This. This. This.

Just some of the stuff that’s showed up on my dashboard today that made me feel sick.

I’m reading about conceptions of the immigrant childhood right now for my history of american education class. I just came across the part where the angsty culture-torn immigrant teenagers blow up at their parents for the cultural dissonance they experience in the home versus in the streets. And I just remembered…damn. I used to embody that teenage immigrant angst. I refused to speak to my mother in Korean, especially in public. I used to end our fights of cultural tug-of-war with “THEN WHY THE FUCK DID YOU BRING ME HERE?” and slam the door in her face. The pull to assimilate used to be such a big part of my life… And until I read this chapter, I had forgotten about it.

On AltBreak a couple of weeks ago, I told my group that I wasn’t an American citizen yet. Everyone was really surprised to hear that. I don’t think I know anyone who’s more American than you, Liz, someone said. (Literally what ran through my head: “So many ways to interpret this! … Eh, I’ll just let it go. THANK YOU. I’M GLAD I HAVE EXPANDED YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF ‘AMERICAN.’ “)

I can’t believe I forgot the shame I used to feel about the way my family spoke, about the values that we believed in, about customs we had. That shame; the guilt I felt about the shame; trying to cover up the guilt&shame WHILE trying to cover up cultural markers that gave away my “difference”… I used to be so angry at my mom that I had to do that. I was so angry at her for not understanding what she “put me through.”

I call myself an immigrant, but I forgot what it felt like to be an immigrant. That aspect of my identity just seems less relevant here. So I forget sometimes.

Looking back at it now, I know where I should redirect that misplaced anger to. I should have been (and rightly should be) angry at that PTA mother who reprimanded my mother in front of seven year old me because “This is America. We speak English here.” I should have been angry at Hunter for obviously valuing a certain type of parenthood over the other.

Being angry helps me remember what it felt like to be an immigrant. But, the language that I willfully forgot, I may never get back.

The immigrant experience? For me, it’s not about the kimchi. Hey, that’s the sexy ethnic part of the “immigrant experience” that America is okay with, right? I could have kimchi any day in the middle of Iowa. That doesn’t make me feel any more like an immigrant.

No, it’s was about “Korean church,” and not having anyone in school understand why it was so important to you. It was about experiencing culture shock every time you walked out the door in the morning and every time you walked back in at night. It was about (and it still is) struggling to communicate words beyond “what’s for dinner” with your own mother.

I remember coming to Grinnell, I felt like a bird. I felt so FREE for the first time in my life. That happened for a lot of reasons. But a large part of that, I think, was because I was no longer felt constrained by whatever it means to be an immigrant in this country. And I definitely felt less constrained by racial identity. (Perhaps this what it feels like to be an “American”???) But I’m not sure I want to be at this place if I know I’m leaving my mother, my brother, my church on the other side.

Ha, the other side. How “other” is the “side,” really?

I’ve avoided talking about “race” here because I’m taking an anthropology class called “The Cultural Politics of Hybridity” and it’s seriously fucking with how I think and talk about “race.”

But FUCK caution. JUST LET ME BE ANGRY AGAIN.

GOSH, I MISS HOME.

Nov

1

2011

8 notes

Notes

  1. unlearningaggressions said: i’m learning a lot this year too, a lot a lot in so many unexplainable ways. i miss this lol and grinnell is just so perfect-lah, you would’ve hated your ED school sooo much.
  2. xpiishpoosh said: I don’t get it. I’m really confused too. And being here in Korea, I don’t know if I feel more alienated or if it’s just a different kind of alienated.
  3. thisizliz posted this

CUDDLE FUDDLE by DEDDY