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an immigrant, she had to double down on her fight for survival. Thus, her anxiety had become a constant, vindicated and put to action in times of emergency. Never subsiding, even when the threat had been diminished.
Am I letting others dictate my reality, or is racialized sexual jealousy a symptom of sleep deprivation?
Why bother trying to emulate her, when even my hair defied her ladylike expectations? That’s why I both envied and pitied my friend’s glossy-smooth hair—so lovely and compliant, with nary a single strand escaping its thick black
Another family classic, especially lethal from Mom: “Why are you crying? Did your mother die? What do you have to cry about then? Go blubber outside.” Actually, for that one, I never had a comeback, so I wailed in the backyard, snotting against the sliding glass doors.
I pictured how Mom must’ve been less alone, how the other Korean wives were probably savvier at defusing the tempers of Korean husbands, especially if not their own. Or who could, at least, provide a hiding place until it was safe to emerge.
Mom’s demands on my brother as a Korean son simply required him to be rich and successful, enough to redeem her suffering. Doctor or lawyer would do. Chris’s secret ambitions then were also equally nebulous. He justified to Mom that the path to law school required studies in philosophy, literature, and human nature. Even as a kid, I knew this was cover-up.
Instead of interrogating me, he talked up how the boarding school gave him a scholarship and changed his life’s trajectory. My father listened and for once was quiet.
The meticulous work and the discovery still thrill me, but ever since grad school, I’ve become more strategic, a careerist intent on job security with ample funding and a travel stipend. So why the sudden revolutionary zeal?
No wonder Swedish boys love high fantasy—it’s already written in their native language and they’re usually cast as the elvish heroes anyway.
Cinderella is found the world over, though many believe she originated in ancient China—bound feet, smallest shoe, foot fetish and whatnot.
But if a bunch of foreigners barged into your world, dragged your men away on dangerous expeditions, studied you like you were some alien, and demanded you explain every word you had for snow—wouldn’t you also run naked and dive into the frozen sea?
“Yeah, I got it. Boys and their bridges. I’m a fan of whatever depicts the Japanese as war criminals. Now that country knows how to spin PR—they’re like white people’s favorite Asian—talk about branding. At least the Germans own up to their history, actually teach it to their kids.”
Maybe this is why I don’t date Asian men. We’re too combustible, echoing each other’s rage, fearing we’ll rehash our parents’ bullshit, reenact their fucked up dynamics and raise kids who chase after approval and achievement rather than love.
Plus, what’s more American than shitting on foreigners and new immigrants?
“You mean the books you ripped up in front of me because they provoked you? You who only got into college because of grandfather’s money? He gave you a factory too and it went bust, right? He even got Mom to marry you, turned her head with all his money and gifts and promises you’d be a grand success someday?”
No, I don’t think the story was “a recruitment video for sacrificial virgins, serve your country, serve your father bullshit.” But Shim Cheong is certainly the exemplar for filial piety.
Doesn’t matter how kind the parents. I was adopted not only into a family, but also into a country, one with little history of immigration compared to others, even less of integration, with a culture valuing egalitarianism that is often misconstrued as conformity and homogeneity.
don’t tell him that I can’t be blamed for my gender or birth order or for taking advantage of these in our family, or that there was no way I could’ve taken him with me anyhow.
To them, he was something more familiar—at times histrionic and fanatically religious like their mothers, or depressive and suddenly violent like their fathers.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” I sigh. “Mom was the drama queen. I told you I didn’t want anything. Give everything to Chris! I don’t care!”
see how my brother, so smart and cynical, can also believe in dreams of a holy father as well as curses and prophecies foretold by a once-loving mother. I see the effects of her redaction and erasure of her son. How much she hurt him when she demoted him from her champion and defender—to just another man who failed her.
“He never abandoned his family or started over with someone else. Even your mother appreciated that he didn’t ‘drink, whore, or gamble’ like his father. Your story, though, ends with you, Elsa. No one will suppress or reject the traits they inherit from you.”
moment when it’s just the two of
I admire these cunning outcast women, for they risk their own souls becoming lost and trapped in the Underworld in order to feed their bellies and go on living. I only did so out of duty and obligation, which I mistook for love.
