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| My least favourite question: where are you from? | My least favourite question: where are you from? |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| As a non-white American, I'm often asked where I'm from and whether I've been "back home". And people don't mean New York City, where I was born and raised. They look at me, and my ethnic face, and they mean South Korea. | As a non-white American, I'm often asked where I'm from and whether I've been "back home". And people don't mean New York City, where I was born and raised. They look at me, and my ethnic face, and they mean South Korea. |
| That was how I used to answer, too. Even though I had never lived in South Korea until I was almost 30. Even though my parents were born in what is now North Korea, fled to the South as wartime refugees, then took the slow boat to Argentina, before becoming naturalized Americans. Despite the fact that I recited the pledge of allegiance at school each morning, despite my blue US passport, I never self-identified as American while growing up; it had never occurred to me that I was. | That was how I used to answer, too. Even though I had never lived in South Korea until I was almost 30. Even though my parents were born in what is now North Korea, fled to the South as wartime refugees, then took the slow boat to Argentina, before becoming naturalized Americans. Despite the fact that I recited the pledge of allegiance at school each morning, despite my blue US passport, I never self-identified as American while growing up; it had never occurred to me that I was. |
| What I describe is hardly a new phenomenon: scores of fellow ethnic "others" have long felt similarly un-American growing up in the US, facing subtle rhetorical reminders of our out-group status. It's well-trodden territory, treated in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Joy Luck Club, and the works of Chang-Rae Lee. As "hyphenated Americans," our identities are qualified – our Americanness is made subordinate, and secondary, to all the ethnic matter that precedes it. We are constantly told to look to that other home, our "real" home, as the place where we truly belong. | What I describe is hardly a new phenomenon: scores of fellow ethnic "others" have long felt similarly un-American growing up in the US, facing subtle rhetorical reminders of our out-group status. It's well-trodden territory, treated in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Joy Luck Club, and the works of Chang-Rae Lee. As "hyphenated Americans," our identities are qualified – our Americanness is made subordinate, and secondary, to all the ethnic matter that precedes it. We are constantly told to look to that other home, our "real" home, as the place where we truly belong. |
| But what we have failed to address is the reverse phenomenon: what exactly awaits us when we "return" to the quote-unquote motherland. As a society we carry romantic notions of stepping off the plane – or boat – and being met with open arms, perpetuated by the likes of Olive Garden commercials ("When you're here, you're family!") and even Jersey Shore, where Snooki et al set off for Italy to search for their roots under every pizza box and carafe of Chianti. Conan O'Brien famously parodied this romanticized attachment to the "old country" when he traveled to Ireland and pressed his giant orange head into the bosom of each and every startled passerby, claiming kinship. | |
| It is wrong to assume that hyphenated-Americans can simply "return" to the "motherland" and automatically fit in. I, too, was once guilty of the same misguided notion, when I traveled to Seoul as a Fulbright scholar to reconnect with my ethnic identity. My parents left the Korean peninsula shortly after electricity came into vogue; as such, my cultural knowledge was at least 40 years out-of-date. Weaned on stories of my parents' war-torn childhood, I pictured straw-thatched houses dotting the fields of rice paddies, and villagers gathering in the town square to kick around the old pigskin (a pig's bladder blown up like a soccer ball). I clung fiercely to this quaint, rustic (read: naïve) image of the old country. | It is wrong to assume that hyphenated-Americans can simply "return" to the "motherland" and automatically fit in. I, too, was once guilty of the same misguided notion, when I traveled to Seoul as a Fulbright scholar to reconnect with my ethnic identity. My parents left the Korean peninsula shortly after electricity came into vogue; as such, my cultural knowledge was at least 40 years out-of-date. Weaned on stories of my parents' war-torn childhood, I pictured straw-thatched houses dotting the fields of rice paddies, and villagers gathering in the town square to kick around the old pigskin (a pig's bladder blown up like a soccer ball). I clung fiercely to this quaint, rustic (read: naïve) image of the old country. |
| When I touched down in Korea, I was shocked to find the place that I thought I knew so intimately – the place I was supposed to hail from – was so foreign. Gray skyscrapers towered over the paved streets. Neon storefronts blinked advertisements for cell phones and fried chicken. My "kinsmen" – bedecked in suits and heels – jostled past me without a word, let alone greeting. | When I touched down in Korea, I was shocked to find the place that I thought I knew so intimately – the place I was supposed to hail from – was so foreign. Gray skyscrapers towered over the paved streets. Neon storefronts blinked advertisements for cell phones and fried chicken. My "kinsmen" – bedecked in suits and heels – jostled past me without a word, let alone greeting. |
| Whenever I communicated in our "native" tongue, the South Koreans laughed at my antiquated vocabulary (I peddled words like apothecary, outhouse) and my distinctly American cadence (I spoke in iambic pentameter). They said I was a "foreigner"; not one of "our country's people," the term they used to refer to themselves. Never did they call me Korean. Once again I felt like the other – except this time, I was otherized by the ethnic group I was told my whole life I was a part of. | Whenever I communicated in our "native" tongue, the South Koreans laughed at my antiquated vocabulary (I peddled words like apothecary, outhouse) and my distinctly American cadence (I spoke in iambic pentameter). They said I was a "foreigner"; not one of "our country's people," the term they used to refer to themselves. Never did they call me Korean. Once again I felt like the other – except this time, I was otherized by the ethnic group I was told my whole life I was a part of. |
| There is a real danger in spending your whole life thinking you belong to some other place that's anywhere but here. My time abroad might have been less culturally wrought if I had never tried to assume an automatic entitlement to Korea. What my experience in South Korea affirmed for me was that you can't go (back) home again – that home was never yours to lay claim to in the first place. I have since returned home, to New York City, with a newfound sense of orientation, and belonging. | There is a real danger in spending your whole life thinking you belong to some other place that's anywhere but here. My time abroad might have been less culturally wrought if I had never tried to assume an automatic entitlement to Korea. What my experience in South Korea affirmed for me was that you can't go (back) home again – that home was never yours to lay claim to in the first place. I have since returned home, to New York City, with a newfound sense of orientation, and belonging. |
| But it's an uphill battle. I don't always feel American, especially on days when people insist on asking, "No, where are you from from?" or compliment my accent-free English. But we must challenge our views on hyphenated-Americans and their place of belonging. You might even say it's time we collectively weaned ourselves off the proverbial teat of the motherland. | But it's an uphill battle. I don't always feel American, especially on days when people insist on asking, "No, where are you from from?" or compliment my accent-free English. But we must challenge our views on hyphenated-Americans and their place of belonging. You might even say it's time we collectively weaned ourselves off the proverbial teat of the motherland. |
| Change is slow, and hard. But if we take even the smallest, simplest steps – like revising the rhetoric we use to talk about where we come from – the sooner Americans like myself might stop looking for acceptance over there, and start to feel we, too, have a claim to our real homeland here in the United States. |