때 (n. grime, dirt, filth, as related to skin)
Before I knew the thickness and beauty of my skin, I tried to rub it off.
Umma taught me how to do this early, when I was shameless enough to get naked in front of her. She’d start the bath, periodically cupping the running water to check its temperature, and I’d brace myself for the imminent torture that’d follow.
It was time to scrub off my 때.
If you’re Korean (usually, a Korean girl), bath time with Mommy doesn’t stop when you’re old enough to bathe yourself. In fact, being bathed and cleaned by your mother can extend well into adulthood without a second thought—just step into any Korean spa and you might even see four generations of Korean women in a loofah train, waist-deep, bellybutton-deep, chest-deep, shoulder-deep in a steaming jacuzzi. Today, a Korean day spa is a common and even glamorized way to spend your Saturday afternoon. It seems like a lovely way to bond with your girlfriends or family, and emerge a pearly thing, lighter in so many ways.
If you traveled just a bit deeper underneath the water, traced this evolution all the way to its primordial origins, you’d find how exactly these women came to form such a thing. You’d find where the loofah train and tradition actually starts. And it isn’t nearly as glamorous nor serene.
It starts in a pretty average apartment bathtub with a dull yellow light emitting from above. There’s a random amalgamation of cheap shampoos lining the shelf and always, always, a small bowl or bucket floating in the water that Umma will use later to pour water down your back and limbs. What’s more likely, it starts outside in the back yard in a large plastic tub specifically meant to make kimchi in, but Umma has washed that, too, and intends for you to get in it so she can now wash you.
This bath time isn’t a time for bonding. It isn’t anyone’s ideal way to spend a Saturday. You are not there to get any sort of relaxing treatment. Umma is not there to fill the bath with bubbles and lather you in rose-scented soaps. Umma is there to scrub the dirt out of you until you’re raw to the touch, until the bath water turns gray with dead skin. Umma is there to perform an exorcism with a bright green exfoliating washcloth. Umma is there to take the 때 right out of your body.
Enter: infamous green washcloth
Exit: 때
때 (pronounced tteh) as an object isn’t an exclusively Korean thing—I mean, everyone in the world has skin, and much of it dies and falls off our bodies throughout our lives—but I don’t actually think I’d know what to call it or even know to scrub it off if I weren’t Korean. 때 is just something so distinctly Korean to me; it’s so Korean, in fact, that I don’t know if there’s an exact English translation that accurately describes what it is.
I suppose 때 can be most closely defined as dead skin. And it’s only when I consider that rough translation that I understand exactly what it means to me. It’s only when I consider the fact that 때 so closely resembles eraser shavings that I understand how wrong I’ve been about my own skin.
For so many years, 때 meant killing my Korean-ness, erasing what made me Asian, shaving myself down to what I thought was beautiful: whiteness.
To be fair, my mother never removed my 때 with the intent of teaching me that whiteness is better, that whiteness is more beautiful, or that whiteness is coveted. For her, the act of cleaning me was actually a very Korean thing to do, filled with love and nurturing, and as typical an Asian thing as using chopsticks. My having been born in America, though, is where our intents separate and split in half. Where my Korean-ness divulges from hers and turns into some unrecognizable, whitewashed attempt to appear as straight and narrow as any other plain stick instead of the beautiful bamboo stem I was born as.
Umma, born and raised in Korea, never had a second thought about removing 때 and what subconscious implications it might have on her young Korean-American daughter growing up in white America. To her, 때 was dead skin you simply needed to expunge, something she learned from her mother, and something her mother learned from her mother. Something customary. Something shared. Something Korean.
To her, someone born and raised in Korea, 때 was Korean.
To me, someone born and raised here, 때 was… Korean. And I’ve spent so much of my life trying to scrub it out of me.
I don’t know when exactly I first became aware of my being Asian. I’m sure that when I first became cognizant and understood what a mirror was, I simply saw my eyes reflected in one and thought they looked different. I don’t think I had experienced the racism just yet to think that they were different.
This naivete had a lot to do with growing up in a lower socioeconomic environment where mostly everybody looked different. From the other kids in the apartment complex I played with to the kids at the school playgrounds, I don’t think many of us pointed out our racial differences to a point of hurt. At least, not really (just yet). Any time I looked around, my world was filled with people of color, vibrant cultures, and different-colored skin.
It remained this way until it didn’t.
One day, I’d come to realize that maybe I was different. It happened when a white girl, one of the first I ever remember meeting and befriending, suggested so to a point of hurt.
This girl—we’ll call her Sally—was maybe two or three years my senior, and she’d visit a family friend of hers who lived across the way from me. Like most recollections from your childhood, she seemed to just appear out of thin air one summer. Once, she was not there, and then, suddenly and without my memory really noticing, she was. And we became inseparable friends as children who don’t know anything about the vast mountains between them so often do.
I knew, though, that Sally was white, and at the same time, never noticed she was white. She just was what she was to me: someone from out of town and therefore someone who probably had stories to tell; Sally was someone who only visited during holidays and summer breaks and therefore someone who I’d come to miss until I’d see her again. We had grown close over the course of a couple years, and my Asian-ness hurtled toward me all the while.
The day I finally came to know my Asian-ness was the day Sally returned from another year-long absence. The day she’d come to stay with me this time for a couple days instead of with her usual distant relative across the road.
We were so excited to see each other again. I remember tidying my small room for her, furiously making my bed and clearing the floor so she’d have enough room for her luggage. I remember planning a weekend filled with gossiping, all the frilly and girly things. I remember quite literally counting down the days.
I remember asking Umma to prepare a special welcome dinner for us to eat.
The day finally arrived, and a random-colored minivan dropped her off at our back gate. The van door slid open, exposing her thin ankles first, and then the entirety of her—my sweet friend I hadn’t seen in so long. Sally emerged a pale, almost translucent thing (she came from a part of North America that didn’t get a lot of sun). She dropped her bags to her sides and we ran to each other, ran into each other; I don’t think I ever gave a hug bigger than that one.
I grabbed one of her bags, never minding the weight of it pulling my prepubescent shoulder down, and we walked through the gate together. The minivan drove off behind us, and I forgot in a matter of seconds what the color of such a massive thing even was.
There was a good ten yards or so from the gate to the back side of the house where the sliding glass door and kitchen were. As we approached, I could see my mother’s head through the kitchen windows ducked and bent over a cutting board. She was slicing a myriad of things, and tufts of smoke plumed behind her. She looked angelic, and I never felt so grateful for having an Umma who graciously labored over a hot stove for something as silly as an impression.
Sally and I giggled all the way to the door. We exchanged excited greetings and eager oh-my-god’s. I slid the large glass pane open, stepped inside, and gestured she should do the same.
Everything changed when she crossed the threshold into my home.
“Oh my god! Whoa! What is that smell?! It smells so… Asian!”
Then she laughed with something I can only describe and recall as superiority.
To this day, I can’t tell whether or not she meant this in a disapproving way, or that she was simply shocked. If I’m rationalizing her outburst as an adult, I have to give her the benefit of the doubt that she, too, was a child who might’ve never had the experience of smelling other cultures’ cuisines. The self-conscious and more realistic part of me, however, has to accept that she just very well could have thought the smell was unkind to her senses.
Even now, I find myself watering down her words, writing silly things like “unkind to her senses” as if that could protect Umma and me, even in my memory.
Maybe it was just that it was a strong smell?
No. A strong smell is gasoline. Cigarette smoke. Burnt hair. Acetone.
It was that the smell was Asian.
Once Sally said this, my house suddenly didn’t smell like home anymore. It didn’t smell like comfort, safety, every day. It didn’t smell like Umma, Appa, or Oppa. It didn’t smell like where I rested my head at night, underneath my posters and glow-in-the-dark stars. It didn’t smell like where I got dressed for school. It didn’t smell like the toy bin in the corner of the closet, Barbies and Legos in a conglomerate mass of childhood joy. It didn’t smell like Saturday morning cartoons eating rice cakes and drinking Yakult. It didn’t smell like reading Matilda underneath my covers. It didn’t smell like any of that anymore. It smelled Asian.
And this Asian smell provoked a reaction from a girl I loved and wanted to love me back. This Asian smell humiliated me and confused me and angered me and exposed me to something I always knew and yet never knew—that I was Asian.
“What do you mean, ‘Asian’?” I asked. “Like, it’s bad?”
“No, no!” she said. “It’s just different. Just… Asian.”
I sought for whatever she meant by this, and tilted my nostrils to the heavens searching for answers. That might have been the first time I ever smelled—truly—things like garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil, red peppers, green onions, soybeans, bean sprouts, radish, ginger. These scents blasted my senses like they never had before, and I knew, then, what it meant to notice something.
It was consciousness, and then it was carnage.
For the pain and ridicule I felt, I wanted to simultaneously smack Sally across the face, and shout at my mother’s. How dare Sally insult my home like that? Insult what I could only describe as my life like that? Insult Umma? My perfect, angelic Umma? And why the fuck didn’t I just tell Umma to cook hot dogs or make PB&Js?
When I think of how ashamed I was of myself, my home, my Asian-ness, my umma, I want to cry. I hate that a comment in passing turned me against my mom in that moment. I just felt so betrayed, embarrassed, and naked. Umma, all the while, didn’t notice (even more likely, didn’t understand) me and Sally’s exchange. Umma just continued julienning carrots in that beautiful way I miss, kept rinsing buckwheat noodles with her delicate hands, and simply kept working away for someone who’d never even appreciate the intricacies of a kimbap.
Umma kept on cooking something for her.
Sally unpacked her bags, and my anguish could have ground my teeth into dust. I watched her take out her sweat pants and scrunchies, blabbing all about her first period and crush back at home. I just kept on deflating all the while.
I don’t think we even ate the dinner Umma prepped. I told her to eat it with Dad, or toss it deep within the dumpster. My shame drove me to madness, and if I remember correctly, we went out for average pizza from a chain.
The weekend passed, and Sally went back to wherever she came from.
Alone, I drew a bath hot enough to last so many more years of my life.
I never wanted to experience the embarrassment and self-consciousness from Sally’s visit again. And for something like that to never happen again, I’d have to jettison more and more of my Asian-ness. I’d have to know the ways to eliminate it. I’d have to work harder to get rid of the 때.
My trials would also come at the same time I saw racism exacted upon my parents. At the time, I don’t think I knew to call it “racism,” but I simply witnessed them navigate everyday America and felt pain and shame, over and over again. I noticed the carnage now. It seemed to happen everywhere, all the time.
It happened any time we got to a counter—didn’t matter what kind, didn’t matter what was being sold. The clerk behind it would almost always laugh at their English or shout in their faces as if to make them suddenly comprehend.
THAT’LL BE FIVE DOLLARS. THAT’S FIVE. ONE. TWO. THREE. FOUR. FIVE. DO. YOU. UNDER. STAND.
It happened any time they needed work done on their cars, and they’d end up paying an egregious amount for something as simple as an oil change.
IF YOU NO LIKEY, GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY.
It happened any time they talked to anyone who didn’t look like us.
ME NO SPEAKY.
I hated this. I hated the way people laughed at my parents, took advantage of them, disregarded them. I hated bearing witness to their inability, how small America always made them feel. I could always see the frustration in their eyes, hear the sadness in their sighs, feel their impotence every time they turned to walk away. Selfishly, I hated how their sadness made me feel. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I was just barely learning that we were Asian; I couldn’t possibly understand that my parents weren’t superheroes who could best anything. Witnessing their shortcomings made me feel uncomfortable and red in the face, like I walked in on something I wasn’t supposed to.
Instead of standing in compassionate solidarity with them, I became so angry at the entire thing. I was scared of living a life filled with humiliation, and I wanted, more than anything, to spare my parents of the shame when all of us would just stand around, unsure of the next move—them, not quite American enough to stand up for themselves, but having to show their young daughter how to do just that; me, not old nor compassion enough to relieve them of that responsibility. I could have simply been kind to my parents and done a better job of translating or helping when they needed it, but instead, I chose resentment and secretly prayed to God they’d wake up speaking perfect English so our lives could be easier.
I woke up day after day, their English still broken at best, and brought out the green washcloth. I’d take it upon myself.
I soon did everything I could to expunge my Asian-ness. This white-washing would cost my parents’ and I our kinship, and it’d drive a big ol’ American-sized wedge between us, but I felt that I had no other choice. Just look at the hurt and hardships our Asian-ness caused us!
Once I (wrongfully) identified and condemned Asian-ness for our pain, I started washing the 때 off me.
I refused to learn how to read and write Korean. It is the reason why even today, I had to Google how to spell the single syllable “때”. I talked to my parents in a strange and broken Konglish (the ramifications of this still massively felt to this day). I secretly curled my eyelashes every night because of how much I hated their stubborn straightness. I begged Umma to buy me something as offensive as Lunchables and save the bibimbap (mixed rice) and gyeran-mari (egg rolls) for home—you know, where they belonged. I didn’t want a doshirak, I wanted a fucking lunch box. I cringed at K-dramas and instead found idols in girls like Mary Kate and Ashley. I didn’t understand why I didn’t have double-eyelids and blamed my mom for never passing them down to me. I told people my middle initial stood for Jane or Justine or Jennifer or Jessica. I was always proud to tell people I was born here, and no, I’m not North Korean, and yes, my legal birth-given name actually is Michelle, and no, I won’t tell you what my parents call me in Korean, you probably couldn’t pronounce it right anyway, and yes, my brother was born here, too, and no, I won’t teach you how to say “hello” in my language, and yes, I totally like Mary Kate better, but like, Ashley’s totally cool, too.
(If you put a gun to my head, I couldn’t even tell you who’s who.)
I just wanted so badly to evade the exposure and shame I felt when Sally visited. I wanted to fit in and be well-liked and not smell Asian and not be noticed as anything besides Michelle, the girl who fits in and is well-liked and doesn’t smell Asian. I wanted my parents to know they could rely on me. I wanted to be an American pillar in our family. And that meant washing the 때. That meant white-washing myself until I fucking pruned or bled.
As I look back, I know I must have convinced myself that it was all an attempt to protect my parents. That I’d consume American culture, discover what Americans thought was weird about Asians, and help us avoid those things. That my parents would have this perfect American daughter who’d help them navigate America. Today, I can admit that it was far more likely that I just wanted to separate myself from this pain as much as possible. That I translated begrudgingly and helped in only some situations, and only with a massive chip on my shoulder. That I, if we’re really looking at what I did, simply abandoned my Umma and Appa.
I am embarrassed and ashamed by myself the most.
I kept scrubbing the 때 for so many more years and in so many more ways. Some methods were more deliberate, while others were deeply engrained in my subconscious. It’d range from the clothes I bought to the way I styled my hair. The movies I watched, the music I listened to. The grocery stores I preferred. The useless way I pointed to an item on a menu instead of just telling the Korean waitress my order. The way I’d pretend not to know how to say something in my language. The way I always seemed to know that the bad driver ahead is Asian.
I spent almost the entirety of my adolescence and teenage years denying my Asian-ness in these ways.
And then the strangest thing happened.
A true phenomenon I still don’t fully understand until this day. It changed almost everything for Asians in general, and for Korean people specifically.
The year is 2012.
President Barack Obama is re-elected.
The New York Giants win the Super Bowl.
Everyone wonders if the Mayans were right and if this really is the end of the world.
Hurricane Sandy is on its way, posed to devastate parts of the East Coast.
The Avengers assemble for the very first time in a major motion picture.
And a Korean pop star named Psy releases the song “Gangnam Style”.
I -
Before this song, K-pop music and Korean pop culture in general was only considered a handful of Asian people’s guilty pleasure. K-pop was something you enjoyed silently and by yourself. This would all change when Psy came out with “Gangnam Style”.
I believe “Gangnam Style” is what made it socially acceptable to admit that you like Korean/Asian pop culture. It’s what helped Korean/Asian pop culture gain its traction, and what helped introduce Asians as cultural tastemakers.
This is all because “Gangnam Style” was one of the very first pieces of Asian pop culture that was heartily embraced by America. I don’t mean to say that Asian pop culture was never liked or had its moments in America, but I don’t believe that any other piece of Asian art or pop culture reached this level of recognition, fame, and immortality. I mean, the music video has nearly 5 billion views on YouTube as of today.
I can’t explain why or how this song took off like wildfire on PEDs. I won’t even attempt to understand the sociological landscape in America at the time and how it so readily accepted and championed this… Asian spectacle. It’s about the very last thing I would ever expect to be integrated into American pop culture. On a very basic level, I suppose “Gangnam Style” combined many things American pop culture featured and often treasured. For starters, it resembled all the Top 40 electronic music at the time—you can basically hear the LMFAO and Black Eyed Peas of it all. It featured a dance routine, and to a culture that grew up crankin’ dat Soulja Boy, staying at the Y-M-C-A, or doing the Macarena, a new dance craze would be welcomed with open arms. The music video was bright, funny, and featured dancing women. Okay, that makes sense enough.
But in its entirety, “Gangnam Style” is still such a nonsensical, outlandish, and Asian song. It’s literally sung in a different language. Why was this what finally put Asians and Asian pop culture on the map? When nobody could even understand what it meant? When the music video was ridiculous and wacky?
It’s not the resemblance to LMFAO’s sound that answers this question. It’s “Gangnam Style’s” nonsensical, ridiculous, and laughable nature that does. Its unprecedented ridiculousness and nonsense is precisely why America finally let us in.
America, otherwise, wasn’t ready to welcome or enjoy Asian-ness unless it was nonsensical. To America, who never could make sense of an Asian man and woman living here, this nonsensical song made perfect sense to them. It’s what they’ve known about Asians forever—that they are to be pointed and laughed at—and now there’s a catchy song and dance to accompany this.
This sensationalized caricature of Asians is how much of America knows Asians, and it was only when something came along that embodied America’s perception that it was finally allowed to be perceived at large.
The timing of America’s sudden embrace couldn’t have been worse, though; “Gangnam Style” was sicced upon the world in July 2012, the summer right before my senior year of high school.
All the social status I’d ever accumulated and almost every identity I’d ever curated had culminated into this final year of high school, where it’d arguably matter and be noticed the most. For the two short months before senior year would start, I watched in horror as “Gangnam Style” gained more and more popularity. I shook my head in disbelief when it first appeared on networks like E! and MTV, and grimaced when it played on morning radio. It wasn’t played on some random Asian station where the static muddled its quality. We’re talking quintessential popular radio; we’re talking KIIS FM. It felt so strange hearing the words “Gangnam Style” leave Ryan Seacrest’s mouth. The two things just didn’t belong together.
Despite my bewilderment, all I could do was monitor it closely. I could only sit idly by as the song established itself as a pioneer in meme music and a defining moment in pop culture in general. It was going to take up space, regardless if Korean people liked it or not.
I, of course, was one of the Koreans who did not like it. Because up until that time, I’d done a great job of cleaning the 때 off of me. And “Gangnam Style,” of all things, threatened to ruin everything.
As the start of the new school year approached, I prepared myself for imminent mockery and for people to make the so obvious observation and association that, hey, wasn’t I Korean? Just as I expected, “Gangnam Style” was a topic of conversation before the first bell ever rang. Similarly, people flocked to the nearest Korean person to make the simplest connection that, yes, we were both Korean things.
The song and its echoes were truly inescapable. It played in retail stores. At the gas station. On the radio. It was even played during our homecoming assemblies and dances. And I had no choice but to suffer the reverberations—the same questions over and over again: So what does the song mean? How do you feel about it as a Korean? Is this what Korea’s really like? Hey, aren’t you Korean? You’re Korean, aren’t you? Hey, you’re Korean!
This lasted almost half a year.
I had had enough by the spring. I wanted to escape America’s magnifying glass on my Korean-ness. This godforsaken association to the only other Korean thing people knew.
So when Umma asked if I’d like to go with her to Korea for two weeks, I—to my own surprise—said yes.
After all, it wasn’t really that I had a problem with being Korean. It was that I had a problem being known as Korean in America. So what better place to hide my Korean-ness than in Korea, where everyone is Korean?
Two weeks.
I didn’t wash off my 때 for the two weeks I was in Korea. I let my skin become thick with Korean relatives who didn’t know a lick of English, calloused with eating on the floor, hardened with dried squid and street food.
And I loved it.
I don’t know if it was the nuance and excitement of traveling that cultivated this newfound appreciation for my culture or the fact that I was actually in the environment that allowed for the appreciation to grow that so drastically rewired my thoughts on my Asian-ness. Truthfully, it was probably a combination of both.
But for two weeks, I lived openly as a Korean. I communicated mostly in Korean, and found that, even though my skill level was terrible, I could get by. I used Korean currency to buy Korean souvenirs and bus tickets. I ate some of the best food I ever had, and it was all Korean. I visited Korean historical sites and traversed beautiful Korean trails. I met my Korean relatives, and I saw my mom as a daughter, sister, aunt—identities I had never ever seen her occupy before coming to Korea. I saw her peel Korean pears, and even though she’d done that a thousand times before, she did it now in Korea and it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever done. I watched her hug her Korean siblings. I watched her laugh at Korean variety shows with her mom. I watched her be Korean, and it felt like I finally got to know her a little better.
During those two weeks, I simply was Korean, and I was with my umma. Two things I didn’t know, previous to my trip, meant everything to me.
And of course, I heard “Gangnam Style” played over and over.
But I didn’t find myself clenching my jaw with fury.
I…enjoyed it over there. Because I saw how much Korean people enjoyed it. Because I saw how much pride it brought them. Because I saw Korean kids doing the dance and singing the lyrics and basking in it. Because I saw that, even though we’d be known for “Gangnam Style” for now, Korean people seemed to know they had so much more up their sleeves.
Our sleeves.
When I went to Korea, I gained a new perspective on my culture and heritage. It sometimes is as simple as that.
I wish I had a better and more profound account of how I undid years and years of self-inflicted white-washing. I guess it was just the way I felt close to my umma in a way I never did before. It was finally seeing her, and knowing and noticing and accepting and embracing and loving that she was—is—Korean. And because I am hers—because I am her— I am Korean, too. And I finally understood, maybe, what it meant to love that about me.
How much happier could I have been if I didn’t stifle who I simply was?
I don’t want to make the same mistake again.
I am my umma’s daughter. I am my umma. I am Korean.
And my middle name is Jung.
When I returned to the states, I thought maybe I had undone almost all of the white-washing.
If I hadn’t exactly “undone” it, then I made the conscious decision to accept the fact that I was Asian and to appreciate it. This decision came around the same time I simply began to mature as an adult. This is another one of those simple-as-that phenomena—I frankly grew up, and I didn’t care that much anymore whenever I heard “Gangnam Style” played on KIIS FM. I just let it run, and laughed at myself for how much I had let Psy—Psy!!!!— send me into an identity crisis.
With these two things braided—my changed perspective from my trip and my development as a mature adult—I started to fully and more honestly accept my culture. I no longer tried so hard to reject Korean things. I started cooking Korean dishes on my own accord. I didn’t scoff and lie about watching Korean dramas; I openly wept at The Secret Garden and told my other Asian friends to watch it. I started looking at Asian people differently, more compassionately, and felt honored to be among them. I started telling people what my parents called me in Korean if they asked, and I started telling them with a sense of pride. And I actually dated (quite seriously, I might add) someone I swore I’d never: a Korean guy.
This acceptance of my Korean- and Asian-ness became a regular part of me, as regular as my skin.
Finally.
And while I’m proud of the inner work I’ve done to come to accept and love my being Asian, there’s still so much more I have to investigate. I don’t think I’ll ever get to a point of having fully dissected and understood my Asian-American-ness as long as I’m Asian and as long as I’m American. But I have a responsibility to myself and those around me to try and understand, to try and reclaim at least some of my Asian-ness. Part of this journey is to admit all the ways in which I’ve actively tried to deny it. Another part is to simply acknowledge the possibility that my current choices—despite how much I’ve come to accept my culture—are residual effects of my suppressed Asian-ness as a child and teenager.
There’s one glaring choice, one made very recently, that I can’t just let slide under the radar. And as much as I want to protect its purity and honestness, I have to look at the very real choice I made to marry a white man.
I don’t have a reason to lie; I would admit if part of my courting him included any calculated attempt to resist my Asian-ness if that were true. But it simply isn’t. I can honestly say that there wasn’t a conscious intent to court him because of some hope that he’d somehow help me wash off the 때. When I first met and got to know Chad on a romantic level, I didn’t see a white token or a white savior. By the time we had started dating, it was a coincidence that I happened to both like him and that he was white.
But in the eight years we’ve been together and the eight months we’ve been married, I’ve realized that it’d be an act of treachery and act of erasure to pretend like we’ve got no racial differences at all. Of course we do, and as we’ve grown closer and have gotten more serious, I’ve had to frequently examine these differences.
Chad has no idea what it feels like for his parents to be laughed at for something as harmless as an accent.
Chad can talk to his mom and dad, and they can talk about anything and everything. He can get advice from them, and he can tell them how he feels—something I’ve never had the ability to do without Google translate or it turning into immediate rage.
Chad has never been asked how to say something as fucking trite and mind-numbing as “hello” or “how are you?” in English.
Chad has never had to translate a simple form or take over a phone call or talk to the person at the door.
Chad has never had to worry about friends coming over, the food his family prepares, or the decor in his house.
But that doesn’t mean his experience was perfectly peachy either.
Chad has never stuffed a dumpling on New Year’s with the smell of sizzling marinated beef throughout the house.
Chad has never carefully bowed to his ancestors, been wished prosperity, and given an envelope filled with cash.
Chad has never tried kimchi straight from the tub, out of a Korean woman’s hands.
Chad has never watched a one-year-old baby pick his or her destiny at a doljabi.
Chad has never had the 때 scrubbed off of him.
Not until he met me.
I don’t know. My marrying a white man could very well have been a deep-rooted, convoluted, labyrinthine, and subconscious manifestation of my childhood suppression of my Asian-ness. That could be true. But I also hope that it was an attempt to share my culture that I love so much with the person I love the most.
Maybe it’s neither. Or both. Or the former. Or latter. Again, I don’t know.
I wish I was able to definitively say that our relationship wasn’t tied to our cultures at all; that the two have absolutely nothing to do with each other. But that’s naive. And I’m no psychologist, but it probably just is not true. I’m sure our cultures had a lot to do with how far we’ve gotten.
I mean, would we have gotten this far if he were Asian? What if he were Korean? Would we have gotten this far?
If my ex, the one and only Korean person I ever dated were any indication, the answer is probably no. While we broke up for other bigger reasons besides our shared culture, some part of me still feels like our shared culture was a contributing factor. At least it was for me.
Because my ex was Korean, he innately understood so much of my inner turmoil and childhood trauma. He had information and data and—worst of all—the similar memory and experience of the pain I had experienced growing up. And I couldn’t handle this. I couldn’t handle the fact that this shared experience was between us because that meant it’d be between us, and I’d wanted nothing else than to be as far away from it as possible. It’s not that I wanted to suppress even more of my Asian-ness; it was that I wanted to suppress some of the pain caused by my Asian-ness, and being with someone Asian just didn’t let me do that. It was a constant reminder of our shared plight, and that sense of relatability wasn’t what I wanted. Looking at him sometimes hurt me, because he fucking looked like me. He reminded me of growing up Asian. Of our parents getting ridiculed at the mechanic. Of Sally’s comment and wicked laugh.
So I don’t know. I don’t know if Chad and I would’ve gotten this far if he were Korean. I don’t know the answer. And it breaks my heart.
It breaks my heart to speculate that dating a non-Asian person very well might’ve been a subconscious attempt to protect little Michelle from any more of the pain and trauma of having to grow up Asian. That pain is connected to being Asian in America to begin with. That that pain was mine at such a young age. That that pain was mine at all. That that pain is so many other Asian girls’ who are now in a relationship with white men or non-Asian men.
Maybe there are so many Asian woman-white man relationships out there for a reason. I don’t think it’s an Asian woman’s kink or a type. It’s a repressed defense mechanism. A subliminal survival tactic. (I say “survival” loosely, and not to suggest that We exclusively or purposely look to white men for saving.) And people, yet again, have found a way to tear this apart about an Asian girl. An Asian girl dating a white guy has become so common that it’s become a punchline. That it’s become so typical of her, and never him.
To the Asian girls who constantly get ridiculed for dating a white guy or someone who’s not Asian, I see you. And your relationship is safe with me.
And I hope my marriage to Chad is safe with you, Reader. I know this evaluation of our cultures has been a convoluted, messy thing. I know it paints a strange, compromised portrait. I know this portrait isn’t all yellow or all white, but a muddled gray area. I know it all seems a bit suspicious and curious. But it’s honest.
Being with Chad, around his family, and their non-Asian life, it felt…painless. Easy. Nice. I am sorry that it felt that way. I didn’t know I needed it. It was like a breath of fresh air. And with this new breath, I’ve since been able to better integrate Chad into my culture, my culture into Chad.
It’s been a strange and serpentine road to Now, our well-functioning and honest interracial marriage.
But I don’t choose to see it as another way to wash off the 때. I choose to see it as sharing the most precious things in my life with one another. I choose to see it as introducing the love of my life to my life. I think there’s a beauty in that.
Chad, Umma, and Appa making dumplings on New Year’s.
In 2012, it was Psy.
In 2022, today, it’s just about everything.
Now, we’re all caught up and fully invested in Korean-ness.
Me. Chad. You. America. Sally, probably.
In the past few years, Korean culture has skyrocketed into mass popularity. Korean culture has shattered ceilings, broken records, made history. It’s something I both love and am deeply proud of, and something that quietly troubles me and brings me shame. I’m so happy that Koreans and Asians in general are getting the mainstream representation and love they deserve, but I’m also terribly confused at how much popularity and adoration our culture(s) has amassed. Didn’t I spend so much of my life rejecting all these things? Being made fun of for these things? Having to be Asian in secret?
And now it’s here. On a pedestal. Beloved.
I haven’t fully come to terms with my culture being so beloved by everyone just yet. It still baffles me every time I see Blackpink storm American stages, or BTS dancing and singing in Korean on Jimmy Fallon. I became emotional and was in utter disbelief when Bong Joon-ho made history at the Oscars. I nearly cried when a group of Koreans stood upon the American stage, holding golden statues and bowing to the audience. I feel amused when Korean skincare and exfoliants of all things fly off American shelves. I feel joyful and I feel odd when Korean food becomes TikTok trends. I find it charming and weird when non-Koreans make the Korean heart symbol with their fingers. I feel immense pride when Korean dramas and shows dominate Netflix and social media.
But when these things happen, I want to both let out a sonic, triumphant war-cry and sob at my own failure to love myself and my culture when I was child. I wish I let myself have that joy, comfort, life. I wish I didn’t succumb to embarrassment, shame, and anger. I wish I didn’t abandon my parents, my culture, my heritage. I wish I would have eaten the meal Umma made for Sally and me. I wish I never grew up to know shame.
I wish I let this little girl just be Korean.
I can’t do much for the little girl in the picture. I can’t change her experiences, change the shape of her eyes, or the smell of her childhood house.
But I can try and heal some of the pain she’s carried around and still carries around.
I’m so grateful I’ve got the opportunity to reclaim my culture. And while I’m definitely not the perfect Korean or Asian, I love being both.
I hope people try and wash off the 때 because they want to try something Korean.
Today, when I bathe myself and watch the 때 roll off my body, I imagine myself, not aiming for whiteness, but restoring my distinct Korean-ness. It’s a conversation I have with my inner child, with my umma when she was of the age where bending over to bathe me didn’t pain her knees. I find myself scrubbing off all the times I’ve ever bashfully made fun of my own race. I scrub off all the times I’ve grown annoyed at my parents for not understanding something they didn’t grow up with and didn’t have the time or energy to fully learn. I scrub off all the times I’ve ever called someone a fob or pretended I didn’t know how to pronounce an obvious Asian name. I scrub off all the times I’ve scrubbed off the 때 with anger, with embarrassment, with the intent to erase. I scrub off the time I grew angry at Umma for cooking Korean food for Sally.
When I think of all the ways I’ve hurt Umma because everything she did and knew was Korean, and all I wanted to do was reject all things Koreans, I feel such a deep sense of foolishness and regret.
I want to ask Umma to run the bath again, and I want her to answer me in Korean, and for me to answer back. I want to be Korean with her. I want to tell her that the water temperature is just right, and of course she can see me naked, she made me. I want to laugh with her, and eat her food, and thank her for my middle name, and I never wish to deny her or our Korean-ness again.
I just wish, more than anything, I can say these things to her.
I’m afraid, though, my Korean just isn’t good enough for that.
