Kimchi Mamas

Koreans and Texans

I have been a transplant here in Texas for the past year. 

Thanksgiving will make it a full year.

In the past, I have wondered how a minority could live anywhere other than the West and East side of this country without feeling like a very obvious outsider.

But I have been feeling a sense of belonging living here and there are obvious reasons of course...

My partner's family is deeply loving and passionately authentic folks who never made me feel anything but a part of their family. 

I think there may be also a few other factors... that I am yet to know for sure but here is what I am deducing ...

...that, Texans may have some strong similarities to Koreans.

• Their sense of family is very very strong
• They don't hide their feelings (Koreans often can't, at least most that I have known)
• They are emotionally blunt
• They don't know how to not care about you if they know you
• They believe in hospitality
• They value hard work and caring for those who are weaker than themselves(on this farm, even those workers who get injured continue to be hired and helped to heal and are loved
• Oh, and they visit those they care about unannounced like we used to do back when in Korea🥰

Perhaps my assessments are based on the farmers and farming culture, or farmers in Texas, but I have never been hugged by people with so much love and sincerity as I have since I have been here.

I think I am falling in love with this place and the farm life in Texas.

-- Nancy

I am curious...

My body weight tends to go up and down and when I am on the heavy side, I am hesitant to go to my favorite Korean grocery store.  

The owner of the store, with helpful intention, says to me, "You are fat.  You need to lose weight."

I grew up with that as well in my family.

I have had to work on my own need to correct people in an attempt to help.

I have trained myself to do it by directing my attention on being supportive and affirming the positive but once in a while I believe I fail (thankfully just once in a while.)

My Korean family was and are that way and most people that I have gotten to know have been that way and I believe it is from the need to protect and help.

I am very curious as to why many of us are that way and if it is related to having been subjugated for 35 years under another very critical and perfection-oriented culture, next door...

Having gone through such stress and fear for our lives has been a powerful influence that still reverberates.

What do you think?  

I would love to know.

My work and passion are about the unearthing of human potential so I am forever curious!!

I look forward to reading your answers!!

 

~ Nancy

Umma

Later this month, I am taking a trip with my Mom, my Umma. We are going to a tropical island for five days. I am doing this voluntarily and it's not something that I thought I would ever do, especially in the last 20 years.

When I was five or six, my Mom left our family. I think she just packed up and left without telling anyone. I have no memories of the actual day when she left... just lots of memories of her absence. She had had enough of living with my alcoholic and abusive father and decided that she had to leave in order to survive. Even if that meant that she was going to live without her two daughters. She told me later that she cried for three days straight after she left.

So, for many years, my Mom was someone who visited. She would come secretly and tell one of our friends that she was here. The friend would somehow come find us and she would buy us fried chicken. Sometimes we stayed over at her apartment for a few days but she would be gone for work most of the time so me and my sister would have to find ways to entertain ourselves. I remember cleaning her house so that she would be proud of us. And drinking hot water mixed with the powdered creamer and sugar she kept by the telephone with the instant coffee.

When we immigrated to the States, she didn't come to the airport to say good-bye to us. I learned later that no one had told her we were leaving. My uncle apparently called her from the airport when he knew it would already be too late for her to come. If she was allowed to talk to us, I have no memory of it. I was ten years old so it would have stuck in my memory if we did. It would have been in one of those private telephone booths that are now extinct. I just remember being so excited to finally move to America. My Mom wasn't a big presence in my life by then so I don't even remember worrying about her or our relationship... or that I didn't get to say good-bye to her.

I don't know how many days she cried after that.

We kept in touch through letters. Hand written letters. Phone calls were expensive during the 90's. She kept every single letter we ever sent her and one day when I was on maternity leave and she was living with me, I sat down and read them all.

After graduating from high school, I went back to Korea for the first time to visit my Mom. The scene at the airport was one for the movies. As I exited the famous sliding doors from the international terminal at Kimpo International Airport, I scanned the row of eagerly waiting faces for a familiar one.

"So Yeon ah!" my Mom cried out.

"Umma! Umma!" I left my baggage cart and rushed to hug her.

It felt monumental and big. Seeing Umma for the first time in 8 years. I just kept saying Umma and crying. We made a huge scene but we didn't care.

When I had my first child, my Mom moved to the States to live with me for a while. The idea was that she would provide childcare so that we wouldn't have to send him to daycare.

Let me spare you the suspense. It was a disaster.

She didn't speak a word of English and didn't have a driver's license so she depended on me for everything. I was working full time and resented her for being so needy. We got into a huge epic fight and she ended up moving out and then we didn't really talk for a few years. We both needed space. Away from each other.

We started talking again slowly. A text here and there. A phone call here and there.

"I heard there was a fire in California. Are you okay?"

"Yes, we're fine. They're pretty far away but the smoke is really bad."

A phone call to let me know her new address. A text with pictures of the kids.

Slowly we made our back to each other to the point that I felt a little bad about letting her know of yet another vacation that my family had taken to Hawaii. She had never been to Hawaii before and partly because I wanted to go back soon, I suggested that we take a vacation there together. I don't think she could believe her ears.

She was like, "Thank you for even suggesting it. I am so moved."

"Umma, I'm being serious! Tell me when you can go and I'll make the reservations." I said.

"Oh, I am busy. I have English class and so many doctor's appointments. I have to have dental work done and it's going to take two months!"

"Okay. Just tell me when you'll be free. I can work around your schedule."

"Okay. Maybe in the fall."

"Okay. Fall is good."

Her partner called me a few days later and asked me to take her to Hawaii ASAP because she has nothing to do and she is available starting immediately.

LOL

So, my Umma and I are going to Hawaii in a few weeks. I picked the Big Island for her because there's so much variety there and I think she will really enjoy it.

Hopefully there won't be any epic fights. Just a lot of good food, good scenery, and good memory making.

Wish us luck!

Best,

Mary

Why I am proud of being a Korean American

 

According to Google: “Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response to being held captive.  People with Stockholm syndrome form a psychological connection with the captors and begin sympathizing with them”

 

My adopted father was undoubtedly affected by Stockholm syndrome in relationship to Japanese invasion of Korean, and then some. He held a deep reverence for power, flawlessness, and precision - traits that Japan embodied to him completely.

I am confident my adoptive father had a fondness for Korea, much in the same manner he felt toward my grandfather(his father). My grandpa was immensely kind and was too good for this world. My grandfather's trust was betrayed and all of his fortunes were taken away by selfish acquaintances. My adoptive father deeply loved him yet at the same time felt embarrassed and shamed about his father's naivety and “weakness.”

He would often remark, “Japanese are like mud – they stick together and thus become very strong and potent. Koreans on the contrary, act independently for their own interests and eventually fall apart leaving no power to achieve anything of value as a nation… like sand”

My father was wrong, to say the least!

Since my departure from Korea in 1975, the nation has transcended its Third World status as if it had never been part of her identity. Despite enduring 35 grueling years of cultural sabotage, robbery, and plundering of artwork, resources, and lives; torture inflicted on citizens; attempts to annihilate culture; and a split country through false Chinese leadership - with all of that… look at us now!

Although there is still more work to be done for South Korea to heal from its past, the country looks as though it has not endured anything due to how she appears and functions. Not only is her material wealth rising but so too are creative arts, and also the wisdom aspects - all of which I am immensely proud of since she is my motherland.  Visiting soon will definitely be a must!

- Nancy

Anti-Asian Racism vs Institutional

I had an interesting conversation with my son about the anti-Asian violence in the news in recent weeks. We were having different reactions to it, and I appreciate that we respect each other enough that we could just talk about it as adults.

My reaction was one of pity, irritation, some anger, and flashback emotions to my childhood. I finally published the poem I wrote 3 decades ago in college on the Kimchi Mamas blog. I grew up in a mostly white area, and I remember one student from Puerto Rico, and two Black families growing up.  The students who terrorized me the most were two Black girls and many white boys. I was bullied and teased in elementary school. Daily. Marginalized in middle school. Respected finally by high school, but seen as "other" by most of my peers.  This continued through college, and even my early working years.

This life experience is what drew me to California in the first place. A Japanese family that I grew up with back East moved to Cali for the same reason, and I remember them writing my (white) parents telling them the difference they saw in their youngest child's socialization after moving. How the teasing finally ended and he could just be himself at last.

My son's reaction is much milder. Yes, the attacks are bad, but it's not institutional, is it? He has a point. While there have been serious attacks, and deaths even, these are rare compared to what our Black friends, neighbors, colleagues have to deal with. I've never worried for my life when being pulled over by a police officer--I see them as protectors, not a harmful force. I've never had to distrust doctors, hiring managers, authority in general based on my race. Based on my gender, Yes indeed.  But not my race.  Mostly it's the social interactions where the racism issue has come up, when people assume I am foreign or don't speak English. Minor indeed.

Longer version of this post on my personal blog.

 

Five White Boys

The bigger boys loved to taunt me
in their ripped jeans and expensive sneakers.
They walked like cowboys from old westerns 
pelvis forward, shoulders squared, hands on their hips
where their holsters should have been.

Irritated with their own lives, 
they wanted to get back at somebody for it--anybody would do.
My Korean face stood out from the others,
so they picked me.

They would stalk me on the way home from school,
where no teachers could stop them.
I had to walk just one short block from the bus stop to my home.
One block with them shadowing my steps.
I didn’t need to turn around to know they were there.

Chiiiink. Jaaaaaap. Goooooook.
I could hear the glee in their voices as they drew out the vowels
to savor the taste of the words.
Whenever I flinched, they snickered.

I imagined their faces behind me; 
fanged creatures, with claws and horns.
I knew if I ran, they would chase me, howling:
huge dobermans growling and snapping at the corners of my schoolbag.

Deliberately, I turned to face them.
Rotating my body first, I brought my eyes up last, 
trying to delay the confrontation.

I saw one red-haired boy, freckled from the sun;
One blond boy, blue eyes glaring through thick glasses.
The other three had brown hair of varying shades and lengths.
One wore a baseball cap wedged on his uncombed head.
Another clamped his lips over braces, which bulged out anyway.
The last was the ringleader, skinniest and meanest.

My narrow eyes of black agate glared at their wide brown and blue ones.
My golden tan contrasted with their pale faces.

I saw them nudge each other and point at me,
their smirks becoming uncertain frowns.
They tripped over their untied laces 
and elbowed each other in the ribs while trying to back away.
They never expected a nine-year old to stand up to them.

Five white boys with nothing better to do.

--Jomama

Musings on Death

I recently watched Dear My Friends on Netflix. It’s a Korean Drama series about a group of elderly friends, mostly women, and their daily struggles with friendship, love, health, and family. All the important things. I found myself alternating between laughter and tears in a matter of seconds. Laughing and crying and laughing and crying. The writing is exquisite but the translation is shit so #sorrynotsorry.

Anyway, I was reminded how much Koreans talk about death. Especially the older folks. My mom has started, in the last few years, to say things like:

• It’d be better if I die soon.
• Old people just need to die.
• I need to die soon.
• People should just die when they get to a certain age.

If we weren’t Korean, I’d think that she needed to be on suicide watch. But this is very normal and common for older Korean folks to say. (All the while taking every vitamin or supplement under the sun to be as healthy as possible.)

Death and comedy seems an odd pair but the show does it so well. In one plotline, a woman gets cancer and is talking to her friend about it, who has already had her battle with cancer. The conversation is so so sad and serious, with them discussing who should be the one to tell the daughter. But there are some hilariously funny moments too with the friend suggesting that all their virtuous chastity and faithfulness to their husbands has been for shit and that they should “give it away generously to anyone who wants it” from now on. Then, they lament that no one would stand in that line even if they were giving it away for free. There is an abundance of Korean cussing which adds to the hilarity.

I used to think it was morbid when I heard older Korean folks talk about death but now I think it’s somewhat healthy. By talking about it casually, there is more opportunity for everyone to think about their own mortality. And to prepare, in ever subtle ways, for the inevitable.

- Mary

They told us that the Foreigners called us pigs because our streets were so dirty.

There was an announcement.  I think I was in second or third or fourth grade.  That part is a little vague. 

Throwing trash on top of an already messed up world, where our king's palace had been turned into a zoo 50 years back, was a norm. And like good little Stockholm syndrome victims, we kept it a zoo for many more years after we were freed.  Well, only half of us were freed, the northern half was to be tortured under horrific leadership even worse than during the occupation era with no end of it in sight. 

South Koreans desperately tried to cope with the financial and spiritual ruins. The air was thick with the sorrow of loss and pain of poverty.   Koreans blamed themselves.  Some elders used to say to me, “It’s because we were so weak why we were so easily taken over.”  What they forgot about was that for hundreds of years prior to the takeover, the Korean Navy had been successfully fighting off the invasion.  All the elders remembered were the 35 torturous years where their children were beaten with metal poles in schools if they spoke their own language and their young girls sent to the battlefields of our occupiers to be sex slaves. 

We did not love ourselves.  We could not love ourselves.  This meant that we did not take good care of ourselves. It was normal to see trash on the streets in any part of Seoul.  That’s just how things were.  We lived poor.  We looked poor.  We desperately needed to wake up.

One Day there was an announcement.  On TV, on the radio, in the newspapers.  We were bombarded with the news that the foreigners were laughing and saying Koreans are pigs upon seeing our dirty streets.  They were calling us all pigs, the government told us.  

It seemed a matter of days before the streets of Seoul had no trash.  No one had to tell us twice.  Since then the streets of Seoul have stayed clean and because of that day, that announcement, even here in my new home, I can't stand littering.

I grew up hearing grownups blame ourselves for being taken over by Japan. 

I look at how Koreans have attacked the CoronaVirus, in the same ambitious way that we cleaned up our streets so quickly working together as one(Han-Gook) and never going back to having dirty trash-filled streets.

I don’t care if the government shamed us into cleaning up our streets.  What it shows me is how strong Koreans really are and I am proud to have that Korean blood running strong through my veins.

- Nancy

 

 

My rock and roll T-shirt

 

I have been actively making Youtube videos for the past nine months now.  

About a few months into it, while watching me struggle to grow my Youtube audience, my best friend bought me a bunch of rock & roll t-shirts and suggested that I try wearing them as a part of my dress up, to show my personality as more than just an Asian face that I am an American girl.  I am a t-shirt and jeans kind of gal anyways and I am a music lover so it seemed like a good idea. I decided to give it a try.

My channel has been growing steadily but slowly as perhaps most Youtube channels grow, but I do wonder if being an Asian American female could be a challenge for the middle Americans to listen to what I have to say.  I do wonder sometimes.  

I remember singing Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” in front of a room full of musicians and some coming up to me in wonderment of how it is that I can sound like Patsy Cline.  What was implied in the comments was the strangeness that a country song was being sung by Asian female like a country singer. Everyone asked me to sing it every time I was at that jam session and I sang. I don’t know if those musicians came to see me beyond my face, or continue to be in wonderment of the desire to match the voice and the face.

I believe there will be people who will see beyond my race.  As is, the small fan base that I do have are middle American women.  

I think we all struggle with a thought of belonging, that is our human nature after all.  I hope that one day we all just share in the belief that we belong to one human race but in the meanwhile, I will keep writing, speaking, making my videos on topics of my passion and hope to get to sing in jam sessions again because it is so much fun.

- Nancy

Speaking Up

It happened in a swanky Bay Area hotel. We had finished a long day and had gotten together to debrief and socialize before all heading back to our homes throughout the Bay Area and beyond. It was a work event.

Everyone was enjoying finger foods and drinks and making small talk. We talked about the weather. Because that's what you do. And that's when one of my colleagues (an older White man) casually made a joke about how someone's wife was so cheap that she won't turn on the heater until it's below 40 degrees. He said something about her being Asian and implied that her cheapness was due to her Asian-ness.

I was so shocked. I couldn't believe my ears. The anger welled up from inside me.

I looked at him directly and spat out the words. "She did that because she's cheap! Not because she's Asian!"

I turned to the Southasian American woman colleague, let's call her Priya, sitting next to me and asked, "Did he just really say that?" She replied, "I know. That's so R word." I said, "Yeah, that's hella racist! I can't believe he just said that." Priya agreed, "I can't believe he said that either. I am shocked."

He went on chatting with other colleagues close to him, not acknowledging my comment or apologizing. The moment was over.

Except I kept thinking about it. I couldn't let it go. I told my husband about it. We talked about it at the dinner table. I told my friends. I posted about it on Facebook. I even told some of my coworkers. Someone said I should report him to HR. I looked up the compliance hotline number. I didn't make the call. He was going to retire soon anyway, I won't have to work with him much longer.

Fast forward a couple months.

I had a final meeting with this group of colleagues and the perp happened to not be on the call. As we concluded the call, I felt like I should say something. If there was a perfect time to bring this up, it was now. I hesitantly said something like, "I'm not sure if this is the right place and time to bring this up but, well, I am doing it, and um.. well, at the meeting we had after the event, Paul (that's not his real name) made a joke that made me uncomfortable... and I'm not sure if any of you remember and some of you were gone already so you weren't there when it happened but I thought it was inappropriate and I've been thinking about it a lot. He made a joke..."

I told them what he said.

Priya chimed in, "I remember it and I've been thinking about it too! He was talking about so-and-so's wife!" It was even worse than I had remembered it. Apparently, he was talking about a coworker's wife!

We talked about what had happened and how inappropriate it was. How insensitive. He should not be making jokes like that. They acknowledged the difficulty in talking about things like this and thanked me profusely for bring it up. For saying something. They said that they were so sorry that this had happened. They affirmed my feelings. He had told borderline jokes before and needed to be aware of the impact of that kind of behavior. Know that it was not okay.

They asked if it would be alright with me if one or two of them had a little chat with him. They wouldn't mention my name, of course. I said that that was fine.

I got off the call feeling so supported and affirmed. They had responded with such kindness. They took my concern seriously and agreed that it was not right. A small part of me had been scared that they would dismiss my concern. It's because he's so old, they might say. Or he's retiring soon. Or the worst, "That's just the way he is." But they didn't. They applauded my courage in bringing this to their attention and assured me that they would address it. What he said was not okay. They were not okay with it.

I am in the middle of reading How to Be an Antiracist by Dr. Ibram Kendi and I think I was putting what I learned from the book into action. I was trying my best to be antiracist. I raised my voice instead of being silent about a racist behavior in the workplace.

Although it was scary, I was so proud of myself for speaking up.

Afterwards, I felt free. I could finally let it go.

- Mary

(Cross posted on my personal blog here.)