Transracially Adopted Korean Children in Youth Literature.

In this article, Asian Critical Theory, Critical Adoption Studies, and the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association (APALA) Evaluation Rubric are applied to examine how children's books portray the racialization of Korean adoptees. The article begins with an overview of representations of adopted Koreans in American youth literature from 1955 to the present and follows with a deeper look at recurring themes: racialization; birth versus adoptive country; grateful adoptee versus adoptee killjoy; adoptee community and futurity; and presence/absence of adoptee voices. It concludes by analyzing how three recent Korean adoptee-authored graphic novels make plain what Kimberly D. McKee calls the transnational adoption industrial complex, and therefore depart from the collective messaging promoted in the youth literature published in the earlier decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]