Miracle Creek

by Angie Kim

The lobby plaque said the courthouse was a 250-year-old historical landmark and asked for donations to the Pineburg Courthouse Preservation Society. Young had shaken her head at the thought of this society, an entire group whose sole purpose was to prevent this building from becoming modern. Americans were so proud of things being a few hundred years old, as if things being old were a value in and of itself. (Of course, this philosophy did not extend to people.) They didn’t seem to realize that the world valued America precisely because it was not old, but modern and new. Koreans were the opposite. In Seoul, there would be a Modernization Society dedicated to replacing this courthouse’s “antique” hardwood floors and pine tables with marble and sleek steel.

I moved from Seoul, South Korea, to the Baltimore area when I was 11 years old. As an immigrant, there are a lot of things I noticed about America and Americans that seemed different from the Korean perspective I grew up with. This is one of the earliest observations I remember having about America and Americans, during a school field trip to Colonial Williamsburg, I think it was. Fun fact: my husband and I were walking around a historic part of Charleston, SC, right before my book was published. He said this to me (about Americans being so proud of things being a few hundred years old) and said “I read that in some book somewhere, can’t remember where.” I had to laugh and say, “Yeah, in MY book. You just forgot because it’s been like two years since the last time you read it!” (We also laughed that it reminded us of that scene in When Harry Met Sally when Sally’s friend Marie quotes Jess’s own words to him at dinner and they fall in love.)