“One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn’t exist… Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.” — Stephen J. Hawking Abstraction, metaphors, and visual symbols are the tools I use to both understand the world and articulate that understanding. Informed by patterns found in nature, my visual vocabulary has developed over the years. It is natural that Abstraction may be difficult for viewers to relate to. Viewers often do not have a reference for an artist’s unique visual language. When viewing abstract work, one is often attempting to read a foreign language—a unique visual language that needs translating and one that requires time. Self-portrait Early on in my work I imagined identity, not as a visual representation, but rather as a lived experience. Being a Korean-American adoptee often means being initially perceived within a limited understanding of my race. I think that many minorities in the United States can relate to this experience. What do you see, when you see me? Never just a woman, but always an Asian woman, and with that whatever you, the viewer, have discovered, understood, or assumed an Asian woman to be. Self-representation is always more complex than a face in the mirror. I am a mix of the diverse white cultures I was raised in and the experiences I have encountered throughout the course of my life. Being an imported American and raised in a transracial family within a predominantly white Western society has played a key role in how I define myself in relation to society. Like many minorities, many of my choices are filtered through my understanding of the predominant culture and how that culture perceives me. Yet the problem of defining my own culture becomes a necessary and unique challenge. Interracial adoptees often cannot find racial or ethnic identity with their white Western family. Some may choose to see themselves as defined by their adopted family’s culture, or they can look to their country of origin as a home base affirming their racial identity. I have learned that culture is much more fluid and subtle than that. As an artist, I have always felt the need to explore all the possibilities, and then create my own way, and my work reflects this practice. My art has always been my cipher and my solace. And so, my self-portrait represents an amalgam of experiences and stories embodied by ornamental organisms, clustered together like coral around what once was a flower. Peacock Poppycock When we are most daring, when we feel our true selves we are covered in pomp and the feathers of our accomplishments. Wallflower Women and artists are both seen and judged by the public eye. Sometimes harsh, sometimes loving, and sometimes predatory, yet we put ourselves on the wall because to be seen is the first step into the arena. Alien in an Easter Bonnet Taken from my first Easter photo in the United States, this silhouette begins the reshaping of my story. Like a cute little “doll” or a “charity trophy,” I was a prop in my adopted mother’s story. The moth upon seeing her reflection in the lamplight After having children of my own and tending to the multitude of transformations that motherhood demanded I wondered and questioned the pursuit of my desires. Would the changes be beautiful or disastrous? What had I become? A.D. Herzel is an Asian-American artist and writer who has shared her work nationally and internationally. You may learn more about her and her work by following her on social media and visiting her website. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pseudopompou FB: https://www.facebook.com/PseudoPompous Website: https://www.pseudopompous.com Medium: https://medium.com/@pseudopompous

My passion stems from promoting equity, advocating for underrepresented communities, and continuing to explore brain-based relationships involving perception. Transracial adoptees are the paradigm for walking, talking contradictions, which provides us with the power to forge our own journey and create a pathway for others, despite what society believes. However, there are real-life repercussions of transracial adoption, such as being outcast by Asian and white communities. Most transracial adoptees are adopted by white families due to the institutional racism that places generational wealth into the hands of white people. Many do not have the opportunity to reconnect with their culture until they develop critical thinking skills, gain multicultural exposure, and secure an empathetic support system. We are often reduced to objects, and our ethnic identities are stripped off like a band-aid on an open wound where white families can praise how lucky we are or exotify our identities, leaving the open wounds still unhealed. Thankfully, I was raised in a diverse city, but I constantly question the mental health, identity development, and constant invalidation that transracial adoptees raised in rural, white neighborhoods experience. Being adopted by a white family forces the adoptee, who is in the role of the token child, to raise otherwise undiscussed topics of race and discrimination to “colorblind” family members. This helps explain why many adoptees, including myself, are diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and borderline personality disorder. Every adoptee’s experience is different, whether it’s immersing themselves into their heritage, having indifferent feelings towards their background, or showing racism towards their own racial identity depending on the environment and community they were raised within. I was adopted from Yueyang, China at 18 months old by an Irish-American family. My family provided unconditional love and support, financial stability, and a childhood I am eternally grateful for. My small, predominantly white neighborhood was a privileged environment where I didn’t yet understand the complexities of racism. Families knew I was adopted, and I felt comfortable being surrounded by a white community then. It wasn’t until middle and high school where I connected with various cultures and ethnicities, and in university that I truly began to dissect my dynamic and ever-changing relationship with racial identity. As humans, it is important to acknowledge, reflect, and applaud the progress that we make, and this need is especially critical for transracial adoptees, given that we face constant invalidation. My journey began from the constant void I felt during my time enrolled in university. I felt isolated from my family, hadn’t healed from my adoptive mother’s death, and couldn’t forge relationships, even though I was surrounded by students my age. I felt alienated from my white friends, because they did not understand the struggles minorities faced, yet embarrassed and frustrated with my minority friends because of the lack of empathy for navigating two identities from multiple perspectives while they did not consider mine. That time of my life was filled with despair, hysteria, depression, and substance misuse from knowing something was missing and being microscopically close to understanding; yet there was a barrier blocking my path to redemption. I couldn’t escape the constant reminders of society ingraining adopted children with the notion that we’re not loved and the deeper sense of isolation of being constantly surrounded by others and yet feeling that no one is truly there. One day, a Ph.D. student emailed a survey studying microaggressions, familial pressure, self-identification, and multiculturalism on campus to students who self-identified as Asian nationals and Asian-Americans in their university records. The majority of transracial and trans-ethnic adoptees experience the imposter syndrome when self-identifying as “Asian” on census forms. We are not culturally Asian, but still experience racism and discrimination. This question that usually caused me anxiety and confusion led me on a path to finding my community. The Ph.D. student and I discussed microaggressions, the sense of belonging, and the lack of cultural diversity on campus. I even shared that although exotification is dehumanizing, I partially enjoyed the attention. It was refreshing to gain new perspectives, share similar experiences, and understand that my complicated relationship with exotification may be due to my lack of cultural connection. Being exotified was one of the ways I finally felt connected to my Asian identity. An expected 15-minute interaction lasted for two hours, and I finally felt inspired and motivated to search for other adoptees and begin my journey to finding myself… My name is Brianna Clancey, and I was adopted at 18 months old from Yueyang, China. I have never returned to China, but that is the top destination on my travel list! I love being engulfed in nature, painting, learning new things, and studying brain and neural pathways involved in preconceived contradictions. I graduated from the University of Rhode Island in May 2020 with degrees in Psychology and Criminology, and I hope to pursue a career in cognitive sciences with a specialty in transracial and transethnic adoptees to the provide developmental support I hadn’t received. Please feel free to reach out, I love connecting with other adoptees!

BLM just celebrated its seven-year anniversary. In reflecting on the movement to date, BLM co-founder and executive director Patrisse Cullors wrote: “Our community has created the largest, most diverse civil and human rights movement in the history of both our country and our world.” Yes! There is much to be proud of. However, there have also been missteps. Cullors goes on to mention some in her article. I’m here to discuss some within the Asian-American community. It all started with a colleague who was growing increasingly frustrated with Asian Americans who seem to believe that honoring our own community’s experiences with oppression under the white establishment somehow detracts from BLM—particularly because, some say, our history “isn’t as bad” as the African American experience: the “they’ve had it worse” argument. This is nonsensical to me. First of all, atrocities cannot be categorized into superlatives; there is no “bad, worse, or worst” atrociousness. Both the African American and Asian American communities have suffered at the hands of whites; our early histories have more similarities than people often realize. Second, as the Chinese-American writer Minna states in her Shrimp Chips blog: “We would never expect Black folks to ‘sacrifice’ their own histories in order to support [the] Asian struggle, and we shouldn’t expect that of ourselves for other groups either.” I agree. Honoring our own histories does not detract from BLM; voicing our unique struggles does not disrespect it. On the contrary, acknowledging the tragic parts of our history, as well as the ways millions of Asians continue to be oppressed under pro-white policies and norms, helps to inform BLM. Our stories, their stories (and the stories of all people of color) lend power to the continuing civil rights movement and help to strengthen it overall. BUT WHICH STORIES? WHOSE VOICES? “What Asian American story?” you might ask. Well, this is where things get a little dicey. In textbook form, Asian American history usually starts in the late 1800s with the exploitation of Chinese immigrant workers on the construction of the transcontinental railroad. At the same time, Japanese immigrants were working on sugar cane fields in present-day Hawaii, and as farmers and fishermen along the West coast. The dominant white culture gave birth to the “good Asian, bad Asian” dichotomy by favoring the “refined, law-abiding” Japanese over the “dirty, job-stealing” Chinese. Later, of course, the labels were switched when, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which essentially started a witch hunt for all Japanese, regardless of citizenship. In this climate, the Chinese were now lauded as hard-working people who fully understood and embraced American values. By the 1950s, however, white America decided it had bigger problems than “good Asians, bad Asians” and turned its attention to the Civil Rights Movement. In a propaganda move against Blacks, the white establishment lumped all Asians together as the “model minority.” It was an attempt to downplay the effects of systemic racism and show that the American dream could, in fact, be achieved with hard work, tenacity, and civil obedience. When the “model minority” term was first coined, it mostly applied to ethnic Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. In recent years, the group has widened to include South Indians. Over time, the “model minority” group has indeed become an elite class of Asians: usually highly educated professionals, politically and culturally savvy, who live in “good” (i.e., desegregated, gentrified) neighborhoods, and whose children attend “good” (i.e., private and the best of public) schools. Ok, great: upward mobility. Success. Achievement. But there are some problems here. First, these specific ethnic groups (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Indian) with their longer histories and wide-open path to assimilation have become—in the eyes of whites and themselves—the Asian American community. This renders the 30-ish other ethnic groups—mostly with roots in Southeast, South, and Central Asia—nearly invisible. While most Asian Americans resent the “model minority” label, privilege does give rise to status, and status keeps the “good Asian, bad Asian” dichotomy alive. This is the second problem: when privileged, “good Asians” go to great lengths to distance themselves from “bad Asians”—the minimized “silent minority” within the Asian American community, marginalized by their very own. GOOD ASIAN, BAD ASIAN So what does it mean to be a “bad Asian”? Well, if “good Asians” are the “model minority,” then “bad Asians” are the opposite. Over the years, privileged Asian Americans have, frankly, looked down on other Asian Americans who are economically poor, and/or poorly educated. If they’re first-generation, they might have heavy accents, or otherwise don’t speak English very well. They might be blue-collar workers or unskilled laborers with roots in a country that is still developing, such as Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Nepal, or Bhutan. But let me circle back to BLM and social justice. In our current climate, “good Asians” don’t just see themselves as educated and middle- to upper-class. They also see themselves as being “woke”—and they’re always quick to call out the new “bad Asians” for, well, “not being woke.” And what does that mean? Well, “bad Asians” stand accused of being largely complicit in the fight against social injustice. In this age of social media and keyboard activism, where it’s so easy to say something, they have nothing to say. They haven’t re-posted or re-tweeted the appropriate memes. They haven’t explicitly showed their solidarity with Black Americans. They haven’t stood up to white people. Yet, “good Asians” also take issue with those who, they say, are too vocal: only “bad Asians” would take up space to air their own thoughts and grievances, when both the platform and the focus right now should be solely for the Black community. Ironically, this call for deference is part of the model minority code too. The message is: show up, be seen, participate, but don’t say too much. Neither of these views is right. First, the “good Asians’” righteous finger pointing follows exactly what white oppressors have done since the first Asian immigrants arrived. It perpetuates the “good Asian, bad Asian” dichotomy, which robs too many of their Americanness. Second, and what I argued earlier in this piece, burying the struggles of our own people, both past and present, “for the sake of” BLM isn’t noble acquiescence at all; it’s turning the tools and expectations of white oppression on ourselves. And worst of all, we do it under the guise of “wokeness.” ASIAN AMERICANS AS ONE In the ongoing fight for equality, there is room for all people of color. As Asian Americans, we need to take care in truly allying ourselves—both to BLM and to the most marginalized in our own community. Instead of being quick to point out “bad Asians” when we see them, we should be asking ourselves: “What can we do about the blatant social and economic gaps, not to mention the prejudice, that exists among ourselves?” Let’s not dismiss the thousands of Vietnamese, Hmong, and Karen who came to America just a few decades ago as refugees with few resources, little education, and limited knowledge of English—all factors that put these groups at a significant disadvantage and remain barriers to assimilation and upward mobility, even now. They didn’t arrive in modern America with a work visa in hand and money in the bank. What about the thousands of Southeast Asian children struggling in U.S. schools because of the language barrier, yet their teachers believe they’ll pull ahead because “that’s what ‘good Asians’ do”? What can we do or say about many of the Bhutanese, Nepalese, and Mongolians who currently live in the U.S. below the poverty line (see here)? What about the hundreds of thousands of Asians living undocumented as victims of human trafficking for forced labor, sex work, or illicit adoption schemes? Where are their rights? Who’s speaking for them? What about Asian Muslim immigrants from Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, southern Thailand, and Pakistan, who face continual discrimination, detention, and harassment as a result of the War on Terror? It’s right to call out injustice—it is. But if you’re an Asian American of privilege, I ask you to check your place, your words, and your motives. Is your message a true contribution to the ongoing fight for equal rights and opportunity? Or is it simply performative? Because I would argue that calling others out for anti-Blackness while remaining complicit towards the stark inequalities in our own community is truly hypocritical, and not “woke” at all. We must find a way to see ourselves, really see ourselves, and recognize the stories of all Asian Americans—that is the way forward, with BLM and all future movements toward equality.

This month, we share more of Eunsoo Jeong’s Koreangry work. If you missed her article in September, you can check it out here. Eunsoo welcomes your connection via social media! Website: www.koreangry.com Social media: @koreangry @madeinkorea1988; Facebook, Twitter

My walls are made of an unearthly substance that I cannot see. The material is ethereal and opaque. Their very existence is unfathomable to me. I live in a world that is constrained by the weight of nothing, its gravity impressing upon my every movement. I do not feel a wall and yet I know it’s there because I feel its boundaries. I used to convince myself that those invisible guards were not guards at all. They weren’t blocking any movement that I cared to pursue. I chose to stop on my own accord. Perhaps the thing waiting in that direction was not worth the journey. Perhaps there was nothing there at all. In time, the walls became two-dimensional lines that I did not cross. It wasn’t due to any thought of the thing on the other side anymore. It was because the world was finite. A fact accepted and believed. A law of science and reason; as clear as the wall the horizon makes against the evening sky, blocking from view the thing beyond, obscured behind heavenly drapes. But like a child slowly waking from thoughtlessness to illumination, I realize that my world is not flat. The walls I perceived were simply horizons on the ocean; light, pale and orange, dancing on an azure body. Then, the glow erupts into a brilliant explosion. It is as if the skies have given the final kiss goodnight. But this sunset never fades nor dies. Brian Krebs is a Korean American adoptee living in Manhattan. If the way we spend our moments reflects who we are, he is a lover, entrepreneur, poet, reader, sleeper, activist, eater, and traveler. He’s also spent significant time as a student, drop out, inmate, mental health patient, and mental health advocate. Cover photo credit: Annie Spratt

WHAT IS THE KOREAN ADOPTEE HEALING PROJECT? The Korean Adoptee Healing Project explores the multitude of issues around international, trans-racial and Korean adoption from a personal and political perspective. After 50 years of living in the United States as a minority, and very often being the only Asian face in the room A.D. Herzel circles back to her origin story. But, this is not just her story, as there are at least 200,000 Korean adoptees globally. We are a tribe. How we evolved in trans-racial families, how we identify culturally, and the trauma some of us have experienced are the visual stories I have begun telling. Through realistic drawing translations of Adoption photos to abstract golden silhouettes, I examine the shadows of my subjects and with each new portrait the facets of this beautiful tribe multiply. What began as a personal exploration has grown as I continually add participants. Where once the Adoption photos represented orphan sales pitches, they are now, often the only vestiges of an unknown history. Each portrait is a story of survival and I draw to honor that. For me, to draw something is to know it so well that you have taught yourself to love it, and so I do. After the first portrait, my friend wrote, “You don’t know how healing this is.” So, there is that too. I hope to have an exhibition of the portfolio within the next two years. A.D. Herzel is a Korean American adoptee, Visual Artist, writer, and educator. She has exhibited work nationally for the past 20 years. She trained as a painter and printmaker at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and went on to receive her M.Ed. in Art Education at the Tyler School of Art in 2000. Her digital work has been published in the Manifest International Drawing Annual, INDA 8 and she has won several awards of recognition for her drawings. In addition to exhibiting work in numerous juried shows, she has been recognized by curators from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, The Kimbell Museum of Fine Arts in Texas, and The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. She has been represented by galleries in Fort Worth, TX, Nashville, TN and Philadelphia, PA. If you are interested in learning more, participating or supporting the Korean Adoptee Healing Project and A.D. Herzel visit her website and become a member of her Patreon.

It’s been two months since the fateful day of the verdict of my court case where the Seoul Family Court recognized me as 99.981% being my biological Korean father’s daughter. I’ve held countless interviews, and there are currently 10 Google pages that host the numerous articles written about my paternal lawsuit and search journey. I would, and could, not have imagined that this would happen, and I’m still in awe of it all. However, two months after the spotlight and shock of what happened is finally settling in. I’m realizing that in my everyday life and in my search for my mother, nothing has really changed. I still do not know who she is, and have not been able to meet her. I’m back home with my beautiful family and traversing life as I did before, and continue to be ignored by my father and his family. The hurt and questions that burdened my heart before are still present, and even though victories were won and many different adoptee/non-adoptee communities are cheering me on, my quest is ongoing without any real hope of it coming full circle. I’m in survival mode again as each day passes by and I try to focus on the here and now; enjoying the amazing life I have and the amazing family I have, but in the back of my mind I’m still agonizing over those unanswered questions that I had worked so hard to get answered. COMPLEXITIES FOR ADOPTEES It’s amazing how we as adoptees manage it all if I do say so myself. We are expected to forget the trauma surrounding our circumstances of arriving into our new families. We are expected to move on, and not dawdle on mere things of the past, as what good will come from doing so? We are expected to be thankful and happy for the new life we’ve been given, and if we dare to search for our roots, then others demand to know what went wrong in our childhood that we would ever have this longing? Are we not happy or thankful for our current families? I’ve been criticized quite a bit from strangers, and even loved ones, with these types of questions since my trial broke headlines around the globe. As often as I say I can brush it off, it of course does hurt. How is it that people are so ignorant about adoption and the complexities involved? This has become my mantra alongside restorative justice for adoptees’ right to origin; to educate the everyday person on the street to gain—even if it’s a sliver of—understanding that adoption is so much more complex than how it was, and still is, currently packaged and sold where: “Adoptive parents are saviors and adopted children have been rescued from poverty and should be thankful for the new life they’ve been given.” I want to tell you that most adoptees are thankful for their new lives, as we’ve been told since we were young to be so. Most adoptees are also afraid to search for their origins or birth families as they feel it will be a betrayal to their adoptive families. Most adoptees also will fall into an identity crisis at some point in their lives, since most are raised in a homogeneous Caucasian society, and it’s natural that they will at some point recognize that they themselves are not Caucasian. WHY ADOPTEES SEARCH When most adoptees search it is completely not associated with whether or not they are thankful for their families or lives, and whether or not they love their families or have a good relationship with them. It has everything to do with the fundamental need of knowing as a human being where one comes from, and seeking answers to those life questions. My lawsuit was representative of a girl searching for her mother and all the culminating events that led to that fateful day of June 12, 2020. I never imagined finding a family member, let alone my father; and I never imagined I would file a lawsuit against him. I’ve rehashed countless times in my interviews, and all social media platforms, that finding my father or filing a lawsuit was never my goal. If my father or his family would have discreetly given answers as to who my mother was, does one really think I would go to these excruciatingly painful lengths? Do I not as an adoptee, have a right to know these answers? Does a birth family’s right to privacy outweigh my right to know my origins? These are questions that are now circulating because of my lawsuit and interviews I have done. Thousands of Koreans in Korea, for maybe the first time, discussed my actions, and the overwhelming majority of those comments were in favor of my father taking responsibility and telling me whom my mother is. Statute of limitations, closed adoption, and the severance of first family ties are completely irrelevant now with DNA-proof of family origin. The Korean Family Court has now set a precedent that even an adoptee who’s family was completely stripped away in Korea by a closed adoption case from Holt in 1984, has a legal right to be on their father’s family register with proof of DNA. However, questions remain: Will it continue? Will my lawsuit actually set a precedent and bring about systemic change? Or, will it bring harm to the birth search quest as some critics claim? Only time will tell, but my hope is that the Korean government will provide restorative justice to adoptees’ rights to origin when they revise the Adoption Act of 2012. In doing so, they will be taking responsibility for their role in sending the more than 200,000 adoptees away, and allowing us our rightful place to find our way back “home.” Kara Bos (Kang Misuk) is a Korean-American adoptee—now a Dutchie—living in Amsterdam with her Dutch husband and two amazing children. She’s an adventure seeker discovering the world one country at a time (more than 50 so far!), an entrepreneur running a drowning prevention program Swim4Survival, and through her journey has become a resilient spokesperson for adoptees’ rights. She is determined to change the rhetoric of the more than 200,000 Korean adoptees searching for their identities and past; while also hoping to change the narrative of the definition of what adoption means to the average individual. Furthermore, she is a woman, wife, and mom, trying to do her best at all three of those while not sacrificing any of them.

For the longest time I was convinced blood and heritage were irrelevant. “You’re shaped by your surroundings and environment,” I thought, “by the people closest to you.” I was taken as a small baby from “the Far East,” and planted into a working class family in the northern countryside of Sweden. Was I not a malleable little sprout expected to adapt to my new environment seamlessly? However, regardless of how much I grew and my new roots dug into the Swedish soil, I was still so different from my Swedish family. Environment couldn’t explain how I developed such a distinct interest in the arts, music, and language when they weren’t mirrored in anyone that I knew while growing up. My parents stood rather clueless outside of my fantasy world built from drawings and paintings. I nurtured my creativity alone. When I started art school, I presented my detailed, small, and colorful watercolors, which were romantic looking, soft, and quiet. The teachers recommended that I try working with oil, that I work bigger and use bigger brushes. I learned that the images I grew up with were considered kitsch by the middle class. My mother’s wall was decorated with textiles embroidered with quotes praising the calm and quiet home, along with prints of farmers or workers dreaming of a day’s rest. All of this was embedded in my own paintings without me realizing it. Even if I tried, I couldn’t erase a visual language that was considered frivolous. This is a watercolor of me and my Swedish mother—burning debris in the yard, preparing for fall. Ornaments and romanticism aren’t what you associate contemporary painting with, but for my mother the romantic images she has at home are an expression of longing—a longing for less heavy work, dreaming of wealth when money is scarce, and wishing for good health and a nice safe home. That’s what I interpreted from the art I grew up with. I think it’s beautiful and honest, but it represents a world that few of my classmates were very familiar with. At the age of 19, I was reunited with my Korean family. I was surprised to find out that both my older sisters grew up with a strong creative urge. They used to write poems and painted when they were young. My father played a little bit of guitar. None of them got the opportunity to develop their skills further, but it had been there. I could see that my sister had the same personality as me, and that my angry face definitely came from my father. And yet, they were complete strangers to me. It was comforting knowing that even my artistic side did actually have roots, and that it came from somewhere and someone. It felt validating knowing it was a part of me, that it was something I had kept and cared for, and not something I had grabbed/added. After that, my Korean heritage started claiming more space in my art. Exoticized and ignorant in the beginning, but my art became more confident and educated as I grew. This is a watercolor and gouache portrait of me and my Korean mother, in her home in Busan. These days, I’m waiting to start a Ph.D. program in illustration in Stockholm. I will be the first one in my family and amongst my relatives to become a Ph.D. student. I’m going to write about and illustrate my adoptee experience and show through my work the interaction of upbringing, belonging, and heritage—a “betweenship” I believe many of us adoptees feel. My latest works of art have been a series of portraits of me with my Swedish and Korean families, portrayed in locations important to me, and painted in a way that is reminiscent of motifs that could be found in a Swedish countryside home. It is an homage to what I admire and love about the Swedish countryside, but it is an expression of sorrow and loss as well. Behind every international adoption is still the heartbreaking severing of a mother and her child. Cecilia Hei Mee Flumé was born in 1987 in Busan, South Korea, and raised in Umeå, Sweden. She got her B.A. in Art History and MA in Visual Communication in Stockholm. Cecilia now lives and works in Stockholm, and will soon start her Ph.D. in Illustration at Konstfack University. You can connect with Cecilia on Facebook. Cover photo credit: Jimmy Flumé

When I want comfort, I lean into rice. Congee, fried rice, or a bowl of white or brown rice and a sweet-savory lap cheong cooked on the surface of the rice grains. A plate of steaming hot rice with a fried egg on top. On this day in March, early on in the pandemic shutdown in California, I woke up worried about a family conflict that I had no ability to control, especially now. I also woke up knowing that I wanted breakfast before heading out for a walk. I decided to focus on breakfast. I microwaved some cold leftover rice in a little bowl. A rice bowl’s worth of food is really all the sustenance we need, I once read. I thought about how to season it. Furikake? The seaweed-y, sesame Japanese seasoning is something I just learned to use. Some of the spicy long beans with ground pork left over in the fridge? I had that for breakfast yesterday with a bowl of rice and topped with a sunny side up egg, edges all crisped up and lacy brown. Today, my breakfast is inspired by a memory of something I discovered as a child outside of my family’s home. In after school care, a San Francisco Unified School District program where I also went for summer day camp, ladies prepared food in a kitchen that would be served to us at lunch. Here, and at my regular school cafeteria, I learned about foods I never encountered at home, like roast chicken or meatloaf. I remember tasting white rice with butter on it for the first time at lunch on a pale green plastic plate. It was a revelation. We never had rice like that at home, grains covered in salty fatty goodness. We rarely used butter at all really. Occasionally, my mother would butter a piece of toast thickly and sprinkle granulated sugar over the top. It was good! Like cinnamon toast without the cinnamon. Pandemic brain wandering reminds me that I also had my first celery with peanut butter back in my elementary school days. Neither my grandmother nor my father served anything like that as snacks at home. At home, we sometimes had a kind of watery rice gruel that my grandmother would make with the little last bit of rice at the bottom of the pot. Or we’d have little biscuits that came individually wrapped in shiny cellophane packs, variations on water crackers with a richer crumb and sandwich filling. My favorites were filled with a light and sweet lemon cream. Sometimes, after he picked us up from school, my dad would swing us by a Chinese bakery where we’d get tall jee bow dan goh, their smooth brown tops covering a rich, feather-light sponge wrapped with thin white paper. Today, inspired by memory, I microwaved the leftover rice in a small bowl, and topped it with a thick pat of salted butter. I watched hungrily as the butter began melting into the hot rice grains. And then, impatient, I helped the process along by stirring the grains. I tasted it and added soy sauce. Tasted. Added a little more soy, and then a little sesame oil. Then, I added some chili oil. Finally, I topped it with chopped scallions. I was reminded of another dish, a favorite of mine as a child that was homey, soft, simple, direct. The version I had as a kid involved being served a mound of steaming hot rice, creating a well in the middle, cracking a whole raw egg into it, and then sprinkling soy sauce and sesame oil in the well before mixing the whole thing up with a set of chopsticks. The most seasoning we added was a bunch of ground black pepper. So simple, so delicious. It is what I need in these times—a little bit of comfort, food acting as a portal back to childhood, to a time when we all were still together—Mom, Dad, my brother, and me. Shirley is a Chinese-American writer of poetry and prose based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a two-time alum of the VONA/Voices workshop and a 2018 fellow in Kearny Street Workshop’s Interdisciplinary Writers Lab. Follow her on IG @shirligig and Twitter @shirlstyle. Cover photo credit: Shirley Huey

While it was natural for humidity to follow the torrential mid-morning rains, the afternoon air on this day was unusually thick. My jeans felt heavy and clung to my legs. I dragged two bulging nylon bags toward the bus station in Kisumu, hoping they wouldn’t tear, not caring about the mud. People trudged in all directions, engrossed in their own private game of avoidance—avoid mud puddles, especially the ones with rotting plastic bags; avoid street kids, especially the glue-sniffing gangs of boys; avoid stray animals, especially the mangy ones. Along the perimeter of waiting matatus, or Kenyan minibuses, stood a row of dukas, or stall-like shops, selling everything from mobile phones to sweaters to Coca-Cola. In front, women sat on small plastic stools, selling ears of corn right off the charcoal or samosas deep-fried on demand. My mouth watered at the smell. I longed for a hot cup of chai (sweetened milk tea), but the ride from Kisumu to Kapsabet would take two hours, and the last thing I wanted was to risk having to pee in a bush while 15 other passengers looked on. As I got closer to the lines of waiting matatus, touts waved and shouted, clamoring for my attention to buy their wares. It’s not that I was the only potential passenger, but I was the only potential foreign passenger—someone who might hand over two, three, or four times the correct fare out of ignorance, apathy, or sympathy. Hell, I might even tip. “Ssss-ssss, miss! Over here! Where are you going?” I hate it when they hiss at me, I thought. “Going to Nairobi, miss? We drive very fast! You will arrive very quickly!” Or dead. “Come, miss! I give you the best seat! Where are you going?” I had to chuckle. A best seat? In a matatu? “Please. Give me your bag. Let me help you.” Nope, not falling for that again! “Hey! Japanese! No? China lady? China lady, come here! Ching chong! Hello! You understand me?” My cheeks began to burn. A familiar mix of embarrassment and anger swelled up inside my chest. I clenched my jaw; my breath came hard and fast. “I understand you just fine, ufala! I speak English!” A group of men—boys, really—laughed hysterically. With a surge of adrenaline fueled by indignation, I lifted my bags high and walked quickly to the last line of matatus, the ones going north toward the city of Eldoret. Surprisingly, the tout said nothing as I handed him some shillings, threw my bags on the floor, and climbed inside. I was the last to board the 18-person van. Once I settled into my seat and it became clear just how much legroom was leftover, the tout whistled and motioned to someone. An old woman with a conspicuous overbite hobbled over and shoved a small cage next to my right foot. In it was a single chicken. Right. “Tuende, tuende!” (“Let’s go, let’s go!”) The tout shouted and hit the doorframe twice with his palm. The matatu began rolling forward while the tout stood in the mud counting the bills. A few seconds passed before he leaped into the side of the moving vehicle and slid the door shut. I reached for my seatbelt. Fuck! I thought. It’s broken. “Bwana!” I said. The tout looked at me. I pointed at the broken belt. He shook his head and made a noise—tsk tsk. I couldn’t tell whether he was sympathizing with me or shaming me, as if I’d broken it intentionally. Now, as a young, idealistic adventurer, I had no real concerns for my health and safety, but I did worry about my freedom. I worried that if the police searched our vehicle at a checkpoint, I’d be arrested and fined for not wearing a seatbelt. Seatbelts were always required by law, but it was enforced haphazardly, usually when the government was short on funds, and usually following a corruption scandal…which had just happened recently. I thought about this as we left Kisumu, a port city on the shores of Lake Victoria. We sped over flat, golden plains, and Kenyan hip-hop blared from the speakers. Strings of beads and a large silver cross swayed from the rearview mirror. Occasionally, we squealed to a stop to allow a passenger off or on, but before long, we were winding through the hills of the Nandi Forest, an area that tends to produce Kenya’s best marathon runners. Once through the Nandi Forest, the matatu slowed, gently this time, and everyone knew why: we were approaching a checkpoint. The tout slid the door open and shouted at the police officers, “Habari za mchana!” (“Good afternoon!”) Two officers, a man and a woman, said nothing but motioned to the driver to pull over. Large semi-automatic guns hung over their shoulders, and the man wore a sash of bullets. No one smiled. I could hardly breathe, and I quickly considered who I would call if I were arrested. My mental list became irrationally long as I tried not to think about the stories I’d heard from those who had already, at one time or another, been hauled off to a police station in this country. Peeing in communal buckets, overnights with no food, trading a bank account number for freedom. And then I got angry: Fucking matatu’s got a sub-woofer but no seatbelts. Idiots! The male officer poked his head in the back door. To each person not wearing a seatbelt, he pointed and barked, “Njoo hapa! Njoo hapa!” (“Come here! Come here!”) One by one, passengers—including me—climbed out of the matatu and stood by the side of the road. The female officer opened the back of the police wagon and motioned for people to start getting inside. I wondered how we were all going to fit. Surely they’d have to make at least two trips. Would it be better to be among the first or last? Should I take my bags? Would the chicken be alright, now that the cage had space to slide all over the floor as the matatu continued to its destination? Two older women began crying and speaking earnestly in Swahili to the female police officer. A young woman, my age perhaps, crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. Behind her, two men chatted as though they were simply colleagues in line for lunch. Another man clutched his mobile phone and, for whatever reason, a toothbrush. The officer ignored them all completely. Then after a minute, she shouted, “Excuse me!” I realized she was looking at me. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I closed it again and simply stared at her. “You!” She walked toward me, shouting in English. “Where are you from?” I hesitated. I didn’t want to say that I’m American. In that case, who knew how much I’d have to pay to be released from jail? News of American poverty, or even the middle-class, hadn’t yet reached rural Kenya. But I didn’t want to lie either. “Chinese lady?” she barked. I kept staring at her, not on purpose, I simply couldn’t move, or speak, or think. Her gun bounced off of her thigh as she walked. “You, Chinese lady,” she said again, a bit softer this time but nowhere near friendly. “You must wear a seatbelt! It’s the law! Do you understand me?” Still frozen, I said and did nothing. Then, she motioned for me to get back inside the waiting matatu. “Go!” she shouted. “Go on to wherever you’re going.” I stepped toward the minibus, trying not to appear too eager. “This mzungu doesn’t even speak English,” I heard her mutter, completely exasperated and to no one in particular. “How am I supposed to deal with that?” I sat down, this time in a seat with a working seatbelt. And this time, completely pleased with being called a China lady.

I am one of over 200,000 adoptees exported from Korea. Plunked down in Minnesota in the mid-seventies, my adoptive parents were told to “raise her like your own,” which translated to a “love sees no color” approach. My name was changed from Sei Myung Lee to Jennifer, the single most popular name for newborn girls in the U.S. from 1970 to 1984. This “love sees no color” attitude seemed like sage advice for the time; however, it did not account for the fact that even if love didn’t see color, people did. This colorblind approach led to the paradoxical experience of simultaneously being treated as another…and also an “other." Being raised as a transracial adoptee in a white family from the suburbs did not lend itself to much discussion about race, racism, or what it was like to be a Korean girl negotiating predominately white spaces. There were few places, if any, to describe my experiences and the fact that moving through the world was different for me than for my white, non-adopted peers and siblings. My attempts to describe these differences were met with a lack of understanding and my parents’ efforts to soothe me by ignoring and minimizing differences—the idea that a bounty of love would dilute the difficulty of navigating a racialized world, alone. Despite growing up in a white family and in white communities, my proximity to whiteness did not shield me from the reality that I was not white. Those around me controlled whether I was considered another (white) or an “other” (Asian). In a society that often views race through the binary lens of black and white, Asians are neither. I was either relegated to this invisible space or else took up my position as a perpetual foreigner. I grew comfortably uncomfortable residing on the spectrum of hyper-visibility and invisibility, moved along and between these poles as others chose to place me. My belonging was conditional. I was fully a part of my white family…until I was told that I could marry my brother…or my cousin because they were not my real family, and we were not related by blood. I was just one of the girls, until someone referenced “the chink” walking by and suddenly I was all alone despite the fact that I was smashed between several other teenage bodies. I learned that at any moment my racial identity could be relevant, although it was rarely recognized. This contributed to the sense that my experiences were as valid as a white person’s understanding and comfortability. My dual access to white privilege and model minority status, made my experiences, feelings, and the visceral happenings in my body difficult to identify and even harder to validate. I learned to keep my experiences private—to get small and be good, and to navigate the confusion on my own. Becoming a parent, myself, created an opportunity to think about race in a new way and to consider what it would mean to raise multi-racial children. Half Korean and a mix of French, Irish, English, and Polish, my boys would never check just one box in a category of racial identifiers, unless of course the one box generically identified them as “other.” I thought about the efforts my parents made to connect me to Korean culture. There was Korean camp. And bulgogi. And kimchi that no one liked. And Korean folk music that my mom played on car trips until my dad got a headache and had to turn it off. These efforts to connect me to my history meant something; however, without the context of language and cultural mirrors, it became a representation of all that had been disrupted. It is hard to describe the internal battle that surfaces each time I think about returning to the place of my birth. There is a notable tension, a push and pull. My birth country holds such tremendous power. It is the place of my beginnings, where my roots extend far beyond my own life, and that of my first family. These roots extend to generations of ancestors and a land that holds my history. The draw is unparalleled. At the same time there is a notable tension—a silent ask to the universe to help me transcend my midwestern upbringing so that I may be absorbed seamlessly back into the Motherland. This is confusing, yet over the years I have learned to live with this tension. It has become a familiar sensation—one that is lifted only when my feet are firmly planted on Korean soil and I am able to move freely within a sea of faces that mirror my own. When my children arrived, I wondered what it would look like to become the role model I had sought so desperately as my younger self. I am still figuring this out. What I know is that I want my boys to have the space, opportunity, and language to grapple with race and identity. I want their identity to be shaped by their own understanding and experiences, not by what others say it should be. I want them to be able to think critically about the explicit and implicit messages that they see and hear about who they are and where they fit, as well as the messages that they see and hear about who others are and where others fit. I want them to understand that identity is complex and evolving, and that they have the right to take up the space that they’re in—no matter what that looks like. In our house, we have ongoing conversations about difference. We discuss difference as it relates to race, but also as it relates to many other areas of identity and living. Our conversations are candid. They are truthful. Sometimes they are awkward and uncomfortable. I can’t say that I’m doing it right. What I can say, however, is that race and identity are complicated beasts, and I do not know how this process will unfold for my children. It may be a journey that is traveled with relative ease, or one that is marked by bumps and detours. Either way, I want them to know that their process is exactly what it should be—perfectly their own and up to them—where they are neither an other or another—just beautifully themselves.

As a person of color, it has been an extremely difficult time with rushes of varying emotions. Christian Cooper. George Floyd. As events unfolded, a friend and I spoke generally about racism in America, and I mentioned hate crimes against Asians due to COVID-19—the Brooklyn woman who had acid thrown on her, for example. My friend, whom I might add, is a highly educated, white American female, said, “It’s a shame this is happening now, when Asians have such a positive history in America.” I paused. The words model minority popped into my mind, followed by the disappointing realization that here was another person who wasn’t at all familiar with the Asian-American story. I can’t blame her too harshly, though. The long-standing institutional racism endured by Asians in America, particularly Chinese-Americans, is not a well-known story, even among other groups of racial and ethnic minorities. In a 2016 article, African American writer Brando Simeo Starkey wrote, “[Even] people like me who care deeply about racial justice—we often fail at positioning the grievances of Asian-Americans against white supremacy at the heart of the fight.” Yes—it does feel like the Asian-American story is written in sand, continually washed over and buried again and again. So, today, I’ll tell the story one more time, as well as answer the question you may be wondering right now: Why is it always forgotten? The History of Asians in America Large groups of Asians from China and Hong Kong first came to America in the mid-1800s, lured by the Gold Rush. However, fortune was rare, and most became laborers on the Transcontinental Railroad, which, by the government’s own admission, could not have been completed without the huge numbers of Chinese manpower. But, the Chinese were given the most dangerous jobs, subjected to physical and verbal abuse, and were paid a fraction of the salaries of their white counterparts. Cheap Chinese labor gave rise to “anti-coolie clubs,” which were essentially white unions that sought to protect the rights of white workers and maintain clear boundaries between the races. In 1862, these clubs successfully lobbied for a tax on Chinese labor, which became the Anti-Coolie Act. Working class whites continued to rally against Asian workers and their families, which, by this time, included immigrants from South, Central, and East Asia. Not only did whites perceive Asians as economic threats, but they also viewed them as cultural threats. Asians spoke differently, dressed differently, and were not easily converted to Christianity. As such, Asians were very much the target of social discrimination, and many died at the hands of angry lynch mobs. The worst such example is the Chinese Massacre of 1871, where 500 rioters hanged 15 Chinese men, shot three, and ransacked Chinese homes. Some historians cite this as the largest mass lynching in America’s history. Afterward, eight white men were convicted of manslaughter, but later the convictions were overthrown on legal technicalities—a phenomenon we’re still too familiar with today. Xenophobia fueled anti-Asian propaganda, and the exploitation of Asian workers continued. In the late 1800s, after the end of the Civil War, southern plantation owners replaced their freed black slaves with Chinese and Indian workers, yet the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred them from US citizenship. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first and only American law to exclude an entire group based on race. Throughout the early part of the 20th century, Asian people continued to move from the West to the East Coast and discrimination followed. All over America, Asian-American families lived in segregated neighborhoods. Many school boards, particularly in California, forced Asian children to attend segregated schools. Then came World War II. In response to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, nearly 120,000 Japanese people—most of whom were US residents but also included Japanese from Canada, Mexico, and South America—were forced into internment camps. Quite ironically, as U.S. troops fought against Hitler, the Japanese in America were sharing some experiences with the Jews in Europe. A concise summary on history.com reads, “The FBI rounded-up 1,291 Japanese and religious leaders, arresting them without evidence and freezing their assets.” Then, “In Lordsburg, New Mexico, internees were delivered by trains and marched two miles at night to the camp.” Internees included men, women, children, the elderly, and the disabled, whether one was fully ethnically Japanese, or merely a 16th Japanese, however that was determined. After World War II, things began to change for a number of reasons. There was a sense of appreciation for the tens of thousands of Asian people who fought with the US military during the war, and large groups of Southeast Asians were resettled in America. Immigration laws that prohibited or restricted various Asian ethnicities were dismantled, the last of which in the 1950s. But, it wasn’t simply shifting times that prompted a change in attitude towards Asian-Americans. The U.S. as a whole was changing rapidly, and white America turned its attention to other perceived threats. Model Minority: A Tool of White Oppression In the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement fueled social and political tensions. White America looked for ways to maintain the status quo and, although not necessarily intentional, a “divide and conquer” mindset was born. White academics heralded Asians as the model minority—a term that was quickly picked up by the media and politicians alike. A popular quote from US News & World Report in 1966 read: “At a time when Americans are awash in worry over the plight of racial minorities, one such minority, the nation’s 300,000 Chinese-Americans, is winning wealth and respect by dint of its own hard work…not a welfare check.” Other analyses pointed to the Asian community’s full trust in government to make the best decisions for American society. Essentially, Asians were lauded for “working hard,” keeping their heads down, and doing what they were told to do. The implication for African Americans was: “If they can do it, why can’t you?” Suddenly, Asian-Americans were not the enemy, but a fine example of assimilation, upward mobility, and patriotism. White Americans flipped the narrative when it suited them to do so. In contempt for the African American community, and again, using its influence over government, education, and culture, white supremacy altered collective memories and attitudes. Power in Numbers It’s incredibly important to me that the Asian-American story is shared accurately and often—not simply because I’m an Asian-American woman, but because our story helps to provide a fuller picture of white supremacy in America. Whether Asian, black, brown, Native American, Muslim, or Latino, we each have a history. While the specific ways and means have differed, we all share the overarching experience of exploitation, oppression, violence, and institutional racism in America. Our collective stories are even more powerful than our single stories alone. Sources: Asian Americans Then and Now Cracking the Bamboo Ceiling Emil Guillermo: Asian Americans were lynched too–On Trump’s offensive lynching remark ‘Model Minority’ Myth Again Used As A Racial Wedge Between Asians And Blacks Polygamy, Prostitution, and the federalization of immigration law The real reasons the U.S. became less racist toward Asian Americans Stop Pointing at Asian Americans to Downplay Racism at Universities