Steeped in Blood: Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family by Frances Latchford (review)

Abstract

According to Graves, the adoption of Black Korean children by African American families was “sporadic,” and after a brief surge in the years between 1955 and 1958, the adoption of Korean children by white American families rose significantly and received much more scholarly and popular attention. As a consequence, the role of Black American families in the early years of Korean adoption, as well as the repercussions these adoptions had for the implementation of reforms in domestic adoption cases, have been obscured. Yet, as Graves skillfully and convincingly shows in her book, the experiences and actions of African American couples who adopted Black Korean children form a significant part of the early phase of transnational and transracial adoption from Korea. A War Born Family is thus a rich contribution to the fields of Adoption and Family Studies but ought also to be included in the history of the transnational Civil Rights Movement and Cold War Cultures as well as in discussions on (Black) motherhood and family formations in the 1950s.