Mothers

I feel like there is so much to write about in The Language of Blood that it is difficult to decide where to begin. The whole story is filled with so many complex relationships: self to parent(s), self to family(s), self to self, self to culture(s), self to government, and so in order to provide a coherent response, I chose one particular passage in the text that can radiate out to touch the rest of the story in terms of its significance and implications.

This passage appears on pages 191-192 and is the scene where Jane is inviting her adopted mother to the funeral she is holding for her birth mother. Jane says,

"It would mean a lot to me if you could come.” She makes some excuses, she’ll have to think about it, Wal-Mart has a sale that day... “Mom, please come. I want you to come. It would mean so much to me.” She says she’s not interested…She is unaffected by my mother’s death; it didn’t happen, she didn’t happen. In my mom’s mind, I don’t come from somewhere else, I don’t have a birth mother. I don’t, I don’t…She has done it again. She can cow me into submission with a single word

This passage is especially significant because it comes near the end of the memoir and is reflective of how far Jane has come in her journey. She has grown up conflicted, with so many questions about both her birth family and her adopted parents—feeling un-whole, caught between American and Korean cultures while truly being part of neither. On reaching adulthood, Jane really claims her birthright and the power to explore her roots by reconnecting with her birth family in Korea. By getting to know her birthmother and other sisters, Jane gets the blood connection she has always longed for, but also comes to see exactly how American she really is. By caring for Umma in her illness, Jane shows her birthmother the ultimate love and filial loyalty. By the time Umma dies, Jane really feels a deep familial connection with her and wants to memorialize her life in America.

While Jane’s journey of reconnecting with her birthmother (though emotional and difficult) is ultimately a personally healing experience, it does nothing to improve her troubled relationship with her adopted mother. As this passage acutely shows, Margaret is not supportive of Jane’s decision to hold a funeral, just as she is unsupportive of Jane’s relationship with Umma as a whole. In fact, and most heartbreakingly for Jane, she refuses to acknowledge Umma’s existence and role in the whole family’s life. Undoubtedly, Margaret’s feels that she is Jane’s only mother because she has raised her—put in the time, resources, and effort to give Jane a life and refuses to see any reason why Jane cannot feel wholly American, like any other child growing up in their community. By denying Jane’s dual heritage, Margaret refuses to truly see Jane and to acknowledge the issues of identity that constantly haunt her. Of course, living in a small Midwestern town, Margaret and Frederick most likely have very little experience with diverse cultures and clearly do not know how or even acknowledge that they need to help their daughters navigate through their experience as Asian-Americans in a predominantly white area.

This silence and stoicism seem to be at the heart of the problems between Jane and her parents. All the time while she grows up, she is bursting with inner conflict, feelings of outsider-ness, questions about the circumstances of her birth, yet her parents create a family space that accepts only silence and values repression of the unpleasant as a strength. In addition, Jane grows up with the belief that she is a consolation child, a stand in for the biological child they could never have and therefore she carries the weight of being a disappointment, a person not truly wanted by either of her families. While her adopted parents feed and clothe and make sure Jane gets a good education, they fail in helping her with her emotional health. With all this bottled up emotion that festers for years and decades, it is no wonder she is ultimately left with a heart wrenching ambivalence dominating her feelings toward her parents.