Written by Cailey Beck
Growing up in Los Angeles’s Koreatown as an awkward little Korean kid was probably one of the best things that could have happened for me. I was about eight when I moved down from the Santa Clarita Valley to LA. It was a beautiful town (from the pictures I’ve seen), but there was only one other Korean girl in my entire elementary school. At that point, I had never really seen or been around many Asian people other than my extended family (and that one girl). I wasn’t necessarily bothered by this, but it was mostly because I didn’t know that it could be any other way. And then, we arrived: I looked out my window at Wilshire Blvd, and stared. There were Korean people everywhere. Walking their dogs, putting money in a parking meter, going into restaurants and shops- I was astonished. I asked my mom if we had come to Korea while I was asleep on the freeway. She laughed and said no, then took me to what would become my favorite place in the world: Boba Time. Mango slush in hand, dripping condensation onto my shoes, my mom and I walked down a street lined with what seemed like a never-ending row of low, plaster buildings, painted in tacky colors with barbeque scented smoke wafting out of their shoddy windows. I knew how to read a little bit of Korean back then, and I gazed dumbfounded at sign after sign of Korean I couldn’t quite make out in varying shapes and colors. We walked until we got to a dinghy looking bungalow-type building, and when we opened the door, a hot blast of air hit us in the face. The restaurant was packed to the absolute brim, which was quite a feat considering its size, and I looked around at the customers. There was a woman feeding her screaming toddler in one corner, a couple of teenagers in the other, and an old man red in the face, yelling at the other red-faced man across from him. And they were all Korean.
I think I’m a pretty down-the-middle Korean-American; not super American, definitely not a FOB. My English and Korean are split too; maybe not right down the middle, but close. English is easier most of the time (because everything is in English), but I can read, write, speak, and understand most Korean. Korean was actually my first language – when I started preschool I would come home everyday bawling because I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying to me. Eventually, I figured it out, obviously, and luckily my Korean stuck around, too. I’ll speak to whoever can understand me in Korean, and whoever can’t, in English. I dream in English about as much as I do in Korean, and sometimes I have to translate words from both ways in my head when I’m talking. Being bilingual, I feel that I am both fully Korean as well as fully American. I feel that I can look across the cultural divide into both worlds. I sort of have a double-negative-ethnicity within myself: not fully American, not fully Korean. In this way, I’m neither this nor that; instead, I’m both.
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