lowest-level Korean language class at Chosun Uni-
versity and is treated as an outcast by her fellow
Korean-American classmates. Lonely for compan-
ionship, Sarah befriends Doug Henderson, who is
also shunned because he is half Korean and half
white—the son of a Korean prostitute and an
American GI. Sarah observes her Korean-Ameri-
can classmates with their seemingly simple lives
and thinks she is not “Korean-hyphen anything,
for what was Korean in [her] had become vestigial,
useless” through adoption (20). When Sarah visits
the Little Angels Orphanage, from which she was
adopted, she finds out that the story of her birth-
parents’ death from a car accident was not true,
and this sends her on a mission to find her Korean
birth mother.
Meanwhile, MARIE LEE weaves Sarah’s birth
mother’s story into the novel. Kyung-sook is a
country girl with a head for education and a heart
for music. So she moves to Seoul for better educa-
tion, only to find herself among spoiled girls and
boring classes. She runs away and takes a job as a
serving girl at a dumpling house, where she meets
a foreigner named David who eventually becomes
her lover. Seduced by David’s extravagant taste
and her own hopes for their new life together in
“A-me-ri-ca” (155), Kyung-sook soon finds herself
carrying his child. David, however, tells her to get
an abortion and then abandons her. Kyung-sook
returns to her native village and gives birth but de-
cides she cannot keep the baby.
This novel marks a new direction for Marie Lee,
who had previously written primarily for younger
audiences. She uses irony by creating characters
whose lives overlap and intertwine; Doug’s mother
is Kyung-sook’s childhood friend, and Kyung-
sook almost runs into Sarah and Doug in the sub-
way. Lee also gives Sarah a name that sounds like
“child for purchase”—“Sal-Ah”—in Korean (27).
Although the novel contributes to a growing in-
terest in Korean adoptee experiences, Somebody’s
Daughter lacks the inward complexity and sen-
sibility commonly found in memoirs written by
those who have actually lived the experience. Still,
Sarah and Kyung-sook’s stories are intriguing and
shed light on international adoption and racial hy-
bridity from multiple perspectives.
Bibliography
Lee, Maria Myung-Ok. Somebody’s Daughter. Boston:
Beacon, 2005.
Sarah ParkSon, Diana (1965– )
Born in Philadelphia to Korean-American par-
ents, Diana Son started to write plays in 1987 and
has been actively involved in writing and teaching
drama. She has received several awards includ-
ing the 1999 GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance
Against Defamation) Media Award with Stop Kiss
and the Berilla Kerr Award for Playwriting.
While Son was growing up in Dover, Delaware,
two major incidents played a crucial role in her
decision to become a playwright. First, in fourth
grade, her essay was chosen as the best and was
posted for the entire class, which allowed her to
perceive herself as an independent person. Sec-
ond, in 12th grade, she went on a field trip to New
York City, during which she saw Joseph Papp’s fa-
mous production of Hamlet. The encounter with
the play inspired her to become a playwright. She
entered New York University in 1983, majoring in
drama. As a senior in college, she interned at La
Mama Experimental Theatre Club, where her play,
Wrecked on Brecht, was performed in June 1987.
After graduating from New York University in
1987, Son started to establish herself as a profes-
sional playwright. After attending the Playwrights
Horizons Theatre School in New York City in
1991 and 1992, she went on to study at the Iowa
Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa
in 1993. Back in New York, Son joined the Asian
American Playwrights Lab at the Public Theater,
where she wrote R.A.W. (‘Cause I’m a Woman),
which examines issues of race and gender via four
Asian-American women characters. In her second
full-length play, B oy, written in 1996, Son extends
the issue of identity especially in terms of sex and
gender. Directed by Michael Greif, the artistic
director of La Jolla Playhouse in California, Boy
questions the idea of identity as constructed in
accordance with social environments. Mama and
Papa Uber Alles, who desperately want to have aSon, Diana 269