The summer after fourth grade, my dad got a new job at Toyota and moved our family out to California for a training year. This was a transformative year for me: attending a school right outside Koreatown, 65% of my classmates were Korean and spoke Korean. I was bullied for being a gyopo, a slightly negatively connoted term for a South Korean immigrant, so I dug deep into my memories for the Korean language and culture I had been brought up with. Once I started “acting more Korean,” I was graciously accepted into the popular clique, and for the first time in my life, boys started showing interest in me. Although a lot of my cultural performance was just that, a performance, that year I did learn to be proud of my Korean background again. I remembered how good it felt to be surrounded by people who looked like me, who didn’t question my presence. And though I hated being pressured to perform my culture in a specific way, I appreciate that year for its role in my own identity-building.
I didn’t even realize I had changed in California until I came back to Michigan. My first week back at church, I sat next to my friend Jenny.
“안녕! 진짜 오랜만이다!” I said. I really couldn’t get over how weird it felt to be back--probably because I was so different but didn’t realize it--so I said it again after a few minutes. “진짜 오랜만이다!”
“Why do you speak so much Korean now?” Jenny commented with a slight side eye. I turned red all over. I had forgotten that Michigan was completely different.
I got used to feeling like the norm in LA so quickly. I felt out of place at school, where I blamed my Asianness and band community for making me not cool, and dove into my relationships at church instead, even if they too required a specific cultural performance of my identities. I hated going to Korean school on Saturdays before my year in LA, but I now enjoyed it--I excelled in Korean, made friends, even started a K-pop dance team. Although I had genuine, good friends at my middle and high schools, I was always more invested in and concerned with my Korean American community because of the social capital I was allowed to have and strive for in those circles.
In retrospect, I regret not having valued my school friends more. While I made a few genuine, lasting relationships at Korean school and church, many of the people who have worked to keep in touch with me are friends I neglected and set aside at school. They’re the ones that showed patience and understanding to me despite my constant obsession with new friends and with being well-known and liked. They’re often the ones that are now feminists and activists in their new communities. They’re the ones closer to the people and groups I’m smitten with now.
Because old habits die hard. As I write this memoirette to question what to do about what’s essentially my current Korean American Christian community, I wonder if I have neglected and set aside some of my friends from that group, friends who have stuck by me and supported me throughout the past four years, as I gaze enamored at my new social justice friends.
But I do want to surround myself with justice-minded people. Where is the balance?
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