투쟁: language, miles, returns, stories

view from Seoul Tower, 2009

i'm going to Korea next year.

i don't know when, or how, or in what capacity, but i am going back.

my saturn return is approaching, and i have been feeling it since the summer. all signs point towards this being the time, the right time, for me. i feel compelled to go, i feel i *have* to go.

i will post A LOT more in the coming months about this journey, my reasons, my feelings, my fears and hopes and plans and all of that. today, i'm going to start with a brief history of knowing and knowledge and language and distance and shame. language study is my number one goal for this journey, and all the heartache and struggle that comes with it.

my first trip home was in 2009. i dropped out of my language class on the third day. i wasn't ready. i'd only been in the country for a week, my body was still jet-lagged, my mind was still overflowing and overwhelmed. i felt shame every time the teacher corrected my pronunciation. i was afraid to even start my homework for fear of what it would mean for me to not succeed.

back in college, i took one East Asian studies class. it was called "Gender, Modernity and Social Change in Korea". the whole thing is kind of a blur. there were Asiaphile white boys and let-me-show-you-photos-from-my-trip-to-India white girls. so many fucked up, racist, misogynist and transphobic things got said on a regular basis, and there were only three of us who actually pushed back. but i remember so vividly the shame i felt at not knowing anything about Korea or Korean history. i remember how these white people shamed me for not knowing the history of my own country. for not knowing as much as them.

and there are so many really deep and valid reasons for why I never read Bruce Cummings' book. but i couldn't shake that shame. the same shame i felt when a stranger at the airport started talking to me about Korean ondol heating and exclaimed "you don't know your own history?" at me when i didn't know what that was.

when i was younger, feeling all this difference on my face and body and hair and history (or lack thereof) and getting "ching chonged" on the playground and people always asking "is she with you" when i was at the grocery store with my mom and avoiding other Asian kids like the plague because separately we could survive, we could dodge the slurs, we had a chance of being something better, more acceptable than each other.

when i was young like this, wounds i couldn't name until a few years ago just barely beneath the surface, when the people who claimed to love me looked just like the ones who taunted me, when my mother dismissed racism as "ignorance", when i was force-fed feeling grateful and elementary school teachers publicly interrogated me about the circumstances of my birth and abandonment past the point of tears, this is when i first learned to be afraid of Korea.

i was told that Korea hated girls, and hated me because i was the child of an unmarried mother, that she had worn a girdle for her entire pregnancy to hide me, that i was her shame, but that she had given me up for a better life in america, that i had no identity in Korea, but here -

i learned to run from my reality of my country. my dark hair, my slanted eyes, my taste for spicy food - these things made me exotic. exotic was good. white people liked exotic. exotic was my pass. if i bent to their will, if i played into the sexual fantasies of every white boy and man; if i let white women ooh and ahhh over my hair, my tan; if i played diverse background dressing in the promotional photos of my private school - that was the way to survive. 

but to know any truth, to imagine myself as a part of Korea and Korean history, was too risky, too painful.

my mother bought me an elaborately rhinestoned American flag pin when i was naturalized. i wore it every Memorial Day, every 4th of July, well into high school. photos of me dressed in red, white, blue and that pin, were taken every year.

my mother always gushed about how beautiful the color red looked against my black hair.

standing in World Cup Park, 2009

i didn't know how to be Korean. i didn't know where to start. i didn't even know that i could.

one of my brother's best friends was Korean. his mother would bring me gifts from her yearly trip to the homeland, but also told my mother that i must never search, must never return. she gave me the film "Daughter of Danang" and told me point blank that real Koreans would hate me.

these are the things that make distance greater than miles and years and language.

i don't know if i can say i'm not afraid anymore. but i'm ready. 

i've set out to learn Korean many times before. but i never committed to it. the characters fell out of my head, they could not find purchase in my brain. i was too afraid of failing, too afraid i had no business learning. 

but all that has changed. little by little, bit by bit, i have found the strength. i have found the need to learn. i can hold the alphabet in my head, heart and hands, my tongue can force out fits and starts of foreign native tongue.

i want to go to Korea and learn. i want to be surrounded by the sounds of this most beautiful language, that makes my heart race and leaves me breathless, a strange and primal memory.

it is time to shed this skin of shame. it is time to write my own story with a diasporic hand.

i am going back, to learn, to live. 

i'm still afraid, but i'm ready.

stories about hair (part 1 of 1000000)

summer 2001 - growing out my home bleach job

summer 2008. first time using buzzers.

(inspired by this post from the wonderful mightyfemme)

fat, queer, korean, adopted, nonbinary
there is a lot to say about hair.
here are bits and pieces. there are many more to come.

---

beautiful, silky, shiny, lustrous, exotic...

i heard these words constantly from my mother, and every time i go to the salon. it's a place called Place Vendome, full of upscale perfume, magazines about dieting and older rich white ladies getting unstylish blowouts. i started going there after attempting to cut my own bangs at age 8. my mom went there for twenty years and admits she never got a good haircut from Lisa, her stylist.

this is not unexpected, considering that Lisa told me that i could never cut my hair above my shoulders because my face was too round. 

i was 11. just gotten my first period. growing out my bangs. i was vulnerable, impressionable.

these are things that stay with you.

---

a stranger once berated me for the size of my cheeks when i was young enough to use a stroller but old enough to remember every word.

---

my third grade i was 100 pounds. Tommy Gianis, scrawny, shrill-voiced elementary school bully, took every opportunity to call me a fat whale.

i took every opportunity to kick him in the testicles.

---

my hair was the only thing anyone ever said was beautiful about me.

even then, it wasn't that my hair was beautiful, it was that Asian hair was so beautiful.

---

for years i grew my hair out long. people would always ask me if i was going to do locks of love. in fifth grade i went in to cut it off but could only get about 18 inches. Lisa wouldn't cut it any shorter because of my fat face.

in middle school i began to want ultra-short hair because i thought that was how you were gay.

 but Lisa's words (and the advice of every teen/beauty magazine ever) kept me from it.

---

but your hair is so beautiful. why would you want to do that?
i'd never do that if i had hair like yours.

my mom took me to Place Vendome to get red chunks put into my hair. they gave me teeny tiny auburn highlights instead.

i begged my mom to let me dye my whole head but she refused. i accused her of being concerned with how it would reflect on her with the other parents at my fancy Catholic private school. she screamed and denied it.

less than a year later, after dropping out of that school because of a bullying-induced mental breakdown (and switching to public school), my older brother bleached and dyed my whole head manic panic purple haze.

---

i didn't cut my hair above my shoulders until i was 18. at this time, i was emaciated, back down to my elementary school 100 pounds, because of a particularly toxic cocktail of psychiatric meds wreaking havoc on my system.

i was still so afraid of my round face. so round, in fact, that strangers still felt compelled to comment on it upon meeting me.

i was at an event offering free haircuts, but you had to wait your turn. i sat for an hour, flipping anxiously through short hairstyle magazines. i finally found a short, choppy hairstyle on an Asian model. i had always attributed my round face to being Asian (since every other difference people continuously commented on was related to by being Asian) and seeing that hair on an Asian face was comforting. i resolved to finally get the short hair i'd always wanted. but when it came to my turn i wimped out, just told her to give me a slight trim.

a person who had been sitting next to me stood up, pointing to the hairstyle magazine i had been looking through.

"no," they said. "they want this one."

---

it doesn't end there. it only begins again. it gets more complicated. but here is a beginning. here is a place to start.

"orphan stories no. 27489" on Interrupt

A little while ago I had this article published on Interrupt Magazine for their issue on race. One of the prompts was "I first realized I was x race when..." and I wrote about my experience as a transracial adoptee. Check it out here: orphan stories no. 27489

MAKING 만두: a memoir

homemade mandu frying in a pan

I.

in college, my first korean adoptee friend told me the story of being a part of one of the special events for Asian American prospective students. she said they all sat around and talked about how their mothers made dumplings. her mother didn't make dumplings.

II.

my mother did. in elementary school we made mandu for my brownie troop. i wore my hanbok and we got coolers full of green tea from the local chinese restaurant. we earned some kind of cultural badge. there were three kids of color in my entire elementary school class, including me.

III.

i learned how to make 만두 (stuffed dumplings) at Korean culture camp. i started going in first grade, i think. each age group had a different color t-shirt. first graders wore white.

the camp was run by white adoptive parents. they set the curriculum, and hired Korean Americans to help teach the classes. the camp was open to Korean adoptees and their white adoptive siblings. we rotated between different stations: music, folktales, language, brush painting, tae kwon do, fan dancing, music, games and art.

my first memory is from the art station. we made ourselves passports. 

IV.

my favorite part was always tae kwon do. every year kids would lay on the floor in a row for other campers to do flying side kicks over and break boards during the final show for parents. i was never asked to do the flying side kicks because i was fat. 

V.

back to the dumplings.

after you hit 6th grade, you were expected to help out with the younger campers instead of being one yourself. one of our duties as unpaid camp helpers was to help prepare all of the food for the end of week banquet. this included making thousands of mandu. i'm kind of an overachiever, a perfectionist, a closer. i was especially so back then. so while others would kinda cower at sticking their hands into raw egg and meat, i dove into it, striving to make the most dumplings and the most perfect dumplings and do to it faster and better than everyone else. so that is how i learned to make 만두.

VI. 

after high school i summered working for a caterer. one year we had to make 300+ empanadas for an event. the other workers were having trouble filling them and folding them. i stepped in and it all came flooding back to me. i personally filled and folded all 300 of them.

VII.

i became a vegetarian in 6th grade but i always made an exception for the food at the culture camp banquet. years later i started making veggie 만두 that were delicious and flavorful. in college i couldn't buy dumpling skins so i made the dough by hand. these dumplings were chewy and rustic. during my summer in Seoul i made dumplings with kimchi from the hasookjip where i was staying, although i ventured out to a vegetarian restaurant weekly for 만두.

VIII. 

now i have to eat mostly gluten-free for medical reasons. this year, for my birthday, my partner and my bestie tried to make me gluten free 만두. the dough was a struggle, and they couldn't fill them properly. once i started helping they turned out better, but i conclude that i can make a gluten exception for dumplings.

IX. 

also ramyeon.

X. 

last week, i made 만두 again for some friends who were coming over for dinner. it felt so right, my hands and heart moved without thinking. i filled and folded each one effortlessly. it felt like only minutes had passed and i made over 50. my partner lovingly fried them on three sides, golden brown, 맛있어요. it felt like home. warm. sweet. full.

my mother never taught me how to make dumplings. turns out, i didn't need a recipe after all.