Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family

by Erika Hayasaki

Overview

An NPR Best Book of 2022 and Winner of a Nautilus Silver Book Award
 
“Stirring and unforgettable—a breathtaking adoption saga like no other.” —Robert Kolker, New York Times-bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road and Lost Girls
  
It was 1998 in Nha Trang, Việt Nam, and Liên struggled to care for her newborn twin girls. Hà was taken in by Liên’s sister, and she grew up in a rural village with her aunt, going to school and playing outside with the neighbors. They had sporadic electricity and frequent monsoons. Hà’s twin sister, Loan, was adopted by a wealthy, white American family who renamed her Isabella. Isabella grew up in the suburbs of Chicago with a nonbiological sister, Olivia, also adopted from Việt Nam. Isabella and Olivia attended a predominantly white Catholic school, played soccer, and prepared for college.

But when Isabella’s adoptive mother learned of her biological twin back in Việt Nam, all of their lives changed forever. Award-winning journalist Erika Hayasaki spent years and hundreds of hours interviewing each of the birth and adoptive family members. She brings the girls’ experiences to life on the page, told from their own perspectives, challenging conceptions about adoption and what it means to give a child a good life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643755366
Publisher:	Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Publication date:	10/03/2023
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	132,151
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Erika Hayasaki is a journalist based in Southern California, the author of The Death Class, and a professor in the Literary Journalism Program at the University of California, Irvine. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, Wired, Slate, and others. She has been a 2021-22 Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow and a 2018 Alicia Patterson Fellow and received awards and recognition from the Association of Sunday Feature Editors, the Society for Features Journalism, and the Best American Science and Nature Writing 2019. She is the mother of a daughter and twin boys.
 

Table of Contents

Prologue: Three Triangles

Part 1

1 1998 9

2 Hà 14

3 Loan and Nhu 21

4 The Baby Lifts 26

5 Liên 33

6 Rô and Tuyet 39

7 Cuckoo Birds 46

8 Isabella 51

9 Cloth Monkeys 59

10 Olivia 64

11 Wonderful Beginnings 70

12 Keely 79

13 Baby Brokers and Viral Adoptions 88

14 "Is the Baby Okay?" 91

Part 2

15 A Twin Who Walks Alone 102

16 Blindly Searching 106

17 Fairy Tales 110

18 The Letters 115

19 Storms 122

20 The Fog 129

21 "I Got Her" 134

22 Strangers in the Village 139

23 "They Love Her" 144

24 They Are Coming 148

25 Motion Sickness 153

26 The Cold 155

27 The Night 163

28 "Harder than This" 167

29 Always Loan 174

30 "Where I Am From" 179

31 "Be with Us" 187

32 Goodbye 191

33 "I Will Come Back" 199

Part 3

34 America 207

35 "We're Still Here" 214

36 Switched 225

37 Powerful Marks 232

38 Similar Scars 237

39 Unspoken 243

40 Grandma 249

41 Where It Feels Safe 254

42 Climb Out 258

Epilogue 263

Notes on Sources 269

Selected Bibliography & Suggested Resources 293

Acknowledgments 301

Editorial Reviews

"Somewhere Sisters is stirring and unforgettable — a breathtaking adoption saga like no other; a provocative exploration into the ideas of family and belonging; and a deeply meaningful meditation on what makes us who we are and what connects us to one another.”
 —Robert Kolker, New York Times-bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road and Lost Girls

“Somewhere Sisters is a heartbreaking, many times maddening tale of three adoptees, two of whom are twins separated at birth, who find themselves at the intersection of nature and nurture, fighting against fate and circumstance to carve out their own destinies. Seamlessly weaving historical context with brilliant reportage, Hayasaki delivers an incisive and poignant exploration of the world of transracial adoption and twinship, bearing witness to the profound struggles of those caught between two worlds, trying to define themselves.” 
 —Ly Tran, author of House of Sticks

"Deeply researched, artfully woven, and lyrically written, Somewhere Sisters explores the harsh reality behind international transracial adoption. Hayasaki is a master storyteller, and her compassion for her subjects is evident on every page. Her meticulous exploration into the dark legacy of nature-nurture studies, American saviorism, and the science of attachment is a powerful addition to our understanding of the lifelong impact of adoption."
 —Gabrielle Glaser, author of the New York Times notable book American Baby

“Well-researched and compassionately written, Somewhere Sisters is a journey from separations to reunions, from individual lives to the history of adoption. Urgent and compelling, this book asks important questions about responsibility and ethics and will inspire all of us as we work toward a more responsible and inclusive society.”
 —Nguyễn Phan Quế? Mai, author of the international bestseller The Mountains Sing

"Erika Hayasaki has produced an elegant exploration of race and nationality. This intimate, meticulously reported portrait of an impoverished Vietnamese mother and her twin daughters, who were separated by adoption, is a not only a compelling story, but one that touches on profound questions of human identity.”
 —Barbara Demick, author of Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town and Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

“Hayasaki reveals the racial and class prejudices at the root of such adoptions without losing sight of the complexities of human emotions and family ties. This is a clear-eyed and well-grounded take on a thorny social issue.”—Publishers Weekly

“Hayasaki weaves their reflections about belonging, heritage, and identity—gleaned from hundreds of hours of interviews with the girls and their birth and adoptive families—with a broad consideration of adoption and twin studies that aim to shed light on the extent to which genes and environment shape human behavior, personality, and development. An engaging portrait of intersected lives.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Fascinating and moving on its own, the sisters' complex story of growing up, both together and apart, is complemented by Hayasaki's illumination of the personal, psychological, and sociocultural realities of adoption.”—Booklist

“Hayasaki, a journalist who spent five years tracing the girls’ diverging paths, writes a sensitive, well-researched account of the years before and after their emotional reunion.”—The Washington Post

From the Publisher

07/11/2022

Journalist Hayasaki (The Death Class) explores “identity, poverty, privilege, and the painful and complex truths of adoption” in this empathetic study of identical twin girls born in Vietnam in 1998. The twins’ unmarried mother left Loan, the healthier of the two, at an orphanage, while the other girl, Ha, went to live with her aunt in a mountain village. In the orphanage, Loan befriended a younger girl, Nhu, and in 2002 a white American couple from Illinois, Keely and Mick Solimene, adopted them and renamed them Isabella and Olivia, respectively. Keely spent several years trying to locate Isabella’s twin sister Ha, and in 2011, they met in Vietnam; five years later, Ha moved in with the Solimenes. Hayasaki alternates chapters about the girls’ lives with illuminating synopses of sociological and psychological studies about twins and adoption. She also documents the U.S. government’s Operation Babylift in 1975 to evacuate Vietnamese children before the fall of Saigon and the early 2000s Christian adoption movement to “save” orphans from “poor and developing” countries, including Vietnam. Throughout, Hayasaki reveals the racial and class prejudices at the root of such adoptions without losing sight of the complexities of human emotions and family ties. This is a clear-eyed and well-grounded take on a thorny social issue. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

2022-08-10
Twins, raised apart, recover their bonds.

Journalist Hayasaki, the daughter of a Japanese father and White American mother and herself the mother of identical twin boys, examines questions about biological and cultural identity, nature versus nurture, and the complexities of transracial adoption, focusing on the lives of three adopted Vietnamese girls: identical twins Ha and Loan, born in 1998, and Khanh Nhu, born in 1999, not related to the twins. Given up by an unwed mother who lived in poverty, Ha was raised by an aunt and her partner in a rural village in Vietnam; Loan was left in an orphanage, where Khanh Nhu soon arrived. In 2002, Loan and Khanh Nhu were adopted by a wealthy White couple who believed that by removing the girls from poverty, they were offering them a chance at a better life. The adoptive parents renamed the girls Isabella and Olivia and raised them, along with their four biological children, in an affluent Chicago suburb. Discovering that Loan had a twin, the family worked tirelessly to connect the sisters to each other and their birth families, involving many trips to Vietnam. Hayasaki places the girls’ experiences in the context of decades of transracial and transnational adoptions, beginning after World War II, when couples began “seeking out children whom they believed had been cast aside, impoverished, or born to families fragmented by war and upheaval.” Adoption, writes the author, became “increasingly embraced as a political act, and a humanitarian one.” But America’s racist attitudes marginalized and victimized many Black, Asian, and biracial children, including Isabella and Olivia, who were often bullied. Hayasaki weaves their reflections about belonging, heritage, and identity—gleaned from hundreds of hours of interviews with the girls and their birth and adoptive families—with a broad consideration of adoption and twin studies that aim to shed light on the extent to which genes and environment shape human behavior, personality, and development.

An engaging portrait of intersected lives.

Kirkus Reviews