SOMEWHERE SISTERS

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.