Why Jenny Heijun Wills keeps coming back to Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Jenny Heijun Wills was born in Korea and adopted as an infant by a white family in southern Ontario. In her late 20s, Wills traveled to Seoul to look for her first family. She chronicles this reunion in her award-winning memoir Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related.
Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related. won the 2019 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the biggest nonfiction prize in Canada.
Wills told The Next Chapter about a book she keeps coming back to: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
"The book that I always return to may surprise some people, but it's Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. It's a book that on the surface seems like something I would not be interested in. It's canonical literature. It's British literature. It's literature not authored by a writer of colour. But it is one of the earliest stories that I can recognize of trans-racial adoption.
It is one of the earliest stories that I can recognize of trans-racial adoption.
"Depending on how people feel about Heathcliff, his childhood, the outcome of his life, it tells me a lot about how they understand the experiences of young people of colour being raised in white families."
Jenny Heijun Wills's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
