From Land of Gazillion Adoptees: Garrison Keillor is another notable Minnesotan mythology builder. His A Prairie Home Companion is a foundation of Minnesotan identity and pastiche, beloved both within the state and across the country. For forty years, he has done a remarkable job constructing a Minnesotan idyll—and ideal—using its fictional environment and characters to comment on contemporary charged social issues as though they were never controversial to begin with. One case in point is Minnesota’s renown for flying in droves of Korean infants for adoption since the late 1950s. To this, Keillor responded with a monologue about the “The Tollerud’s Korean Baby.” In 1985, as Keillor drew his audiences in with a philosophizing sentimental didacticism, he weaved a heartfelt story about a Lake Wobegon couple adopting a child named Corinne, one who didn’t look like them and came from a far-away country. One who plopped into this couple’s arms as though cascading down a chute, just like all kids do in this world, he said, destined for the joys and quirks of a family. Adoption agencies and adoptive parents ate it up and passed it on, approving its confirmation of the goodness of Minnesotans, serving also to demonstrate once again that Minnesotans are willing to be diverse, in controlled circumstances however, and on their own terms. If we were to more closely examine the narrative of Lake Wobegon’s Korean adoptee, Corrine Tollerud, we would make visible the erasure of Corrine herself... - Of Nine Minds (a writing collective based in Minneapolis, MN), from the upcoming cover story for Gazillion Voices, Issue 7
Posted on: Thu, 23 Jan 2014 20:21:47 +0000