Elizabeth Kim was born in Korea.
Omma was killed by her brother and father ('honour killing') for the sin of sleeping with an American soldier and producing a mixed-race child, Elizabeth. There is no record of her birth or of her name.
Dumped in a horrific orphanage in post-war Seoul, Kim was lucky to be adopted by a fundamentalist American family.
But just as her American features doomed her in racist Korea, her Korean features served as a constant reminder that she wasn't good enough for her new all-white environment.
Her mother had always told her that life was made up of ten thousand joys as well as ten thousand sorrows.
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