After studying abroad (when my Spanish was at its peak), some people who heard me speak Spanish would ask me if I was Latina. I may or may not internally scream when I get this because this, of course, is the ultimate goal for a non-native Spanish learner. [Short segway: if you are surprised that an Asian could be latina, do me a favor and read about Japanese-Peruvians here and Korean-Argentianians here. Latina Asians do exist!]
The funny thing – or not so funny thing – is that no one who hears me speaking Korean would assume I am from Korea. My grammar and vocabulary are lacking, my sentences obviously American. My parents both speak English very well, and so I didn’t practice Korean as much as I should have growing up.
Here is the struggle for me, a complicated set of feelings that I’ve thought a lot about here in Mexico: Korean is my mother’s tongue, but the truth is, I speak Spanish better.
In Spanish, I can talk about politics and how I feel about our government’s current administration. I can discuss the complexities of gun control, and the nuances of race relations in my hometown. My Korean, on the other hand, is what one would call “kitchen Korean.” It’s the Korean I use at home to ask my mother things in simple syllables, like if the soup needs stirring, if the onions need chopping, or if the noodles need boiling. I am not eloquent in Korean; I am limited.
While learning Spanish, yes, I’ve felt guilt. I’ve asked myself why I went to Spain and why I’m in Mexico when it’s my Korean that needs improvement. This guilt over my languages is two-pronged. Sometimes I’m angry I’m made to feel guilty. Being Asian-American in America means that America forever links you to the way you look. You have to prove your ethnicity in a way that white ethnic groups don’t have to. People of Polish ancestry and Italian ancestry aren’t judged for not speaking Polish or Italian. But in America, non-white groups are forever marked as foreigners, and foreigners are expected to speak a different language. I would never expect a blonde person to speak unaccented Swedish or German, but people are disappointed when I say that I can’t speak Korean perfectly. There is an imposition of American expectations on the foreign body that occurs in the United States.
But much of my guilt lies within me as well. My mother is intensely proud of me being in Mexico, but when I was applying to Fulbright, I remember her asking me whether I would consider applying to Korea. I told her the truth – that if I had this one shot to apply, that I didn’t want to go to Korea. I wanted to go to Mexico. I’m confident in my decision, but I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about that question since. Shouldn’t I, as a Korean-American, be putting my efforts into learning the language of my ancestors’, instead of the language of a continent that has nothing to do with mine? I pour my time here into studying Spanish grammar structures and memorizing lists of Mexican vocabulary. I haven’t studied Korean in years. There are layers of loss and gain linked with the linguistic abilities of the children of immigrants that I want others to understand.
I wish that I could wrap up this essay with a neat paragraph that says something along the lines of whatever language I speak, it’s the human language that matters or I have confidence that I will speak all three of my languages fluently by the age of 25. But that wouldn’t be fair to the complexity of the feelings that are tangled up inside of me. I panic a little, because I’m 22 and I know that my capacity for language, according to linguists, is fast coming to an end, may have already come to an end. I don’t know if I’ll ever speak Korean perfectly. As I continue along in my English and Spanish speaking lives, I’m honestly afraid I’ll lose more of my Korean, and I’m afraid that I’ll never get it back. Should I have chosen Korea instead of Mexico for my Fulbright?
But through talking to Rita, one of my dear Fulbright friends, I’ve realized a lot of things. She put it eloquently, saying that though we aren’t returning to a homeland where our parents and grandparents were born, we’re setting foot into a new part of the world we’ve never before seen. As a Korean-American, I live and understand the Asian-American experience – we have our own customs and secret languages and struggles and cultural idiosyncrasies that bond us. By coming to Mexico, I’ve learned from a culture that is not my own at all. I’ve spent time in a place that has both baffled and dazzled me, developed a palate for food I didn’t grow up eating, seen completely new ways of living that I’ve never seen before. Speaking to people who have gone to or have family in the U.S., I’ve gleaned insight into parts of the Mexican-American experience that are so different from the Asian-American one. I can’t regret learning Spanish because without it, I would have never been able to receive this grant, or have conversations with all of the people here who taught me what I know. And here in Mexico, as I’ve explained my Asian-American identity to my students and friends, I have reaffirmed who I am to myself.
Because in the end, can I be Korean without speaking Korean perfectly? The answer is – yes. Yes, I can. I may listen to more banda and indie rock than I listen to Kpop, but Korean is the language of my birth. It´s the language of my childhood. There is something about it that runs in my blood, that is buried deep inside of my body. When I need them, I remember words I didn’t know I knew, words that are still within me from when my family spoke them into me as a child. The way my mother scoops rice into a bowl is Korean, and I learned to scoop my own rice from her. When someone judges the authenticity of my heritage or my pride in my family’s immigrant history based on my ability to speak Korean, they are missing so many parts of the picture.
If you have a hyphenated identity – Korean-American, Mexican-American, Nigerian-American – we are lost children, in a way. There is Korea and there is America. There is no country called Korea-America. We have to forge our own worlds, our own cultural identities, where we can be both. Maybe neither country will claim us as their own, but the important thing is that we claim ourselves. No, I don’t speak Korean perfectly. Yes, I am Korean-American.
La Coreana Americana 