Ivenäs, Sabina. ‘White Like Me: Whiteness in Scandinavian Transnational Adoption Literature’. Scandinavian Studies, vol. 89, no. 2, [Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, University of Illinois Press], 2017, pp. 240–265.
From introduction: This paper problematizes the concept of whiteness by applying it in the context of the Scandinavian transnational/transracial adoptee. What is unique about the Scandinavian transracial adoptee is that theyalmost exclusively grow up and live in white segregated middle- class environments (Hübinette 2007). Nevertheless, Scandinavian trans-racial adoptees blend in seamlessly with white Scandinavian society in terms of language, culture, and behavior. at the same time, in contrast to transracial adoptees in more diverse countries such as the such as the United States, Canada, France, Australia, and the Netherlands, the Scandinavian transracial adoptee non-white body becomes extremely concrete (Hübinette 2007, 117). In this paper, which conducts a critical reading of Scandinavian transnational adoption autofiction, I consider how Scandinavian transracial adoptees negotiate the fact that they, as non-white individuals are raised in, and thereby indoctrinated into, the whiteness norm. In line with Dyer’s perspective on how whiteness is studied within white Western culture, this paper sets out to explore how self-representation of whiteness is depicted in Scandinavian trans-national adoptee autofiction. How do the Scandinavian transnational/transracial adoptees represent themselves as white in literary texts?
doi:10.5406/scanstud.89.2.0240.
PDF: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/scanstud.89.2.0240.