CBR17 Book 4: "Kvit Norsk Mann" (White Norwegian Man) by Brynjulf Jung Tjønn

Page count: 93 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Nowhere Bingo 2025: A poetry collection

The author of this poetry collection was adopted from South Korea by a childless Norwegian couple when he was three years old. Throughout this rather short, but very impactful poetry collection, he writes about his constant feeling of exclusion and lack of belonging. As a child of Asian descent in a small western Norwegian village surrounded by white people, he obviously stood out among the other children. Adopted by farmers to take over their farm when they grew old, he turned out to be entirely unfit for the task, with his grass allergy, lactose intolerance and breaking out into a rash every time he touched the wool of the sheep on the farm. Many of the poems deal with his feelings of inadequacy because he was brought to Norway from the other side of the world, named for his grandfather and unable to continue the long family tradition of farming. 

Even as an adult, he never really feels like he fits in, as despite him growing up in Norway, people keep asking him "Where are you really from?", confusing his identity with other Asian people, side-eyeing his relationship with his white girlfriend (then wife). He writes absolutely heart-breaking poems referencing three young Norwegians with a non-white background (two of them adopted like him) who died in racially motivated killings. He doesn't feel like he properly fits in in Norway, but has no actual connection to Korea either. 

Back in 2021, I read a short essay collection by a woman whose mother is Norwegian and whose father is Gambian. While reading these poems, I kept being reminded of the short and brutally honest ways in which Lundestad Joof shared the difficulties she keeps facing as a biracial woman in Norway. Both authors explore the difficulties of being non-white in an almost overwhelmingly white country, which for all its progressive views, excellent social benefits and efforts towards inclusivity, still has a long way to go before the majority of the population gets over its often very unintentional racism. 

Since I'm currently teaching 10th graders, I am absolutely going to have them compare and contrast some of these texts, hopefully giving them more perspectives on contemporary life for a lot of minorities in Norway. If I'm lucky, some of them might even come up with some clever stuff to impress whomever is grading their final exams in a few months. 

Judging a book by its cover: The cover is very stark and simple, with a black background and only the title of the book and the name of the author featured. In class, the students had to discuss the colour choices here: the title "Kvit Norsk Mann" is in yellow - the colour the author describes himself as in several of the poems, while the name of the author is in white - the colour the author claims he always aspired to be growing up. I doubt these colour choices are coincidental. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

#CBR6 Book 121: "The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Get Pregnant" by Dan Savage

Page count: 246 pages
Audio book length: 7hrs 33 mins
Rating: 4 stars

I've been reading Dan Savage's Savage Love for years and years now, and when I'm in the mood for Podcasts (which I have to admit, I rarely am, I just can't seem to get into them, it puzzles me greatly), I often listen to his Savage Lovecast. He's generally quite open about himself, his life and his experiences, so I already knew that he was married and that they had an adopted child. My BFF Lydia recommended this audio book to me when I visited her in the States in early October, and as my husband and I are trying to get me pregnant, I figured it could be pretty topical.

In this book, Dan relates what happened when he and his then boyfriend (now husband, as far as I'm aware) decided to adopt a child together, at a time and a place where gay adoption was not always a popular choice. They used an organisation which arranged open adoptions, which means that the adoptive parents and the birth mother keep in contact after the adoption and agree on a schedule in which the birth mother can visit her child, should she choose to do so. Dan and Terry were the first gay men to successfully adopt through the agency they used.

The book is divided into three parts, chronicling the couple's decision process, the application stage, the waiting period where they were wondering if they'd ever get picked, followed by the period in which they got to know the birth mother of their child, a street punk (a girl who is voluntarily homeless) from Portland..Due to her history of drinking and recreational drug experimentation before she realised she was pregnant, there were possibilities for complications with the baby, and Dan and Terry had to consider carefully whether they wanted to adopt this young woman's child.

Dan manages to be very honest and personal, without the reader feeling as if they now know everything about him and his family. He deals with serious issues, but intersperses it with humorous anecdotes. Savage wrote the book in 1999, and as I knew full well from reading his columns and listening to his podcasts that he has a kid, there was never any element of suspense or surprise as to whether he and Terry would be successful in their adoption. It was a very interesting book, well narrated by Savage himself. I must admit that hearing him talking about several of the straight couples they met when trying to adopt, who had mostly all tried to go through all manner of fertility treatments before settling on adoption, made me a bit more worried about my own future, considering I'm already experiencing difficulties with conceiving. As adoption is a very slow, time consuming, not to mention extremely costly process in Norway, it is sadly unlikely to ever be an option for my husband and I. So I'm just going to have to hope that we have luck either the natural way or somewhat assisted by science.

Based on this book, I would absolutely be interested in checking out more of Savage's written work. He is just as charming and interesting when narrating his own audio book as he is on his podcast (and he generally speaks more slowly).

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.