Hate Ain’t Great

The word wall in my gray matter has frozen with its little rainbow ball spinning. Writing has always been natural for me … like breathing.

Oh my soul! It is pale blue from suffocation. There lays one lung unable to accommodate air, while the other … unable to exhale. We know what happens when the brain is left without oxygen. Parts of it die.

I cannot make sense of my life as a Korean, as a transracial adoptee, as an …

Do. Not. Say. That Word.

Save us all from that word.

… American!

Navigating through a multi-layered identity as a transracial adoptee is like the Los Angeles commute. All roads lead to absolute standstill. The standstill was tolerable if there was a good audiobook, but those days are over. Ignoring the systemic problem only sustained the status quo.

In my earlier straightforward life, I was that girl who loved America. It had saved me. I played the game well … good student … good wife … good parent. The American dream was mine … until it wasn’t.

What I hid, I regret. Alone without my white privilege, without my adoptive family, without my white husband, I was reminded that I was owned by those who saw me as an object … men who sexually assaulted me before my marriage, men who smacked my ass when my husband was not around, men who touched my face when my husband was seated next to me, and then, the agencies and people who lied to me.

Korea allowed me to face the truths and gave me the ability to swim the sea of like selves. It was euphoric, until I spoke. While Korea felt like it should be mine, it just wasn’t quite mine.

I returned to a place I once called “home,” to find a man who embodied hate, rustling the leaves to reveal the dog shit underneath. The shit is teaming with parasites that invade my home from the bottom of my shoe. They are looking to find a way into my body, and here, these parasites will infect me and eventually kill me.

The America I left has devolved into a hellish, toxic place.

In this place, my son can be asked why he is walking in his own neighborhood.

In this place, a young man can be beaten to death because he is Saudi Arabian.

In this place, a man can rape an unconscious woman and serve little time because the rapist has been traumatized.

In this place, a presidential candidate can talk about grabbing “pussy” as locker room talk and still garner a substantial percentage of the electorate.

In this place, a young transracial adoptee can be assaulted in an Idaho locker room.

This is not America, and may it never see hate as great again.

Hapa

Living in Rwanda, my husband experienced something I had felt for a long time.

He could not hide the fact that he was different. When we were in the market, kids and adults would point and whisper (though he could hear), “Wazungu,” Kinyarwandan for “white person.” It was disconcerting.

As I have written, two Korean adoptee women have entered my life and are teaching me a little more about myself. They each adopted two Korean children, something for which I admire them deeply. In the process, one of them said her husband mentioned that the tables had been reversed once they visited Korea. In Korea, he couldn’t hide his race. His wife, on the other hand, could finally blend in.

I have spent a good portion of my life trying to blend in and secretly wishing to meet someone as confused by race as myself. On the one hand, I wanted to be seen as white or Puerto Rican. On the other hand, I wanted validation that being Asian was okay. As a teen in the 80s, I searched Teen magazine for Asian models. There were few, maybe one every few months in the Teen Model Search finalists.

TV gave me no respite. The media had few Asians other than Connie Chung, to whom I was often compared as I studied print journalism in the late 1980s, and Yoko Ono, to whom I was referred when I wore large sunglasses. At the time, I was trying to assimilate, and in my efforts to do so, I would often shun such comparisons.

Regretfully, I didn’t share this feeling of alienation with my parents. My mother sensed some of it, as she special ordered an Asian baby doll for me.

These experiences drive me today to create a better childhood for my own children. While they are mixed race, both Korean and Caucasian, they are often placed solely in the Asian category. My husband and I have sought to place them in racially diverse communities and schools. I’ve tried to make sure they see themselves as both races.

We own a fantastic book, Part Asian, 100% Hapa. In it, photographer, Kip Fulbeck, has photographed numerous subjects who are part Asian, from children to adults. My children pour over this book. It is worn from all the page turning and marking. It affirms them and assures them that they are not alone in their confusing ethnicity.

While I hated the references to Yoko as a teen, I relate to her now as a mother. Her son, Sean Lennon, has written the forward in Fulbeck’s book that addresses my children’s feelings.

Sean Lennon says, “It is only human to want to belong to a group. … If, like me, you are half-Japanese and half-English, you will in Japan be considered white, and in America be considered Asian. This can be lonely at times … ”

Yet, this book reassures my children that they are not alone in their feelings.  They are indeed Hapa!