I AM KOREAN AMERICAN

Own Words

I am my mother’s daughter.

One morning, I woke up and realized that my freezer is overflowing with individually packaged frozen meats (originally purchased in mega family packs). I have saved hundreds of completely useless little rubber bands that once held together bunches of spring onions. I am incapable of cooking for fewer than 10 people. I open gifts VERY carefully because wrapping paper can and should be reused. I firmly believe that miyukgook aids in breast milk production. I save plastic yogurt containers and yes, even plastic tofu containers, although in my defense, they really came in handy when, in a moment of insanity, I decided one spring to start my vegetable garden from seed.

However, I do use my dishwasher to wash dishes. And I buy the nice, thick toilet paper, not the see-through-thin stuff. I refuse to dry out used paper towels to use them again later, despite the frequency with which my mother tells me how wasteful I am. In the summer, I lower the AC thermostat below the 80 degree mark, and I don’t believe that a circulating fan in an enclosed space will kill me in my sleep.

But (perhaps) more so than my mother, I am my father’s daughter. I’ve inherited his dark skin, which I’ve always loved despite being asked by countless Koreans if I had done that to my skin on purpose (?!?). I have my father’s odd-shaped eyebrows, which I religiously alter every morning through the science of make-up. I have his stubbornness, his fighting spirit, his dream of setting out on his own path.

I am an art historian of contemporary African art. I can’t recall the number of times I’ve been asked why I’m so interested in Africa, and my response has always been, “Why not?” There are no limits to education; there are no boundaries on dreams. My personal identity begins and ends with my Korean-American-ness, but the world lies in between.

Now, I am a mother of two beautiful, utterly perfect, identical twin boys. At a recent visit to the pediatrician, I noticed on their chart that my boys were identified as “Causasian,” which is only half of the truth. I AM THEIR MOTHER! I found it infuriating that as the person who gave birth to them, who cares for them, who cultivates their love for kimchi, who speaks to them in Korean, and who brings them to the doctor’s office (!!!), their ethnic connection to me had been erased. When asked about this, I was told that the computer system only allowed for one ethnic identification. I was asked if I wanted to change it to Asian, which I reluctantly denied. What problems would I solve by refusing their father’s ethnicity?

I hope that my children, whose laughter melts my heart on a daily basis, recognize the realities of the world we live in, that they embrace and appreciate the fluidity of their identities, that they live and love—without boundaries.