Inconvenient Daughter

by Lauren J. Sharkey

Overview

A vibrant and provocative debut novel that dispels myths surrounding transracial adoption.

Inconvenient Daughter received the IPPY Awards GOLD Medal in Multicultural Fiction

“This debut novel vividly details the awkwardness of high school and heartbreak of rejection. Rowan’s first-person narrative voice provides sharp, devastating emotional insight.” —Kirkus Reviews

Rowan Kelly knows she’s lucky. After all, if she hadn’t been adopted, she could have spent her days in a rice paddy, or a windowless warehouse assembling iPhones—they make iPhones in Korea, right? Either way, slowly dying of boredom on Long Island is surely better than the alternative. But as she matures, she realizes that she’ll never know if she has her mother’s eyes, or if she’d be in America at all had her adoptive parents been able to conceive.

Rowan sets out to prove that she can be someone’s first choice. After running away from home—and her parents’ rules—and ending up beaten, barefoot, and topless on a Pennsylvania street courtesy of Bad Boy Number One, Rowan attaches herself to Never-Going-to-Commit. When that doesn’t work out, she fully abandons self-respect and begins browsing Craigslist personals. But as Rowan dives deeper into the world of casual encounters with strangers, she discovers what she’s really looking for.

With a fresh voice and a quick wit, Lauren J. Sharkey dispels the myths surrounding transracial adoption, the ties that bind, and what it means to belong.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617757099
Publisher:	Akashic Books, Ltd.
Publication date:	06/23/2020
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	771,738
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

LAUREN J. SHARKEY is a writer, teacher, and transracial adoptee. After her birth in South Korea, she was adopted by Irish Catholic parents and raised on Long Island. Sharkey’s creative nonfiction has appeared in the Asian American Feminist Collective’s digital storytelling project, First Times, as well as several anthologies including I Am Strength! and Women under Scrutiny. Inconvenient Daughter is her debut novel, and is loosely based on her experience as a Korean adoptee.

Editorial Reviews

04/06/2020

In Sharkey’s stirring if uneven debut, a transracial adoptee of Korean descent endures a crisis of identity. At the novel’s start, 24-year-old Rowan Kelly is at the ER to report a sexual assault, and a question about her family medical history leads her to reflect on her complicated feelings about being adopted, as well as self-esteem issues and abusive relationships. From there, the narrative jumps back to Rowan’s first day of elementary school, when another student mocks Rowan for looking different from her mother. Though Rowan has a positive relationship with her mother as a child on Long Island, it begins to fracture once Rowan enters high school and pursues a relationship with an older boy. Frustrated by her mother’s rules, Rowan escapes to college in Pennsylvania, where she meets fellow student Hunter, who cuts Rowan off from all of her friends and family, making her entirely dependent on him, and is physically abusive. Sharkey gradually circles back to the opening scene in the ER, describing the legacy of Hunter’s abuse and the persistent voice of self-criticism in Rowan’s head. Though things start slowly, Sharkey achieves a moving account of Rowan’s difficult reckoning with her identity. This is an adept portrayal of the long shadow of abuse and the difficulty of being an adoptee. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"Rowan’s journey to healing, and a form of redemption too, is a five year quest—and one that leaves you begging for a sequel."

Exclusive Magazine

"Rowan's journey to healing, and a form of redemption too, is a five year quest—and one that leaves you begging for a sequel."
—Exclusive Magazine

"[Sharkey] tackled a very powerful subject line and conveyed the emotions through Rowan in a heartfelt way."
—Hey It's Carly Rae

"Lauren J. Sharkey's masterfully plotted portrait of Rowan, a smart and willful young woman in wild rebellion against the life she's been handed, is so raw and honest, written with such passion and heart, you turn the pages rooting for her to love herself as much as the reader and her indomitable adopted mother do. Inconvenient Daughter delivers this and so much more."
—Beverly Donofrio, author of Astonished: A Story of Healing and Finding Grace

"Lauren J. Sharkey's emotionally searing novel chronicles its heroine's quest to forge her true self. Deeply felt and intensely written, Inconvenient Daughter speaks to the need we all have to find our place in the world, our place of belonging and acceptance. This is a powerful and stunning literary debut."
—Sue William Silverman, author of Love Sick: One Woman's Journey through Sexual Addiction

"Steel, raw love, and rage forge the relationships between Rowan Kelly and her family. Inconvenient Daughter illuminates with cutting truth the layers of longing and grief which underlie a transracial adoption. Author Lauren J. Sharkey shines a light on how the truth of being loved and belonging can transcend the construct of biology. Sharkey provides heart-rending insight that never dips into false sentimentality, wrapped in a sharply written, intense, and page-turning novel. I simply loved this book."
—Randy Susan Meyers, bestselling author of Waisted

"Rare is the book willing to confess how essential belonging is, to detail the myriad ways we both seek it and suffer from its absence. Readers will discover in Sharkey's prose a truth few authors have the honesty to acknowledge or the courage to reveal."
—Kevin Clouther, author of We Were Flying to Chicago

From the Publisher

2020-04-13
A transracially adopted girl struggles during high school and college.

Rowan Kelly, adopted from Korea by Catholic parents from Long Island, has never known another home. And yet, her classmates and community identify her by her differences, though she knows nothing of her birthparents or Korean culture. Rowan is confronted with this disconnect on her first day of kindergarten when she’s asked why she doesn’t look like her mother, and another child replies that it was because her "real mommy...didn’t want [her].” These words plant a deep-seated fear in Rowan that she has never really been wanted by anyone, not her birth mother or her parents (who adopted after failed fertility treatments). Rowan’s relationship with her mother grows ever more tumultuous, and in true teenage fashion, she can't convey her fear of abandonment. Once she moves to college, Rowan cuts off all contact with her family after her boyfriend becomes abusive, the beginning of years of isolation from everyone around her as she flunks out of school. This debut novel vividly details the awkwardness of high school and heartbreak of rejection. Rowan's first-person narrative voice provides sharp, devastating emotional insight in recalling these moments. Yet the novel opens with Rowan’s implying to a nurse that she was raped, a long hospital scene that is woven throughout the length of the book in between Rowan’s life stories. It's hard to know how to respond to these scenes, as Rowan’s emotional healing and reckoning with her decisions are told quickly rather than as part of the story. This is a significantly felt absence, especially given the serious nature of these scenes and the extended focus on her most traumatizing years.

This novel’s uneven focus detracts from its fresh voice and important expansion of narratives about adoption.

Kirkus Reviews

"Lauren J. Sharkey’s masterfully plotted portrait of Rowan, a smart and willful young woman in wild rebellion against the life she’s been handed, is so raw and honest, written with such passion and heart, you turn the pages rooting for her to love herself as much as the reader and her indomitable adopted mother do. Inconvenient Daughter delivers this and so much more."

Beverly Donofrio

"A transracial Korean adoptee works through identity questions and the aftereffects of abuse in search of self-acceptance."

a Summer Reading Pick Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Rare is the book willing to confess how essential belonging is, to detail the myriad ways we both seek it and suffer from its absence. Readers will discover in Sharkey’s prose a truth few authors have the honesty to acknowledge or the courage to reveal."

Kevin Clouther