So there's this stereotype of a Korean man that—if you're Korean or intimately familiar with Koreans—you've heard before. It goes something like this.
Korean men:
- Never talk. They speak in grunts and certainly never speak in full sentences, at least not when women and children are around.
- Like to gamble. Especially at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.
- Play golf. Anytime, anywhere.
- Are haughty. Because everyone knows Koreans are superior to all other races.
In my world, the embodiment of this stereotype was my Uncle Jimmy.
Uncle Jimmy never said more than three words to me in my whole life. Once, when I was about 6 years old, I picked his newspaper up off his driveway and carried up to him as he waited on his front porch. "Here's your paper, Uncle Jimmy," I remember saying brightly. "Grhhhhhnnnnhh," he responded.
In the 70's, Uncle Jimmy drove a DeTomaso Pantera. I think he had the only one in all of Hawaii (where I grew up). I am sure he won it in a poker game. He also "brought home" a Trans-Am for my cousin Garrett. His first car. I think Garrett was 11 at the time. It sat in their garage for about a year and then, one day, it was gone. It had an eagle on the hood, I remember that.
Uncle Jimmy hung out with guys named Slim and Takeo. He had four TVs and watched four different football games at the same time. While eating beef jerky from Chinatown. He used to command his daughter (my cousin) to cheer for certain teams because her college money was riding on the game.
He also used to tell her that for her first car, he was going to get her a baby blue, 1956 Thunderbird. Because that was a "ladies' car." Yeah. I know. Cool, right?
Uncle Jimmy went to Vegas. A lot. He wore plaid Sansabelt pants and orange-tinted sunglasses. He drank Chivas. When he went out, he left the house at midnight. He didn't come home until two days later.
He and my aunt were like the Robert DeNiro and Sharon Stone characters
in Casino. They had a wood-panelled bedroom with wall-to-wall
carpeting, and my aunt kept an 8 x 10 framed photo of Elvis (in Blue
Hawaii, natch) on her bedside table.
Fuck yeah, Uncle Jimmy was haughty. Why? Because—nevermind being Korean—he ruled and he knew it.
Uncle Jimmy was a gambler. His lifestyle was rough. It cost him his marriage and his family. But Uncle Jimmy was getting his shit together. His kids were grown and graduated from college. He was selling Fords. He had an apartment.
Uncle Jimmy loved golf. Golf was probably the one constant in his life. And, one sunny, Hawaiian day, it was there, on the golf course, that he had a heart attack and died.
He was 59 years old. And for most of his life, he kicked ass.
—Stefania Pomponi Butler
