of her work as an actress, sort of the way people started to appreciate Norma Shearer only within the last 20 years, based on the policy of going back to the films and seeing what worked, what didn't in them.Who among us for example has more than the vaguest of memories of ONCE MORE WITH FEELING, the Stanley Donen comedy which was Kendall's last picture.Poor thing she had to co-star with the film world's biggesr ham, Yul Brynner, while at home she was getting locked out of her hotel room by Rex Harrison, her husband, who was pretending to enjoy his tempestuous relationship with her while trying to keep the secret from her that she was dying of leukemia.Eve Golden and Kim Kendall try to give thhe devil his due, but by the end of the book you're thinking that meeting Rex Harrison was the worst mistake poor Kay ever made in her tragically abbreviated life.

Dirk Bogarde was a close friend to Kay, and Eve Golden apparently was able to interview him at great length in the years before his death.His contributions give the book a lot of depth, while the recollections of Princess Lilian are also important, historically.I also liked the memories of Kay's younger half-brother Cavan Kendall, who must have been around 20 when his sister died but who retains a lot of the crystal sharp memories of youth.

Yes, Kay Kendall had her faults, and chief among them was her inability to see that she was doing wrong when she wanted something (such as someone else's boyfriend or husband).In context, Golden lets us realize that some young women who grew up in London during the blitz had an amoral attitude towards grasping the brass ring.Because at any moment death might rain down from the sky, the feeling was, live for today, and damn the consequences.

Yes, Kendall had her faults but I do not see that it was the job of the biographer to gloss them over.She wouldn't have been hman if she was just the madcap clotheshorse she played in a handful of sophisticated flicks.She did sterling work for Muriel Box, Vincente Minnelli, George Cukor.For that I would forgive her many sins.And her death is still very sad.Hopefully Kay's sister, Kim, will live to see a day when the disease that carried Kay off will be eliminated from the face of the earth."And there will be no more dying then . . . " as it says in Holy Writ.

The Divine Kay
This was a book I eagerly anticipated and I was not let down. Entertaining show biz author Eve Golden weaves a fun story around show business's most glamorous comedienne. From day one, Kay Kendall lived a fast-paced, fun-filled life, mixed with a semi-successful career filled with interesting and witty friends.
As the world knows, Kay Kendall's life was cut short following a losing battle with leukemia, a disease everyone swears she never knew she had. Her marriage to Rex Harrison is honestly told and the author manages to bring Kay's story to print in a slender volume that is filled with reminiscences from family and friends.
A fun read, a delightful tribute to the Divine Kay.

Utterly fantastic - in true Golden style.
This is Eve Golden's best book yet, and that's saying a lot.While many Americans are unaware of Kay Kendall's short, but significant, career, Ms. Kendall's popularity over the pond remains unwavering.Her life story is told in a style true to Kendall's off-screen persona: funny, witty, sharp, and always interesting.As the subject matter could have ended up a cliched tearjerker with Kendall's death, Golden instead takes the high road.Highly recommended for any fan or Kendall's, Golden's, or movies in general.

Anything but a delight...the book, not the subject
After waiting years for a bio about the magnificent Kay Kendall, Eve Golden's effort is little more than tin.The book is a laundry list of Kendall's personality quirks and defects (film stars documented as self-centered is a revelation?) and completely misses the mark.Kendall was so extraordinary and special as an actress, and this book, tragically, misses that which clearly made her so memorable.Several of Kendall's films are watchable only due to her presence and there is no mention of that here.Golden has chosen to focus on the personal details at the expense of Kendall's charm and uniqueness as a performer.It seems that cooperation of Kendall's sister, Kim, was necessary to provide documentation about their childhood and early careers, however, this doesn't seem to have helped the book much.Previous bios on Rex Harrison have better captured the essence of Kendall's star quality (i.e. Alexander Walker's).Noel Coward's diary entry for Kendall's London stage performance in THE BRIGHT ONE does more to illuminate this great actress than this book:"Went to see a dreadful play in which Kay Kendall was enchanting..."THAT was Kendall's gift.This book does nothing to endorse that consensus.

did we read the same book?
I am quite a fan of Kay Kendall, having been charmed by her performance in "Genevieve" at an early age. I found Ms.Golden's book to be a wonderful read. I am usually disappointed by "Hollywood" biographies, which ,it seems, are either hagiography or sleazy "tell-alls". Thankfully Ms.Golden falls into neither camp. Her work is respectful without being fawning, well-researched without being dully academic.
Her recounting of Kay Kendall's life shows insight into Kay's character,without resorting to the fashionable psycho-babble which too often afflicts current biographies.
Kay Kendall emerges from this biography as a much more complex and interesting character than I would have imagined. Her relationship with Rex Harrison is beautifully realised and his place in her last years, which could easily have been both maudlin and melodramatic, instead becomes poignant and ultimately deeply moving. It would be difficult to understand Kay's later years without an understanding of Harrison's character, and Ms. Golden gives us enough understanding of Harrison to enable us to really understand the bond between Harrison and Kay.
If you have never heard of Kay Kendall, you will still enjoy this book and when you have finished you will be beating a path to your local video shop to find Kay's films. If you have heard of her, well, same deal.
Ms.Golden has,in her writing, an increasingly rare quality in modern biography writing; respect for the intelligence of her reader.

Her research is clearly thorough and she paints a convincing picture not just of Kay herself, but of the social context from which she emerged and in which she lived.
The other aspect of Ms. Golden's writing which deserves mention is it's lightness (which should never be mistaken for superficiality). I refer to the sheer readability of the book. Kay was clearly a charming personality and Ms. Golden's style is appropriate: it is elegant and sweet-natured, with a lovely sense of humour without ever resorting to flippancy. Sort of like Kay herself.
If you expect an author to spell everything out to you, then perhaps you will be disappointed. If you expect sleaze and scandal and shoddy research, you may also be disappointed. If, however, you appreciate being treated as an intelligent adult reader, then you will find this book to be insightful, enlightening and, as much as anything else, wonderfully entertaining.Once again, much like Kay herself. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Ten Thousand Sorrows starts with its young narrator watching her mother's murder; improbably, things go downhill from there. "Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood," Frank McCourt famously wrote in Angela's Ashes. But McCourt's hardscrabble youth looks like a walk in the park compared to the experiences of Elizabeth Kim. The child of an illicit union between a Korean mother and an American father, Kim grows up the object of disgust and contempt in rural Korea. As a honhyol, or mixed-race child, she isn't considered a person at all.

Yet her mother refuses to sell her into servitude, and for that show of compassion she pays with her life. In the harrowing scene that opens the book, Kim watches from a hiding place as her mother--the victim of a so-called honor killing--is hanged from a rafter: "All I could see through the bamboo slats were her bare feet, dangling in midair. I watched those milk-white feet twitch, almost with the rhythm of the Hwagwan-mu dance, and then grow still." Left alone in the world, without so much as a name or date of birth, Kim ends up in an orphanage where she spends hours on end locked in a crib that resembles a cage. Things ought to look up when an American couple adopts her. Instead, one form of abuse merely replaces another, as the pastor and his wife tell Kim that her mother "left her to die in a rice paddy" and immediately take away any toy or pet to which she develops an attachment. Later, Kim escapes into a young marriage (arranged, naturally, by her fundamentalist parents), only to find no refuge there either. Surely there is a special place in hell reserved for her husband, the kind of pathological sadist who becomes aroused only by inflicting pain.

By this point, the reader begins to feel like something of a sadist herself. It's a tribute to Kim's skill as a writer that we can't look away from her pain, even when it might feel more comfortable to do so. True, she does leave her husband, make herself a new life with her daughter, begin a journalism career without benefit of training or degree--all of which demonstrates an amazing tenacity and inner strength. Yet the latter half of the book employs the familiar vocabulary of healing without doing much to convince. Reconciled with her experiences, Kim doesn't necessarily seem to have finished processing them. Her book has all the raw urgency of a call to 911: it feels written for the author's very survival. --Chloe Byrne Book Description
They called it an "honor killing," but to Elizabeth Kim, the night she watched her grandfather and uncle hang her mother from the wooden rafter in the corner of their small Korean hut, it was cold-blooded murder. Her Omma had committed the sin of lying with an American soldier, and producing not just a bastard but a honhyol--a mixed-race child, considered worth less than nothing.

Left at a Christian orphanage in postwar Seoul like garbage, bleeding and terrified, Kim unwittingly embarked on the next phase of her extraordinary life when she was adopted by a childless Fundamentalist pastor and his wife in the United States. Unfamiliar with Western customs and language, but terrified that she would be sent back to the orphanage, or even killed, Kim trained herself to be the perfect child. But just as her Western features doomed her in Korea, so her Asian features served as a constant reminder that she wasn't good enough for her new, all-white environment.

After escaping her adoptive parents' home, only to find herself in an abusive and controlling marriage, Kim finally made a break for herself by having a daughter and running away with her to a safer haven--something Omma could not do for her.

Unflinching in her narration, Kim tells of her sorrows with a steady and riveting voice, and ultimately transcends them by laying claim to all the joys to which she is entitled.Download Description
They called it an "honor killing", but to Elizabeth Kim, the night she watched her grandfather and uncle hang her mother from the wooden rafter in the corner of their small Korean hut, it was cold-blooded murder. Her Omma had committed the sin of laying with an American soldier, and producing not just a bastard, but a honhyol -- a mixed-race child, considered worth less than nothing. Dumped at a Christian orphanage in postwar Seoul like garbage, bleeding and terrified, Kim unwittingly embarked on the next phase of her extraordinary life when she was adopted by a childless Fundamentalist pastor and his wife in the United States. Unfamiliar with Western customs and language, but terrified that she would be sent back to the orphanage, or even killed, Kim trained herself to be the perfect child. But just as her Western features doomed her in Korea, so her Asian looks served as a constant reminder that she wasn't good enough for her new all-white environment.

After escaping her adoptive parents' home only to find herself in an abusive and controlling marriage, Kim finally makes a break for herself by having a daughter and running away with her to a safer haven -- something her Omma could not do for her. Unflinching in her narration, Kim tells of her sorrows with a steady and riveting voice, and ultimately transcends them by laying claim to all the joys to which she is entitled. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (106)

Liked the book - wonder about the truth
SPOILER ALERT

I really liked this book. It was sad but not too self-pitying. I was absolutely riveted to the story and found the image of her walking away from her husband moving. I got the sense that the author understands her strengths and shortcomings. The writing was simple but deep. I couldn't believe that she's still in contact with her parents!

I've tried to find out whether honor killings happened in Korea and haven't found any evidence of it on the web, but I've only done a rudimentary search. Does anybody have any concrete information on this?

About some of the facts. Lucy Grealy who wrote "Autobiography of a Face" was asked how she could have remembered all the conversations in her memoir. She replied that she had used educated guesses to make them up. Some people were shocked but it makes sense to me. Memoirs are not autobiographies, they don't have to be based on facts, just memories. I never read a memoir expecting to tell the complete story or even an accurate portrait. It's a point of view. Kim wrote a really good memoir, now I just want to find out more about Korea at that time.

a piece of work that comes from the heart
Sometimes, we don't know what is happening in the other parts of the world. Perhaps, we don't care. It is good to read something that is a true story and hear the story from the person who experienced the occasion personally. I love the way Elizabeth Kim tells the story. She described the situation well. It feels like we were actually there, watching her life being torn by someone else.

an emotionally stirring memoir with value
*this review refers to the unabridged audio book.

first of all, it's hard to say what i would've thought had i read this book rather than listening to it. my experience with audio books is limited. elizabeth kim, the author reads it, and i liked the soothing sound of her voice. also, she talks at a nice, relaxed pace--not as fast as some books i've heard. that made it much more enjoyable to me as it was easy to follow the story.

secondly, i started reading a few of the unfavorable reviews and had to stop. i'm also a korean adoptee and if i have any issues with this book, they most definitely do not center on the accuracy of its content. i feel like anyone who questions kim's account or sees it as a misrepresentation of korean culture probably could open their eyes and/or hearts a little bit. either that or take a creative non-fiction writing course because they're missing the meat and potatoes of her work.

if you've been adopted, you're already at the front of the "victim" pack. when you compound that with unloving and abusive environments, the issue can take an extraordinary amount of soul-searching, heartbreak and work to climb out of. and it's usually a very slow journey. kim's memoir depicts this with self-effacing honesty and raw emotion. i don't think the average person can relate to the sum total of the author's horrific experiences, but they'll recognize the themes of control, acceptance, self-discovery and redemption. this is the strength of the work and the best reason to read "ten thousand sorrows." i sobbed during parts, especially where kim talks about feeling unworthy, alone or hopeless. i don't know if that's because of what we have in common or because of the universality of these feelings.

the plot seemed to jump and skip around a bit toward the end, the author's adult years. i don't think it took a lot away from the flow, but i don't know how much i would've noticed it in the book form. all the necessary parts remained intact and the story was ably told regardless. my favorite parts are the author's reflections on poetry, journalism and motherhood--perhaps because they were among the major vehicles for her healing and say so much about the human spirit.

even if you don't personally share elements of kim's story, "ten thousand sorrows" is a worthy read. it's about forgiveness and redemption in the end, not all the suffering and cruelty in its beginning. but it's important to know where you came from to know who you are. kim fully understands this. the book also delves deeply into religious fanaticism, physical and mental abuse, and identity. i thought there were a few glitches here and there, some parts dragged a teeny bit and a few parts seemed to be handled with the same response of the author at the past-time rather than with hindsight and broader perspective. what you get here is completely personal insight with a packed plot. those are the building blocks of a strong memoir. kim covers a lot of ground and generously shares what she learned along the way. it's gutsy, inspiring and admirable.

3 stars from me
I was interested to see several reviewers have taken offence to this book , and regard it as a work of fiction.
I myself, having little experience or background of Korean culture and heritage, found the book to be an interesting read.
However as with all books that offer up brutalities of a culture foreign to my own, I am careful not to generalize that this is true of the culture as a whole.
3 stars from me, Ok but not great.

Ten Thousand Sorrows
Ten Thousand Sorrows was an overall great book. I wish the author had given some dates throughout the book so we could get more of an idea of when the events were taking place. But then again, dates may not have been important - just the fact that the events happened.
I know some folks don't like this book and gave it a low rating. I didn't like a lot of what I read in Ms. Kim's book but things like she wrote about does happen. Honor killing is a very touchy subject but it does exist.Racism in Korea after the war was there. And the children of Korean women and American Soldiers did not do well.Even in the 1970's there was still a lot of stigma for a Korean woman to marry outside of her race.
I know things have improved somewhat in Korea when it comes to mixed race children, but it wasn't too long ago that mixed race children in Korea had very hard lives.
Ms. Kim wrote a beautifully sad story that gives voice to her pain and also honors the memory of her mother. Maye some of Ms. Kim's writing makes a reader question events in her life (learning English in week for example), but putting aside those details, this is her story and it happened.

... Read more

Book Description
In Elizabeth Bishop: The Art of Travel, Kim Fortuny argues that Bishop's travel poetry reveals a political and social consciousness that, until fairly recently, has largely been seen as absent from her poetry and her life. Fortuny argues that questions of travel bring up questions of form in Bishop's poems. Moreover, because Bishop knows much about both travel and form, yet is particularly well versed in the latter, Bishop's poetry sheds light on the ethical and political problems of modern travel from a vantage gained by a scrupulous and hard-won artistry.

Fortuny maintains that there is practical merit in paying close attention to the linguistic complexities of Bishop's poems. The textures of poems concerned with foreign travel—poems such as "Questions of Travel," "Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance," "Crusoe in England," and "Santarém"—reveal a consciousness that is fundamentally social, in spite of the writer's reputation for Modernist and ahistorical reserve. Consequently, the heart of this study is a series of close readings of these poems, in which Fortuny teases out the nuances of Bishop's relationship to the world in which she lived and traveled, examining her "apolitical" poems through a political lens and encountering her poetic style as politically engaged itself.

Elizabeth Bishop: The Art of Travel will appeal to Bishop scholars, literary scholars, and those with an interest in Modernist poetry. ... Read more

Book Description
Elizabeth Smart, author of By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, has long been seen as a woman determined by "Romantic" love. In this suggestive new look at her life, Kim Echlin shows that another--and powerful--source of her creativity was rooted in her fearless exploration of the female body and psyche--as daughter, lover of men and women, and mother of four children. Elizabeth Smart bucked tradition from the beginning. The daring and pain and elusive moments of joy in this extraordinary life are told through her diaries, poetry and prose. Echlin brings new material to bear on this reflection including a hundred interviews with family, friends and work colleagues, as well as never before seen letters in which Smart reflects on birth and female creativity. She highlights Elizabeth Smart's unwavering commitment to writing in a voice and aesthetic form that reflects authentic female experience. Smart's subject matters--women's sexuality and relationships--are timeless, but they have been viewed with a cocked eyebrow since the Wife of Bath. Echlin shows how Elizabeth Smart's fearless embrace of her own experience provides the raw life from which she created her art and challenged herself to live and speak her truth. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Environmental Health Perspectives, published by Thomson Gale on March 1, 2006. The length of the article is 6515 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Exposure to environmental ozone alters semen quality.(Research)
Author: Rebecca Z. Sokol
Publication: Environmental Health Perspectives (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 114Issue: 3Page: 360(6)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
"The Uninvited Dilemma" is different from the autobiographies and clinical studies on transsexuality.It represents two years of research involving carefully structured, in-depth personal interviews with seventy-five transsexuals, consultations with members of the medical and mental health communities, and conversations with loved ones of transsexuals.This book will give you an understanding of the true nature of transsexuality.It is a remarkable reading experience for all who are interested in the human condition and and exploration of the most fundamental aspect of our humanity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

The Uninvited Dilemma - A Review
Right up front the author says,"This book is about transsexuals."She then goes on to state, "The subject has received widespread publicity; but despite the headlines, little is known about the condition by the general public..."

Starting off with a set of definitions and descriptions she painstakingly stakes out her grounds for discussion and then carefully and methodically attempts to correct the misconceptions and to debunk the myths surrounding transsexualism.The early chapters of the book deal with the problems and experiences of transsexuals from the early years to adulthood.The final chapters deal primarily with the conclusions reached as a result ofher research and the many interviews she conducted.Although the period covered by her work is now almost twenty years old, some of her comments are timeless, being equally relevant to today's world as it was in the 1990's.For example, in Chapter 4 she states in part, "Certainly a society which can find its way to the moon and back has the ability to find fair, discrete, and equitable ways of helping a very small percentage of individuals cope with personal dilemmas without destroying their careers and human dignity.We have become such a wasteful, throwaway society, it comes as a shock to learn the price we pay when we squander our natural resources.Although we are sometimes our own worst enemy, human beings - men and women - are our most precious natural resource.Just as we exact a toll on the quality of our life when we carelessly trash our environment, society pays dearly when we heedlessly toss about human lives as if they were empty, used up cans and bottle."

Despite the fact that the book claims to be about transsexuals, a careful reading of the author's definitions, so important to an understanding of this work, it is equally about transgender persons, a term in use today which was not used when the book was written.

This book is a fascinating read which challenges us all to reevaluate our thoughts on gender.I recommended it highly to all who seek answers to problems associated with trans phenomena; transsexuals, transgenders, their families, their friends, service professionals, and the public in general.

The uninvited dilemma is a breath of fresh air.
I found the book to be thoroughly thought out and genuine. It truly answered many of my question where other books on the subject failed to answer.
I feel this book is a must for anyone who questions there gender and is looking for direct and to the point answers.

The writer took great pains to retain the authenticity of the interviews she held.

A Rational Outlook on an Irrational Subject
Transsexualism is a subject area where much of the literature is either very clinical, or very anecdotal.A topic where the only common theme among the books is how incredibly difficult it is to study a condition that is deeply internal and subjective to those who live with it.

Where this book stands out is the author's ability to provide a blend of researched, clinical information _and_ 'personal stories' together.This book provides an enormous amount of valuable information that goes beyond the individual stories of transsexuals, and picks out the common themes and presents them clearly and concisely for the reader.

If you want to read a transsexual's story, this is the wrong book.If, on the other hand, you wish to understand transsexualism and what it is, this book is unusually accessible.

Others have commented that this book is perhaps a bit dated - although its calendar age is fairly old, this is a topic area where truly good research is rare, and Ms. Stuart has done a superlative job of both research and writing.

Good basics, but slightly out of date
I was at first disappointed to discover that the book I had just purchased was 12 years old. So some of the terminology no longer is in use and some theories have been either refuted or more warmly embraced by the TG community in the years since this book was published. New theories have emerged that were not even discussed in this book, understandably.
However, her methodology and findings appear to be quite sound and have stood the test of time. Some ideas she proposes, which may have been unique or relatively fresh at the time, have now come to be common knowledge or understanding.
However, so much of what is in this book exists in greater detail in other, more updated books. I would recommend this for those wanting a comparative look back in time, but I believe more current publications would be much more beneficial to most readers.

The other fifteen percent!
The Uninvited Dilemma is truly a remakable achievement, seeking as it does, to elucidate the lay person to the multitude of complexities surrounding transexualism. Kim Elizabeth Stuart manages to incorporate both the medical aspects (consequnces of SRS and hormone theraphy etc) and the personal accounts of her interviewees, by using examples of the latter to illuminate the former. The only real criticism I can honestly level a this book - and it is one levelled at many others in this particualr field - is the paucity of personal accounts from those individals who, whilst felt different growing up, could not articulate that sense of 'otherness' until their mid to late twenties, or even later. Approximately 85% of those interviewed knew that their body's gender was incongruous with thier mental gender from being a small child. I feel that the book would have benefited from more than the odd quote from the other 15% who did not know so early on in life. Indeed, whilst the use of real life anecdotes from M-F and F-M transexuals (or 'former' transxuals) worked beautifully, the lack of them however, seemed a little unfortunate. Thus, if these two points had been addressed, I would happily rate this book ...! ... Read more

Book Description
During the 1990s, the number of children adopted from poorer countries to the more affluent West grew exponentially. Close to 140,000 transnational adoptions occurred in the United States alone. While in an earlier era, adoption across borders was assumed to be straightforward—a child traveled to a new country and stayed there—by the late twentieth century, adoptees were expected to acquaint themselves with the countries of their birth and explore their multiple identities. Listservs, Web sites, and organizations creating international communities of adoptive parents and adoptees proliferated. With contributors including several adoptive parents, this unique collection looks at how transnational adoption creates and transforms cultures.

The cultural experiences considered in this volume raise important questions about race and nation; about kinship, biology, and belonging; and about the politics of the sending and receiving nations. Several essayists explore the images and narratives related to transnational adoption. Others examine the recent preoccupation with “roots” and “birth cultures.” They describe a trip during which a group of Chilean adoptees and their Swedish parents traveled “home” to Chile, the “culture camps” attended by thousands of young-adult Korean adoptees whom South Korea is now eager to reclaim as “overseas Koreans,” and adopted children from China and their North American parents grappling with the question of what “Chinese” or “Chinese American” identity might mean. Essays on Korean birth mothers, Chinese parents who adopt children within China, and the circulation of children in Brazilian families reveal the complexities surrounding adoption within the so-called sending countries. Together, the contributors trace the new geographies of kinship and belonging created by transnational adoption.

Contributors. Lisa Cartwright, Claudia Fonseca, Elizabeth Alice Honig, Kay Johnson, Laurel Kendall, Eleana Kim, Toby Alice Volkman, Barbara Yngvesson
... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Transnational Adoption: Beyond a Singular Lens?
This edited collection by Toby Volkman has a fair few adoptive parents (who are academically working as anthropologists) playing the roles of interrogators, interpreters and story tellers of this global phenomenon. Sometimes the object of their analysis is their own community (adoptive parents) and sometimes it is Others (birth parents, the overseas children they adopt).

This positioning itself is not unusual, for adoptive parents (who are also making a living as adoption researchers, practioners, authors and so on) dominate the publications coming out on the practice of transnational adoption. While their own voices remain valuable, the lack of voices from researchers who are adopted, from the birth countries and birth parents has limitd the lens through which the practice is viewed and understood.

However, this edited collection remains a must have for any adoption researcher - as well as scholars interested in issues of transnationalism, diasporas and "new" or "hybrid" cultural identities.It is also accessible enough for ordinary readers, including adoptive parents begin to overcome many of the myths and fantasies surrounding the practice.

For example, I refer to a very interesting and original discussion piece titled "Chaobao: The Plight of Chinese Adoptive Parents in the Era of the One Child Policy" is provided by a researcher and adoptive parent - Kay Johnson. pp 117 - 141

The discourse, at times, leans on the language and the subjectivity that perhaps only an non-Chinese adoptive parent could foster but it is still a remarkably broad insight into the social stakes of Chinese adoption and abandonment.For Western readers like myself, it also has much sort after rare references to English language but Chinese led studies on the topic.Like all the articles, the interpretations provided are always ready for people to unpack or debate.But what's important is that I've not read anything like this before and think it is worthy of consideration and reflection.Most other works in the collection also remain original and remind us that adopting across borders leads to a kind of cultural and social complexity that can be as challenging as it can be liberating.If you really want to be informed about the latest trends in the multi-actor/layed adoption community, then readingthis book is a great start.

Review Supplied by Indigo Willing - PhD Candidate studying Transnational Adoption, Former Rockefeller Fellow in Project Diaspora at UMASS, Boston and Founder of Adopted Vietnamese International in Australia. Transnationally adopted from Saigon to Sydney in 1972.

Mapping Transnational Adoption
Toby Volkman, editor of this volume and an anthropologist, describes the uncharted territory and cultures that transnational adoption is fast creating as the "new geographies of kinship."Indeed, the contributors to this thoughtful volume examine with courage and carefully grounded research, difficult subjects, such as the motivations of birth mothers in relinquishing their children to international adoption, or the struggles of adoptive parents and their children as they seek to constitute new identities despite minimal cultural knowledge of their children's country, gaps in memory, and the absence of connections with birth parents.The themes range widely to include the power of the internet in shaping popular representations of international adoption; the ways in which mythologies and fantasies confront realities as adoptive children make return journeys to their country of origin; and changing national policies of sending countries as they reconsider the stigma they once associated with mixed children adopted internationally who were the product of love and war.The contributors pay close attention to the larger political and economic forces that frame the contradictions and struggles entailed by transnational adoption.At the same time that they do not fall into the trap of romantic narratives of rescuing children, they are sympathetic to the good faith efforts of families to make sense of a world for which few road maps are available.Most, but not all, of the authors are adoptive parents themselves and therefore do not lose sight of the positioning and perspectives underlying the ethics and practices of all the actors and institutions involved in these journeys.This is first-rate ethnography.The book is beautifully edited and well-written; the language is accessible; and many first-hand accounts are offered.I recommend this book highly to anyone interested in gaining a solid introduction to the complexity of the issues involved in transnational adoption, as well as to readers more generally interested inkinship, marriage, and the family. ... Read more

Book Description
LAW AND CRIMINALITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES:ACADEMIC ESSAYS by Professor Onyoo Elizabeth Kim of Handong University in Korea is an academic feat in legal studies.Trained by America's best medieval canon lawyers and having had extensive medieval law research experience in Europe, Professor Kim delivers a book on the Law of the Middle Ages that is relevant for today's legal, scholarly, and intellectual discussions.This book contains five of Professor Kim's academic essays:"War and Its Justification in the Law of the Middle Ages"; "Understanding "Intent" in Criminal Law via Gratian's Decretum and St. Augustine"; "Medieval Canon Law and Sacramental Theology:The Case of Baptism"; "The Order of the Templars and their Criminalization in the 14th Century AD"; "Understanding the History of Penance through Medieval Canon Law."Professor Onyoo Elizabeth Kim is licensed to practice law in the states of California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.Professor Kim graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004 with a B.A. in history and classics and a M.A. in medieval history.Professor Kim received her J.D. degree from the UCLA School of Law in 2007.Since then Professor Kim has researched extensively on medieval law and its comparative and causative worth for modern law at UCLA, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Cologne Law School in Germany. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A very pro African-American Korean pastor shares...
Rev. Manwoo A. Kim has been aggressively pushing for friendship between Korean and African American churches in the city of Philadelphia for over 15 years.Rev. Kim and his church, the First Korean Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, has been praised by President Bill Clinton and Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge.You can see from his essay, "The Korean Diaspora's Realized Vision" (at the end of this book after his photos), what his vision for Korean and African American friendship is.His Christian vision is grounded in his Christian piety, which is clear in his devotional poems.(United Methodist Church press release reagarding Rev. Kim's important work (Camphor Memorial United Methodist Church and First Korean Pres. plan multi-cultural fellowship,
4/12/2004) can be found at this link --http://www.epaumc.org/NewsDetails.asp?pageID=447 ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of Studies on Alcohol, published by Alcohol Research Documentation, Inc. on January 1, 1999. The length of the article is 8896 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Intoxicated Sexual Risk Taking: An Expectancy or Cognitive Impairment Explanation?
Author: Kim Fromme
Publication: Journal of Studies on Alcohol (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 1999
Publisher: Alcohol Research Documentation, Inc.
Volume: 60Issue: 1Page: 54(1)

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