Tragic and Insightful

Keurium is a tragic and insightful look at the often harsh realities of transracial, international adoption and the childhood trauma that so many adoptees have experienced. I am a Korean adoptee myself and, while my childhood was markedly different than Shay’s, so many of her feelings and reflection on adoption, gratitude, guilt, and keurium were instantly relatable. It’s amazing to see adoption and adoptee communities, culture, language, and common internal conflicts represented in a novel.

I hope readers of this novel who aren’t familiar with adoptee experiences (or who are close to and seeking to understand adoptees in their own lives) walk away with a more complex view of adoption than the traditional narrative of gratitude toward one’s adoptive parents and a lucky escape from terrible circumstances in an adoptee’s birth country and family. So happy that JS Lee wrote this important book to bring greater depth of representation to adoptee stories. –Amy