ABSTRACT
This chapter elucidates how adoptee-authored cinematic productions intervene and recast a 50-year history of adoption that had relied on reductive narratives concerning the Western humanitarian rescue of orphans. It examines two Korean adoptee-authored documentaries: In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee and Resilience, directed by Deann Borshay Liem and Tammy Chu, respectively. Documentaries provide a pseudo-realistic view of people's lived lives that viewers usually treat as if they were impartial arbiters of truth rather than a narrative framework. In contrast to the growing number of female adoptee-authored cultural productions that were produced in the same time frame as Resilience, Beesley's reunion narrative is one of the few centering on a man's perspective on Korean adoption. Through the cultural productions, adoptees craft new histories of Asian American immigration to the United States. Adoptees produce counterstories, redefining a past that incorrectly characterized their experience.
