Interview by Hannah Luppe
Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom is a Swedish-Korean comic book artist, illustrator, writer and adoptee rights activist. Her work revolves around issues of racism, representation, identity and the politics of transnational and transracial adoption. She has published two graphic novels: Palimpsest (2016), an autobiographical account of her search for her Korean family, and The Excavated Earth (2022), which follows adoptees who were stolen from their families in Chile and sold for adoption to Sweden. She is currently working on her third book, which again deals with adoptees; this time, the focus is on mental health, trauma, and the alarming lack of support from a society that consistently has turned its back on suffering adoptees. She recently returned to Busan, South Korea, where she was born, where she lives with her partner, two children and a cat.
Hi Lisa! Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us here at Young Adulting. We’re so excited to have you! You’re an illustrator, cartoonist, graphic designer, and activist whose work focuses on the transnational adoptee experience. What does your creative practice look like these days?
I continue to work on issues related to transnational and transracial adoptions from a critical point of view. After Palimpsest, I made another graphic novel, this time about adoptees who were stolen from their families in Chile and sold for adoption to Sweden. Many of them were of indigenous Mapuche origin. I’m currently working on my next graphic novel, focusing on adoptees and mental health. I’ve just finished a year of extensive research and note taking and have started working on the manuscript and storyboards.
Another fun project I’ve been involved with is a podcast created by a friend and me early last year, where we discuss and dissect adoption, and this year, we’ve started recording episodes in English as well, under the name Lifting the Adoption Fog. It’s way out of one’s comfort zone and something completely different from what I’m used to. Aside from my comics, I’ve also been creatively involved in adoptee-centred projects, exhibitions, activism, workshops and talks, and I hope I’ll be able to do more of that.
Your graphic memoir Palimpsest: Documents From a Korean Adoptee sheds light on the darker realities of the transnational adoptee experience. What impact do you hope your work has on audiences? And how does writing and illustrating impact how you see the world?
My intention when I started working on Palimpsest was to push for an adoptee-centred view on adoption and what it can mean to be adopted, as so much before that had been written by white adoptive parents, even stories about adoptees. And their stories were and still are fuelled with harmful stereotypes, racism and myths and often lack empathy for the adoptee as well as our first families. My hope was to help other adopted people who, just like me, felt that their voices had been silenced, feel encouraged to speak up. I also wanted non-adopted people to realise that adoption is very much a story, a narrative, that very often covers up painful truths about both how adoptions are carried out but also what adopted people carry around and what challenges we are faced with. Palimpsest unravels a lot of that to show that adoptions may not be the glossy, one-sided story we’re so used to hearing about. Adoption is not comfortable, and our stories shouldn’t be either.
Writing and drawing about these topics have helped me realise just that: adoption is a story. Many non-adopted people like to tell us what we’re supposed to think and feel about our adoptions, our adoptive families, the way we look, our first cultures and families left behind, and often they completely miss out that these things may be deeply painful and difficult for us. There’s a reason why the concept of “coming out of the fog” is such a big thing among adopted people because it means we’re fighting against the stories we’ve been fed and start speaking our truths.
You were recently part of the anthology When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology. Can you tell us a bit more about the experience working on this project with a group of such amazing writers?
It was an honour to be asked to be involved in such a beautiful project. As a comic book artist, I almost always work completely on my own, and even though my piece for When We Become Ours was produced at my desk, it still felt different, knowing that it would be a part of something bigger, something directly involving other adopted people. Very often, I doubt myself and my work, wondering if it will matter to anyone at all, but with this anthology, I felt from the start that it indeed did matter; to the editors (also adopted) who’d worked so hard to find all the contributors; and the publisher who put so much time and effort into reading and re-reading our work, and being mindful about what stories we wanted to tell. I hope more books like this will be produced because I truly believe adoptees become stronger when we come together and support each other’s stories and creativity.
If you could give one piece of advice to emerging illustrators and storytellers, what would it be?
Tell the story you need to tell, not the one you think others will approve of or like. Be honest with yourself. I struggle a lot with drawing myself, so my advice would be: don’t be intimidated by all the amazing cartoonists and artists out there; think about what you can bring to the blank paper. It’s never been done before; it can only be done by you.
Who are some adoptee creatives—including but not limited to writers and illustrators—who have inspired you?
Oh, so many! Anyone can be inspiring, and creativity is not just limited to traditional “creative” practices, I feel: academic researchers, sports people, activists, psychotherapists, teachers, and people who are not known for a particular profession or craft but are decent human beings and great friends. Adoptee solidarity on any level is the most inspiring because many of us lead such lonely lives and are not seen or heard by those around us. We need to support each other, what can be more inspiring than that? Anyway, to name a few:
Jeanette Winterson (author) – she’s one of my all-time favourite authors, in any category.
Mindy Tsonas Choi is a maker, artist, and community organiser whose beautiful voice of empathy, inclusion and compassion is what the world desperately needs.
Kimura Byol – activist, artist. One of the strongest voices in our community who has done so much for adoptee rights and making our fight visible.
Hannah Luppe is currently completing her MA in Children’s Literature at UBC. She is the managing editor of Young Adulting Review.
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