It has taken me a while to fully articulate how I've been feeling about my senior year. It has been really hard to try to accept the fact that this is how my senior year is going to end. But I made this video to commemorate the time I had at UNC.
I hope you check it out and enjoy :)
An Introduction to “Where are you from?” /
My family. A typical, American family.
PS: Yes, that’s me in the green with my mom. I looked like a little boy until like kindergarten.
I’m unsure if there are questions that you, yourself, can get wrong if they’re questions about your identity.
“What’s your age? What’s your hometown? What’s your star sign?”
However, I always seem to get this one wrong:
Where are you from?
I just want to know this:
Did the people who normalized the question, “Where are you from?” intend for this question to be a race identifier?
Video by KenTanakaLA
Honestly, I get quite offended when people ask me that question and tell me I’m wrong when I say that I’m from Georgia. I’m wrong when I say that for 17 years, I grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta. I’m wrong when I say I’m from America.
Am I wrong?
I have only been to Korea two times and can barely speak the language. How do I even have the right to tell someone I’m from a place I barely know?
As you all know by now, I love telling stories about my life.
So, here’s this blog’s edition of story time:
When I was in fourth grade, I went to a summer camp in Alabama called Camp Cosby. I was a super shy kid, so I mainly stuck to myself or clung onto my brother whenever I would see him during activities.
One day, my cabin was about to go to bed, and a girl came over to my bunk.
“Alex, where are you from?”
“Georgia”
“No, where are you really from?”
“Norcross, GA?”
“No, like where is your family from?”
“Korea.”
“Oh! Isn’t that a city in China?”
That happened 12 years ago.
And after 12 years, I still get asked that question. And it still takes so many more clarifying questions from the inquirer for me to finally confess that, yes! The color of my skin and the way my eyes are shaped definitely mean I’m not from here.
More recently after I’ve been asked these questions and when I finally tell the person that my race is Korean, they tend to follow with:
“Oh! I knew it! I have a Korean daughter-in-law. You both look so alike!”
“Oh, I know some Korean myself! Anyong!”
“I love kimchi!”
I’m not sure if you’re reading this and deeply relate or if you’re reading this and don’t understand what I’m complaining about.
All I would like to say is this:
No. It is NOT cool to ask people, “Where are you from?” and be disappointed with the answer they give you. It is NOT cool to try to tell me all the Korean curse words that your one Korean friend taught you that one time. It is NOT cool to ask if I’m from North or South Korea.
Now I’m not saying that this happens to just Asian people. This happens to all minorities in all sorts of different ways. And the people who are doing this are not just straight, White people. It’s everybody.
And we have to work harder to make sure the future doesn’t have blogs like mine talking about all the random, racist things that have happened throughout life. We have to work harder to make sure the question, “Where are you from?” doesn’t continue to instill a sense of annoyance and fear of ignorance towards a person. We have to work harder to reduce the amount of subtle microaggressions that people may think are fine but are really not.
We have to work harder.
An Introduction to How to Throw a Zoom Birthday Party /
Illustration by Haley France
Hello! It’s been quite the long time since my last blog post. I highly apologize for that. I, like many others across the world, have finally started to adjust to this new normal of social distancing and online schooling.
I turned 22 this past weekend. I know a lot of people are unfortunately having their birthdays during this sort of tumultuous yet static time in life, but I wanted to take a moment to reflect on how unexpectedly special it was to spend my birthday during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Now, a lot of people reading this blog know me. And they know that I’m a worrier, especially when I host things.
When thinking about how to properly celebrate my birthday, I honestly was very close to not celebrating at all.
I just thought, Alex, who in their right mind would log onto Zoom when there are so many other things to do? Wouldn’t it be super awkward if you have people who all know you but don’t know each other? Would you be delivering a lecture?
All those thoughts just floated around my head for days.
Luckily, my lovely friend Haley France designed a Facebook cover photo for my party. And I thought, well, I can’t not host a party now. I mean, if it went well, it’d be a fun story to tell my kids! If all didn’t go well, it’d still be a story!
So I did it. Last Friday, I threw a Zoom party with all my friends!
And it was so perfectly imperfect. And it will forever be one of my most memorable birthdays.
A screenshot from the rager of a Zoom party we had.
Even though you didn’t ask for it,
Here are steps on how to throw your own Zoom birthday party:
Our Kahoot game!
Make a Facebook event and post all the details!
Invite friends from ALL parts of your life - this is basically grounds for the most EPIC birthday party ever because friends from all realms of your life can join
Take a moment to breathe. And realize that you don’t have to make everything perfect. The point of this call is to celebrate you.
Start the call - Don’t get anxious about whether or not people will join or who will join first. Just be there and greet your friendos.
Make your friends sing you happy birthday. And see how amazingly out of sync everyone is.
Make everyone play a Kahoot game about you. And if you’re of age, make it a drinking game.
If your participants are willing and able, randomly put them in breakout rooms, and make your friends get to know each other - this was quite literally the best part of my night - just seeing all my friends getting to know each other. An ENFP’s DREAM.
Lastly, take a moment to just appreciate the people who took the time out of their quarantined lives to join your Zoom chat with a bunch of people they didn’t know in order to band together for one purpose: to celebrate you.
I know this blog was super cheesy and not really a part of my usual Korean American experience theme, but I strive to make content that is relatable. And I thought it was super important, especially right now, to make a post celebrating life and friends.
So please everyone, hold your family close, keep your friends six feet away. And stay sane!
An Introduction to Yellow Fever /
Yellow Fever. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.
If you haven’t, here’s the Urban Dictionary definition:
Source: Urban Dictionary
My first encounter with the concept of Yellow Fever was during my first year at UNC.
While training to become an Orientation Leader, our group was sent to a leadership conference to meet other future Orientation Leaders. At this conference, like so many other random school conferences you go to in your adolescence, there was a weird sense of urgency to make friends with everyone you met there in order to tell your supervisor that it wasn’t a huge waste of time.
Here’s a cute throwback picture of UNC’s 2017 Orientation Leaders! OLOVE!
During one of the many cult-ish activities we did at this conference, we were put into random groups with other students and were forced to find similarities amongst ourselves.
In this group, I met this guy that I thought was really nice. I thought we clicked, so we exchanged social media – as the kids do these days.
I was so excited because I felt like I had met someone from another school that I could brag to my supervisor about.
Fast forward to a month after the conference. This dude and I would occasionally Snapchat message each other.
The conversation went something like this:
Him: “Alex I think me and some friends are going to visit Chapel Hill soon!”
Me: “Oh wow! I’ll gather some Orientation Leaders, and we can hang!”
Him: “I can come hang with you at your dorm if you want!”
Me: “Sure”
Him: “You know, I think I have Yellow Fever. I have a thing for Asian girls.”
Yeah. I left him on read after that.
What did he mean by, “I have a thing for Asian girls?” Did this mean I fit into only the category of “Asian girl?” That every Asian girl is the same?
At the time, I was involved in UNC’s Asian American Student Association. I brought this up to some people in it, and they said it didn’t surprise them.
They went on to say that the fetishization and sexualization of Asian people, especially Asian women, has been going on for decades. That this was a pretty common thing – the concept of non-Asian people wanting a subservient, subordinate Asian person who would tend to their needs.
This made me further question the idea of interracial dating. Not in the way that I’m against interracial dating. That’s not it at all.
It made me question myself within a relationship and how my partner would view me.
Did they only like me because I'm Asian? Would they want me to fit this stereotype created for Asian people?
I’m unsure if you’re familiar with the concept of being called “pretty for an insert race here.” But it’s a thing. The idea that people of a race other than White cannot be referred to as anything more than being within their race.
Can someone not just be good looking in general? And not have to be classified as a subcategory of good looking based on their race?
This concept coupled with the idea of Yellow Fever make me question whether or not Non-Asian people would actually like me for me or because I’m Asian.
I guess I just have to hope that the future person I date doesn’t have an Asian fetish (especially a secret one).
Let’s hope!
An Introduction to Coronavirus /
My mom showing me yet another article about Coronavirus.
As this is an extremely relevant topic, I believe it is best to discuss the Coronavirus.
News broke about this highly contagious disease around a month ago. I didn’t really pay too much attention because I had that mentality of “Oh, it hasn’t affected me personally yet. Therefore, I shouldn’t worry about it.” I thought it would be like ZIKA, where it was in the news for months during the Olympics, but would gradually fade.
Right when all the news was just breaking out about the Coronavirus, I called up some friends who live in Hong Kong and asked if everything was okay. They said it wasn’t as serious as the media has been making it out to be. And I thought, “Well, if they think everything’s okay. Then everything will be fine.”
But over the course of this past month, the virus has spread so much that it has created mass hysteria around the world. There are now upwards of 80,000 cases.
With this mass hysteria has also come xenophobia against East Asian people. Xenophobia is the concept of discrimination against people from other countries.
My East Asian friend and I were talking about Coronavirus and how people have been treating us differently. And at one point, she was telling me a story about how her father was on a flight back home.
He accidentally choked on his water and started coughing.
People around him looked disgusted, and he yelled back, “I just came back from Wuhan!”
I’m unsure of how much we can joke about this virus. I can’t tell if it’s one of those things that only Asian people are allowed to joke about or if it’s free game for anyone.
But as technology and the internet have advanced, so have people’s malicious tendencies and comments.
Therefore, as Coronavirus has spread, there has been an increase in racism and xenophobia against East Asian people. I say East Asian people because, although the first reported cases were from China, ignorant people basically believe that any person who resembles an East Asian person has the Coronavirus.
Now, I’ll be honest. I have also been lowkey freaking out about the Coronavirus. My mom sends me news articles about the virus everyday. I’m not lying:
A screenshot from a conversation with my mom.
It’s hard to talk about because there are so many aspects to this.
Obviously it’s concerning that there’s this highly contagious disease spreading across the world right now. I’m freaking out too! My friends and I are supposed to go on a cruise for spring break, and we all know what happened to The Diamond Princess…
But having people look at me and treat me differently just because I’m Asian is ridiculous.
I have not been out of this country in a year. Yet people are treating me like I just came back from Asia yesterday.
I would like to say that people are being sent back from their study abroad programs, vacations, etc. I know this will not make you feel better, but really, we have no idea who has come in contact with this virus. Anyone could have it. Which leads me to my main point of this blog: stop being racist. Anyone and everyone may get the Coronavirus. There’s no point in being discriminatory against people.
Now will I be washing my hands more often? Yes.
Will I be reading more news reports to understand, hopefully, what is going on around the world? Yes.
Will people stop being xenophobic after reading this blog post? Well, I would hope that the people who are reading my blog posts are not racist, but PLEASE!!
Lastly, will I be going on a cruise for spring break? Probs not.
An Introduction to Plastic Surgery /
Source: 200 Pounds Beauty 2008 Movie
Plastic surgery. It’s a thing. All around the world.
My first memory of plastic surgery was when I was watching a really old Korean variety show called X-Man. My favorite celebrity was on the screen, Bin, and I told my mom to pay attention because she was my favorite and was so pretty.
My mom, in disgust, said, “Her face is so fake. She ruined it.”
After that first encounter, I started noticing it more and more: plastic surgery.
Now, by no means is this blog trying to shame plastic surgery. I think you should be entitled to do whatever you want with your body. And if you believe it’s the best decision for you, then more power to you!
But I would like to comment on its prevalence in my culture and share my own personal experience with it.
My last blog post was about K-pop. What I didn’t talk about was how much plastic surgery each K-pop group needs before they are even considered fit enough to debut.
Arden Cho, a Korean American actress, said that when she wanted to make it in Korea, they told her she would need to get plastic surgery. And it wasn’t just a few minor things. They were asking her to do at least 20 different surgeries fixing her nose, jawline, eyes, etc. And yet, Arden Cho was able to make it- at least in America. And maybe this is due to the fact that Asian beauty standards are very different from American beauty standards.
But plastic surgery has become so normalized in Korea that as a graduation gift, parents have started to award their children with double eyelid surgery.
Double eyelid surgery is one of the THE most popular and inexpensive surgeries to do in Korea.
Now you may be asking, what is double eyelid surgery?
Source: Wave Plastic Surgery
It’s the concept of making monolids (eyelids that don’t have a crease in them) have a crease, thus, making them double eyelids.
People usually get this surgery in order to make their eyes appear bigger.
If you’re not Asian, you may have never heard of the concept of double eyelids.
That is because most people who aren’t East Asian have tall nose bridges that help create double-eyelids. For East Asian people, however, they usually have lower nose bridges, which result in no crease forming on the eyelid, thus, a monolid.
Because most of America’s surgeries focus on fillers and injections, they don’t really notice eyelids as much.
But if you ask any Korean, they notice. Boy, do they notice.
Growing up, I never really noticed anything wrong with my eyes. That wasn’t until my mom started asking me to crease one of my eyes to match the other. I have distinct memories of taking a bobby pin with glue and creasing my left eye.
Eventually, I realized this was because I had one monolid and one double-eyelid.
Here’s some photographic evidence of my uneven eyelids:
PLEASE disregard the goat (Her name is Apricot). I was looking through my photos to find ones of my eyes - this made me realize I should take more pictures of myself.
ANYWAYS: The red arrows point to my monolid.
After this realization, I kept noticing the imperfections in my eyes.
Sometimes, I wished that I just had two monolids or two double eyelids. Like sheesh, my body couldn’t pick one or the other, so I’m stuck with both?
Nonsense.
I eventually started noticing the imperfections in my nose, jawline, etc. And I would start to think: if I just had surgery here, this would be gone. And I would look better.
I visited Korea in the summer of 2016.
My mom took me to get a Korean facial for the first time - 11/10 would recommend because Korean skincare is the best.
After the facial, I had what I thought was a skincare consultation.
Quickly, I realized it was a plastic surgery consultation.
They said the surgery would be very simple, but they would have to operate on both of my eyes in order for them to be even.
I called my dad to ask why my mom had brought me to get my eyes done. And he said that I’d thank them later.
Honestly, if I had grown up in Korea, I probably would have been thanking my parents for wanting me to get plastic surgery. But growing up in American, I was mortified.
It was kind of ironic. In the beginning, my parents told me how fake people looked with plastic surgery. But now, they were telling me it was okay to fix my imperfections.
I really almost did it. I almost said yes to plastic surgery.
I’m not sure what snapped me out of it. I think it was me saying that when I become famous, people will know I didn’t have plastic surgery because my eyes are uneven.
But I also thought, my whole life, my parents told me I was pretty. Now they’re saying they want to pay to fix me?
I love my parents and I know that it wasn’t their intention to make me feel ugly. But it hurt.
And from that moment, I knew I did NOT want plastic surgery. And I want to tell my children that society was not able to dictate my decision of whether or not I should have plastic surgery. And I want to tell them that society shouldn’t dictate theirs either.
Catch me in 20 years - with uneven eyelids and hopefully on TV :)
NOTE: Again want to reiterate: I’m not trying to bash plastic surgery. I have many friends and family who have had plastic surgery. And in trying to understand why they did, they said that it was a decision that they had made for themselves and no one else. And I think that’s awesome.
An Introduction to K-pop /
Source: POSTKULTURE
If you’ve been following my blog, you would know that I was born and raised in America.
Therefore, growing up, I really only listened to American music – Jesse McCartney, Leona Lewis, Natasha Bedingfield, all those early 2000’s throwback artists.
It wasn’t until 6th grade that I realized there was a world beyond American music.
And that moment was when my Black friend told me I “had” to watch this music video. She whipped out her 3rd Generation iPod Touch, and opened up YouTube.
All of a sudden, a bunch of Asian girls in matching outfits were onscreen singing and doing synchronized dancing. They all wore matching outfits, but with every new line they would sing, their outfits would change. It was incredible.
It wasn’t until half the song was over when I realized the girls in the video were singing in Korean.
Me: “Whoa, are they singing Korean?”
Friend: “Yeah, it’s called K-pop. Korean Pop music.”
I was so confused yet amazed to see music from Korea being shared so openly like this. And I quickly became a fan from that point onward.
If you’re wondering what the video was that sparked my love for Korean music, it was “Gee” by Girls’ Generation – The BEST K-pop group of all time, fight me about it.
Anyways, I started listening to K-pop when it really started becoming a global movement. Therefore, it would be some Big Bang here and there, 2pm, 2am, Wonder Girls, 2NE1 – all the greats.
One day, one of my friends asked what I was listening to. And I’m pretty sure I told her it was My Boy by Sistar – a true throwback.
The conversation went something along the lines of:
Me: “I’m just listening to some K-pop!”
Friend: “What’s K-pop?”
Me: “It’s like pop but from Korea.”
Friend: “I thought only the FOB’s (Fresh Off the Boat) and people who are obsessed with
Asia listened to that sort of stuff…?”
From that point on, I realized that it wasn’t “cool” to listen to K-pop. And I realized my culture wasn’t “cool” enough to be normal.
Therefore, I started to shun K-pop too. I started to delete it from my playlists and dismiss it when someone would find it on my iTunes saying, “Oh, yeah I used to listen to K-pop, but it’s lame. I’m not one of those Asians...”
It’s funny. I tried so hard to be accepted that I was ashamed of my own culture.
It wasn’t until I was well into high school that I tried to re-embrace my culture.
I’m not sure what started it. I’m pretty sure it was when BTS started becoming a thing and one of my White friends came up to me and asked if I was a fan.
I kind of laughed to myself. It was SO ironic to me that K-pop was becoming mainstream. And it was acceptable to like it.
Now, BTS holds the record for the most-viewed video on YouTube. Blackpink appeared on James Corden’s Late Late Show and got this clip to 20 million views on Youtube. Red Velvet’s Wendy had a hashtag trending on Twitter wishing her to get well after she suffered a fall before a performance.
So yeah, I like K-pop. And so does the rest of the world.
Reflecting on my younger self: I wish I had more self-confidence to accept who I was. I am a Korean American. That means I should be able to embrace both sides of my identity. And I shouldn’t let society dictate what I should or shouldn’t do. And hopefully younger generations will have this realization faster than I did.
An Introduction to To All the Boys I've Loved Before /
Source: Netflix
Since we’ve already been talking about movies, let’s keep going.
I’m not sure if you’ve heard about it, but there is a breakout film series on Netflix called To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.
The movies are based off of a book series by UNC Chapel Hill’s very own, Jenny Han. For those of you who don’t know, the movies are about a girl whose secret love letters get sent out to all the boys she’s loved before and follow the consequences of these letters.
Here is the trailer for the first movie.
Now, this blog is not going to talk about the plot points of the movies or deconstruct cinematography or anything like that.
Instead, what we’ll be focusing on is the representation of the Asian people in these movies.
In this movie series, the main character, Lara Jean, and her two sisters are half White and half Korean.
However, what was really confusing to me was that the actresses who play these characters are all not of Korean descent.
The actresses who play the sisters, Kitty and Margot, are, in fact, half Asian and half White, but they are not half Korean.
In addition, the actress who plays Lara Jean, who is still supposed to be half Asian, is actually full Vietnamese.
Now, I’m all for Asian representation. And I’m so proud that this film did not white wash these characters. However, a conversation has to be made about representation within the Asian community.
It has been done time and time again - Asian actors playing ethnicities that aren’t their own. For example, Arden Cho, a Korean-American actress, playing a half Korean half Japanese character on Teen Wolf and Randall Park, a Korean-American actor, playing a Chinese character on Fresh Off the Boat.
I really do want to know why people who are not the same ethnicity as the character they are playing are cast. Like is there such a lack in Asian people that we have to double dip actors into playing roles that they don’t fully represent?
Or another question is if the “perfect” actor has come along who doesn’t actually represent the character’s descriptions, can’t they just have a small rewrite to accommodate the actor they want to play the character?
For example, how hard would it have been to rewrite Lara Jean’s family as fully Vietnamese if Lana Condor was the best actress to play the part?
Now, there’s always that argument: this is all a part of acting, playing someone else.
But, to me, it’s kind of unsettling to watch people on screen represent my culture even though they’ve never experienced it in real life.
In To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, there is a scene where Lara Jean’s sister, Kitty, is interacting with Peter for the first time. He asks what Kitty is drinking, and Kitty responds that it’s a “Korean smoothie drink.”
Source: Netflix
Now, if you’re a Korean reading this, there is NO WAY that you would refer to this drink as a “Korean smoothie.” And it was so weird to see it referred to as that and eventually be popularized by American media as “the smoothie drink featured in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.”
In the second installment of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Lara Jean and Kitty wear hanboks, a Korean traditional dress.
Source: Netflix
I KNOW they’re just acting, but it’s weird to have such a popular movie be praised for its representation of Korean culture and Asian actors when the actors are not actually representative of the story that is being told.
Maybe I’m being too sensitive about this type of stuff, but I feel like there has been a movement going on with trying to cast people who are the same gender, race, or sexuality that the role calls for. For example, the character Jules in Euphoria is played by Hunter Schafer, a trans woman. The character Min-ho in Maze Runner is played by Ki-hong Lee, a Korean-American actor. The character Rosa Diaz in Brooklyn Nine-Nine is played by Stephanie Beatriz, a bisexual woman.
Left: Hunter Schafer in Euphoria. Middle: Ki-hong Lee in Maze Runner. Right: Stephanie Beatriz in Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Now, I’m not trying to tell you to boycott To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.
In fact, I’m a fan of the movies! Just not the representation.
That’s the difference.
So what is the solution? To cast people who are actually representative of the characters they’re supposed to play.
I know that may be difficult and maybe there just aren’t enough actors who are both representative and good enough to play the part.
But that’s something that we’re just going to have to work on.
Because we need to move towards better representation. Period.
An Introduction to Parasite /
Bong Joon-Ho, director of Parasite, with his Oscars. Photo by: DAVID SWANSON/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Hello friends! Welcome back to Week 3 of my blogs!
This week we’re talking about Parasite!
For those of you who don’t know, Parasite is a film about a lower-class family conning their way into working for an upper-class family. However, along the way, the lower-class family finds that they have gotten themselves into more than what they had first intended.
The film gained worldwide attention when it was the first Korean film ever to be selected to receive one of the most prestigious awards in the film industry, the Palme d’Or, at the Cannes Film Festival.
Now, I’ll be honest.
I didn’t hear about Parasite until months after it came out.
I was mindlessly scrolling through Buzzfeed and stumbled upon one of those “17 Facts about a movie…” posts. I clicked on it because I love random movie trivia.
I realized this movie that Buzzfeed, an American-based media company, was writing about was a Korean movie, which was wild to me.
Of course, after I realized it was a Korean film and that it was receiving Oscar buzz, I stopped reading the article so that I could make sure not to spoil the movie for myself.
Then, I called my dad wondering why I had never heard of it before.
Me: “Dad, have you heard of this movie called Parasite?”
Dad: “Oh yeah, it came out a while ago. I liked it.”
Me: “… Okay, so why did you never tell me about it?”
Dad: “I didn’t think you’d want to watch it because it’s Korean.”
I finally watched it with some friends up in Chapel Hill.
I’ll keep how I felt about the movie short because this blog isn’t a movie review. But all I will say is it is brilliant.
It’s quite funny actually. One of my friends told me his White friend took a girl on their first date to watch Parasite. His friend heard it was such an incredible film that he chose to take this girl, who he barely knew, to it. Unsure if he scored a second date, but I thought it was really amazing that people who weren't Korean or who didn’t even speak the language chose to watch this film over some Disney film re-make or superhero movie.
Now, I had heard that it was critically acclaimed - nominated for Golden Globes and Oscars - but I didn’t think America was actually capable enough to award a foreign film for its excellence.
It was definitely a shoo-in for those best “foreign film” categories, but I didn’t think it stood a chance to Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino.
I don’t have cable. So on the night of the Oscars, I was only refreshing “Oscars” in search bar on Google to see who all had won. There was news of Parasite winning Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film, so I was already super happy.
That night, I already had plans to go out for a friend’s birthday, so I tuned out the second half of the Oscars. I just assumed that, that was the end of the night for the Parasite team. I just thought there was no way Parasite could possibly win Best Director or Best Picture – of course, in my heart I wanted to believe this, but I just didn’t have hope that The Academy would feel the same way.
But luckily, my friend was keeping tabs on the night.
In the middle of my friend taking a birthday shot, I got a frantic text.
A screenshot from the text conversation that went down that night.
There it was. History.
The first KOREAN film to ever win Best Picture and Best Director at the Oscars.
Now. Let’s get into why this win was so important to people like me.
Growing up, for some reason, there was the common question of “Who would play you in your biographical film?”
Every time, it would always be between Sandra Oh and Lucy Liu - the only Asian actors who were actually recognizable at the time.
But I never felt like Sandra or Lucy looked like me enough to play me (ALL respect to those women though. They helped pave the way for Asian people in the media). I only had two options, whereas other people had a whole catalog to look through. Therefore, I always hated that question. Because I never knew the answer.
But, with this win for Parasite, it meant more people who looked like me were being represented on the screen. More people were being added to this catalog of people who could play me in my biopic. And that’s so exciting to me.
A second, and more personal reason as to why Parasite’s win was so important to me, was because I’m an aspiring filmmaker.
The majority of films I associate with greatness have all been American films directed by white people. However, the idea that Parasite, a Korean film written and directed by a Korean person has received such praise, it gives me hope.
It gives me hope that a film doesn’t have to be white or even be in English to be considered a good film.
Bong Joon-ho has an amazing quote that he said at the Golden Globes when he won for Best Foreign Language Film. He said, “Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”
And that’s so exciting.
*NOTE: There are many opinions as to why The Academy chose Parasite to win this year. People are saying it’s because the Oscars was accused of being too white, and therefore, they awarded Parasite all these awards on purpose. They awarded these awards in order to seem like they were being “woke” enough to award a brilliant, foreign film. — There are many things I could say about this topic, but, again, this blog post is “An Introduction to Parasite.”
I’ll leave it at: I think that Parasite deserved this win.
Do I think that their win may have been politically charged? Quite possibly.
Does this mean progress in the film industry? I hope so.
Am I proud of Korea? 대한민국!!!
An Introduction to Tiger Parenting /
Image by Alex Kim.
Since we now know my parents, let’s talk about how they raised me.
Before we go any further, I would like to openly acknowledge that I was and still am very privileged in the fact that I grew up with two parents who were able to speak this country’s primary language.
There is a distinct memory I have.
I was in high school, and I was talking to a teacher. For some reason, we got on the topic of my parents.
The conversation went something along the lines of:
Teacher: “You’re involved in a lot of things. Did your parents make you join all these clubs?”
Me: “Um, not really. I think my mom wants me to quit Drama, actually.”
Teacher: “But she encourages you to do a lot. And she makes sure you get A’s.”
Me: “Yeah, I guess my parents are pretty strict.”
Teacher: “Yeah, your mom is a tiger mom.”
And that’s when I first heard it. That term.
Tiger mom.
Honestly, when I first heard it, I thought it was pretty badass. My teacher was calling my mom a tiger mom for making sure I did well in school.
And I was like, I guess my mom is pretty badass. Tiger mom. Cool mom.
It wasn’t until I looked up the definition of tiger mom when I realized the connotations.
Of course, the first place I went to was Urban Dictionary.
I was kind of taken aback by the idea that it was really only targeted towards Asian parents.
I did my research.
The term tiger mom was coined by Yale Law School professor Amy Chua.
In this book, she helped define the tiger parent as someone who makes sure their child strives to have the best academic standings and be involved in all the extracurriculars. But she made sure to emphasize that the parent was of Chinese/Asian descent.
Now, I would be lying if I said my parents didn’t send me to SAT prep school.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t wear baggy pants when I did something wrong (if you know, you know).
And I would be lying if I said I didn’t have a distinct memory of me crying in first grade when my dad told me I wasn’t allowed to see my school’s production of Oliver Twist until I fully memorized the multiplication table.
Now, did I make it to the play? Absolutely.
What is 6x7? 42.
But having my parents classified as tiger parents by non-Asian people just hits differently.
Like good for you Asians for being able to have your OWN TERM for parenting. But having other people call my parents “tiger parents,” or even more common, “Asian parents”, made it feel a little different.
It’d be weird.
I would be talking to my friends, and we would talk about how strict our parents were. I would say something like, “Oh yeah, my dad made me do the extra algebra practice.”
And another friend would say, “Oh that’s so Asian of your dad.”
I was kind of ashamed of it when I was a kid, having people call my family Asian for doing extra math problems.
Like “Ugh Dad, you’re so annoying for making sure I didn’t fail math.”
If I were to classify my parents, I don’t think I would classify them as Asian or tiger parents. I would just say they were good parents.
They made sure that I felt like I had to do my best. And if I felt like I did, then that was good enough.
So yeah, if the definition of being a tiger parent is someone who pushes their kid to be the best and most successful they can be, then SURE.
My parents are tiger parents.
Note: I say if you’re a parent wanting to do all the best things for your kids, you should be called a tiger parent. Or the animal of your choice. Because you’re badass.
An Introduction to My Parents /
Hello everyone! Welcome back to Week 2 of my blog!
Since we’re still getting to know each other, I feel as though we should talk about the people who raised me: my parents.
Let’s start from the very beginning:
My mom came to America when she was five. My dad came to America when he was 16. Therefore, they can be classified as 1.5 generation immigrants.
Because most of their childhood was spent in the States, they are fluent in English.
I actually asked my parents how it was growing up here.
My mom said she was constantly called “Ching Chong” and people would tease her by slanting their eyes.
My mom in a shirt I would probably wear today.
My dad posing with a fresh catch.
My dad said people would tell him to “Go back home, Chink.”
^That’s pretty harsh, America.
But that was a long time ago.
Years later, my mom went on to become an art director. My dad graduated with a chemistry degree but decided to pursue business instead (I was so relieved to know that my dad also did the whole pre-med switch. Made the process a whole lot easier).
The two of them met at a golf tournament that my mom was putting on. My dad won the tournament, they fell in love, and they had two (awesome) kids, Nicholas and Alexandra.
You would think that at this point, racism wouldn’t be that bad anymore, right?
Growing up, I thought we were the definition of a normal, American family.
- My dad signed my brother and I up for recreational soccer.
- My mom was the head of my Girl Scout troop.
- They straight up dressed me as Hermione one year for Halloween.
Yes, I went through my archives and found that picture of me as Hermione. The two gals to the left are my homies (if y’all are reading this, hello).
But I realized that those rituals weren’t quite enough.
One time, my family and I were in line at a restaurant. We had lived in Georgia for a little while, but I was definitely too young to be super cognizant of what was going on.
As we were waiting in line, for some reason, people kept cutting us in line. At one point, my mom stopped one of them, and was like, “Excuse me, we are in line.”
And the person looked back, startled at how my mom had called him out, and said, “Oh, sorry ma’am. Wow, your English is so good. You sound like you could’ve been born here.”
That was so surprising to me, that my mom, who had literally lived here her whole life, was told that she spoke English well.
As I was too young to completely comprehend everything that was going on during that interaction, I’m unsure of what exactly happened after. But I’m pretty sure, knowing my mom, she said some sort of snarky comment back to that man in perfect English. And knowing my dad, he probably had to hold her back.
This has been a recurring theme - that people are surprised that my parents can speak English. Or people will comment on how good our accents are. Or that racism still exists.
Now I know I may be too sensitive or that I may be misconstruing things, but they definitely affected me as I was growing up.
There were many Meet Your Teachers Day’s where my teachers would be surprised that my parents actually went up to go introduce themselves. There were many times when people would say they thought my mom was white when they spoke to her on the phone.
And yes, there were many times when people would call me “Ching Chong” and slant their eyes.
But that was a long time ago.
Or maybe it really wasn’t.
Maybe I just keep making excuses for America. Maybe I keep hoping that we know better. Maybe I keep saying that we’ll get better.
I’m not sure. But I hope that in the future when my kid is somehow reflecting on their life experiences, they won’t have to think about kids making fun of their eyes…
Here’s to hoping.
An Introduction to Shoes /
Image credit: Linda Raymond / Gettyimages.ca
As this is a blog about my Korean American experience, let’s start at the foundation.
Norcross, GA - it is a city about 20 minutes outside of Atlanta for families who want that nice minivan with that nice, cookie-cutter home and that nice ordinary life.
And if there ever was anything out of the ordinary, you could find out all the hot goss with the moms at the tennis courts the next day.
Norcross, GA - it is the place where I grew up.
Early on in my childhood, I never really thought about race. I guess I was lucky because my nextdoor neighbors were Japanese, Indian, and Chinese-Vietnamese. Therefore, for a long time, I thought it was normal to take off your shoes when you go into someone’s home. I thought it was normal to use chopsticks during meals. I thought it was normal to find rice cookers in people’s kitchens.
However, for all of y’all who know Norcross, GA, there are really only a handful of Asians.
This realization came quickly once I started having oddly uncomfortable conversations with newly acquainted friends who wanted to come over to my house.
Here’s the scenario that would happen many times throughout my childhood:
It is my friend’s first time coming over to my house. They knock on the door. I let them in.
They walk in.
They walk straight in.
They walk straight in without stopping to TAKE OFF THEIR SHOES.
You can imagine my horror as they would just strut into my living room and lay on my couch with shoes that have travelled to God knows where - just the thought of it makes me recoil as I am writing this blog post.
THINK ABOUT IT - You wear your shoes through mud, water, pee, poop, etc.
WHY would you ever want to wear those inside your home?
Anyways, my friend would just make themself right at home and ask what was on the TV. And I would sit there in horror as my mom is giving me that “you need to tell them to take off their shoes or else YOU will have to clean up their tracks once they’re gone” look.
So yeah, I would slowly and awkwardly in the middle of a commercial break tell them that my family doesn’t wear shoes in the house.
And they’d, of course, be overly apologetic about wearing their shoes inside, to which I would also be overly apologetic for calling them out on wearing shoes inside my house. And then we would both have to get off the couch, go back to the front door, and I would have to stand there and watch as my friend would unlace their shoes.
Finally, we would head back to the living room. And just when I thought all the awkwardness had dissipated, my friend would stop in my kitchen.
They would point and say, “What is that?
Me: “Oh, it’s our rice cooker.”
Friend: “Isn’t that what the stove is for?”
Me: “...?”
Have these conversations and situations become less awkward? Slightly.
Have my friends started to instinctively take off their shoes before they enter my home? Yes.
Have my friends asked their parents for a rice cooker? Absolutely.
Disclaimer: Please know I am not trying to make fun of you if you have grown up wearing your shoes inside your house. I totally understand. But just know that when you’re at my house, you have to TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES.
An Introduction to My Name /
Hello, person who is reading my blog!
As it is my first blog post, I believe that it is important to introduce myself before we get any further.
My name is Alexandra Kim. But most people call me Alex.
The only person who calls me Alexandra is my mom. So yes, just Alex to everyone else.
I have a middle name too, but like my first name, only certain people call me that. This is due to the fact that it’s my Korean name, Hejin. For all you Koreans out there reading this blog post, YES, my mom is bad at spelling and spelled my name wrong on my birth certificate. I guess the 혜 in 혜진 didn’t translate to a “hye” when translating to English.
Anyways, yes, my middle name is Hejin.
How you would pronounce that is Heh-jin.
The only people who call me that, or who I let call me that, are my Korean relatives and myself (we’ll get to this in a future blog).
The reason being is that I HATE when people attempt to pronounce my middle name.
I would say this is due to childhood trauma...
When I was a mere fifth grader, people would ask what each others’ full names were - we thought we were sophisticated, calling people by their full names. We would go down the line - John, Katherine, Elizabeth, the random cool mother’s maiden name Abbott, etc. Finally, they would ask me:
“Okay, Alex, what’s your middle name?”
“Hejin”
“What?”
“Heh” (pause) “Jin”
“Is that Asian?”
“I mean, it’s Korean, but sure.”
“Haha! Sounds like PIGEON!”
Suddenly everyone around me started chanting “ALEX PIGEON KIM” over and over. It’s funny now that I think back on it, but geez when I was a kid… Scarring.
From then on, I HATED my Korean Asian name.
Now, as a senior in college, I will say that I have YET to move on from this weird feeling of embarrassment whenever someone pronounces my middle name. There have been SO many instances of professors calling roll and asking if there’s a “He (like the pronoun) Jin present.”
Classmates would turn to me and snicker as I would raise my hand to tell the professor I was there.
Another reason why I don’t enjoy my middle name is because of the occupational field I have chosen to pursue. The Hussman School of Journalism and Media teaches students to try to secure a portfolio website in order to display all our craft.
The only problem is my name: Alex Kim.
If you type that into Google, it has 285,000,000 hits. If you type in alexkim.com, it directs you to a criminal defense lawyer, which is great for him, but quite inconvenient for me.
When I had totally given up on a domain name (the URL you type into the search bar), Gary, my professor who is having me write these blogs (Gary, if you’re reading this, wassup), suggested I include my middle name in my website URL.
Of course, to the average person, including your middle name wouldn’t be THAT big of a deal. Yeah, if my name were Alex Elizabeth Kim, I would have no qualms. But due to my tortured past, I CANNOT bring myself to rebrand as Alex Hejin Kim.
No. Gary, I know you think I’m silly for doing this, but DAMN IT. America has shaped me into a person who wants to assimilate into American culture. And it has taught me to try to erase my Korean heritage and to only go by names that don’t draw too much attention.
So can’t I just not worry about the randos visiting my portfolio site reading my name and potentially likening it to the word “pigeon?”
Sorry for the rant. But yes. I hope this was a good enough introduction for you.
Hello, my name is Alex Kim. Welcome to my blog about my Korean American experience.