One of the issues I’ve been exploring in my writing is enmeshment. The thing I trip on is that the idea is Western, with a base ideal that we are individuals first and foremost. Enmeshment is the problem between two individuals who can’t separate, hence “co-dependency”.

It’s an easy thing to see in the case of say, drug addicts, or enabling spouses, think Sid & Nancy, or women who can’t leave their abusive husbands. It’s more elusive in the long running genre of writing about daughters and their mothers, where it is often a battle of wills and daughters struggling to emancipate. It’s hard though to find this in Asian cultures – where the base ideal is the group, and the individual serves the family. The idea of teenage rebellion and departure from the family home at eighteen or twenty-one, esp. for a young woman, is foreign in Asian cultures where the idea of harmony is supremely valued, and ideally, a daughter is so cherished and valued there would be nothing for her to rebel against. (I know, this is an idealized example.)

As a KA I’ve seen a lot of conflict over this, where the Korean selves war against the Western parts of ourselves. KA families are torn apart by this, esp. by children who bitterly resent the Confucian authority of their parents ending in years of silence and anger. In Korea, this problem doesn’t exist in the same way. Anger of course is always a Korean issue, but the way KA’s, being born and raised here, internalize the Western values of being unique, independent naturally sparks wild against traditional Korean mores leading to a very real threat for KA’s who feel stifled, then oppressed, before in a sense fleeing for their lives.

Continue reading "Enmeshment and the KA" »

Sniffle. My little sister is getting married! This summer. If there are any crafty folk out there with Korean themed ideas, we'd love to hear 'em. She's chosen Korean ducks as a motif since her wedding will be lakeside. Nice, right? Clever bride.

Tonight as I was putting the boys to yoh (Korean style bed) my two year old Gabriel says,

"Me love you Momma. Me love you Hyung-ah."

(Hyung-ah is the kid term for Older Brother)

Silence from Hyung, who is four years old.

I nudge him and say: "Tell him you love him!"

Hyung, really quickly: "I love you Momma and Gabriel."

Gabriel squeals. Then, "Me so happy Momma! Me so happy!"

Then as if he can't believe it: "I love you Mom! I love you Hyung-ah!"

Again, silence.

Gabriel, haltingly: "Tell me Hyung-ah!"

On my list of things to do included adding a section for other blogs on my site. I'm not really a full member of the blogosphere but part-time (as if you couldn't tell by my postings!) but I do so enjoy the form.

In any case, one of the Grace's sent me this link yesterday: askakorean.blogspot.com After reading a few posts I seriously considered whether I should stop writing my own blog. This guy is an expert writer though for the uninitiated you should know his writing style is very aggressive (surprise, Koreans are aggressively opinionated?!) and voicy, but it does feel as though he is genuinely and deeply passionate about Korean and KA matters.

Another weird thing is that the writer is best blog friends with The Mexican which some of you might know, is my husband's handle. It almost feels like that pop sci-fi book where the main character finds out he is just a duplicate of the real him. And I'M the duplicate.

Anyhow.

Here's an excerpt from one of his funny posts titled:
Ask A Korean! News: Open Letter to Non-Asian People

Dear Black, Hispanic, and White People:

My name is the Korean, the host of a popular blog of Ask A Korean! The Korean keeps the blog in order to edify non-Koreans, and more generally non-Asians. That means you. The Korean had been thinking that he was making good progress, but visiting a region in America mostly populated by you people made the Korean realize that more direct approach is necessary. Therefore, the Korean presents the behavioral guide of interacting with Asian Americans.

- When you meet an Asian person in America, listen to the person's English. If it's fluent, assume the person is American. Do not say "Oh, your English is so great!" unless you want a punch in the face.

- Do not ask "Where are you from?" to an Asian person unless you are reasonably certain that s/he is outside of his/her American hometown. If the Asian answers, say, "Los Angeles", do not follow up with "where are you originally from?" or "where are your parents from?" Our precise ethnicity is none of your fucking business. Do we ever ask you whether you are from Dominican Republic, Ireland, or Ivory Coast?

- Do not holler any Asian celebrity name at any Asian person. The Korean is 6'1", and plays basketball frequently. If the Korean hears one more "Yao Ming!" from one of you, he will shove a basketball up your ass.

- Do not say "gonnichiwa" to an Asian person in America, unless you are absolutely positive that the Asian person is a Japanese tourist, or you are a host/hostess of a Japanese restaurant greeting an Asian customer. (Although if you are a host/hostess, the proper greeting would be iratsaimashe.) There are relatively few Japansese Americans in America compared to Chinese or Korean Americans, so you are most likely wrong; and if you had been reading the blog, Korean people really don't like being mistaken for a Japanese. Chinese people are not all that different either.

- On second thought, don't say any Asian phrase to any Asian person, unless you are at least conversational in the language. It's the 21st century, people. We are no longer impressed by your amazing ability to say "hello".

.... click the above link to continue reading.

A tip from a blog friend emailed this today:

The Korea Society engages in the gender struggle with “Korean Women
Filmmakers: A Screening and Discussion with Yim Soon-Rye” on Wednesday
April 22 @ 6pm with one of the country's rare female directors
screening her documentary about women in Korea's film industry as well
as her short film.

The Korea Society
950 3rd Avenue
8th Floor
NY, NY 10022

(212) 759-7524

I am so there, a bag of ojing-oh (squid), old school style!

Found via Loobylu

Tae Eun Yoo also has a lovely etsy shop where you can buy her prints for $25 and a website with her portfolio!

Most recent offering at 20x200 (I know, I'm such a tool but isn't this lovely!)...

(I don't know if you can tell but these are large format photos ... a rush of both detail and perspective at the same time, not to mention the colors! )

painted a mural on her dad's laundromat wall.

I've been a fan for years....

She's doing a group show March 18th-April 11th at:

Sloan Fine Art
128 Rivington Street
(corner of Norfolk)
New York, NY 10002
212.477.1140

with Caroline Hwang another favorite...

and Seonna Hong whose work I am looking forward to seeing... !

Hence, David Chang.

I was sent this link ages ago about the superstar chef and owner of Momofuku Ko, Ssam Bar and now Bakery and Milk-Bar. The profile is well-done and captures much of of his immigrant upbringing and I was asked along with the link what I thought about the article, about David's conflicted genius and his compulsions towards religion. And I could not come up with an articulate response no matter how hard I tried.

What came out finally was the blog post from yesterday and how David Chang to me is a poster boy of our generation. It touches on his obsession with perfection, his compulsion toward religion, his conflict-ridden psyche as well as his ability to deal with the madness of the professional world of cooking. Also, it touches on something close to my heart, probably a subject most sensitive to me recently - KA men and their identities. But that's another blog post entirely.

Can't wait to hear what you think.

A social anthropologist once said of 1.5'ers that our experience here was the same as if our children were being raised by our grandparents. That the cultural mind-jump was profound, spanning from an agrarian post-war mindset to post-post modern in one generation. There was more said about this but this statement captured it all for me...

It captures my feeling that we are a generation of time travelers, of sci-fi characters able to feel at home in a tin-roofed home with an outhouse in Pusan, S. Korea and just as easily go to our jobs manning a register in the inner city while spending our days in academia. We can receive our local prayer lady without batting an eye, she'd come in and pray over us in tongues and things might even become more christian-shamanistic and your mom will be in the other room getting bruised black and blue (what IS the name of that practice?) and you will be in the kitchen preparing the watery instant coffee doused heavily with coffee-mate thinking of what movie you'd like to see, and if there was time to do a Starbuck's run for a latte.

I think this is the main reason Korean-American's have been able to assimilate so quickly and so successfully, the reason why there were recent studies done on the absurdly high percentage of Korean-American's who have made their way into the top tiers of entertainment, fashion, and art including the more traditional model-minority pursuits of law and medicine. We are a generation unfazed by the speed at which our times are progressing, we can twitter/game/Youtube as fast as we can help our mothers get out of the weird illegal DirectTV deal a Korean man approached her with (my mom in PA got somehow hooked into New York DirectTV but only got about eleven channels total) - how many times have we had to write letters, call companies on our parents behalf starting with "My mother doesn't speak English very well..."

It also explains why a K-A college girl from Los Angeles on vacation with her mom was able to whisper/mime to us one night by the camp fire in Yosemite that all the Korean's she knew were f***ed up. Pure and simple. And it was the reason, she said louder, that she knew she would not ultimately marry a Korean guy. She looked at her mom, a cheery energetic sort who loved driving all over the country on these mini vacations with her daughter and her mom said batted her eyes innocently and demanded to know, Why you look at mommy ?

If you think about it, the east-west factor alone is pretty astounding. At the same time we have to be both inter-dependent and individualistic; authority revering and authority critiquing; thinking of other's feelings first and thinking of how we feel first; obedient and unique; financially enmeshed with your parents and family, and expected to earn your own way. The list goes on and on and I for one think it's no small link to the high percentage of immigrant K-A's and mental illness. Because it is an impossible jump, bigger than a move across an ocean and half the planet- it's a move into an other way of understanding, opposite to all the meaning Koreans had ever known.

I think of all the times I witnessed a profound culture conflict, from something as little as a customer who'd misunderstood my parent's manner for rudeness to as big as legal events where a beloved family member tried to show respect to the law with silence and cooperation, and how the legal system exploited this to profound damage. And like all sci-fi characters, because we're a unique generation, caught halfway here to there, we're marked by what we see and can't share.

Thanks Grace for the heads-up! We saw the episode last night and was rolling. They've got every shot down and Brett's Korean is pretty good.

He turned two on Sunday. He was so excited he kept practicing 'blowing' all weekend and was only sad when he couldn't turn 'four' like his big brother. "No two! Yes four!" he shouted. He's still figuring out verbs.

Amazing things about my #2: He potty trained himself at 16 mos and was night trained within two months. (This was the first thing Raul and I'd blurt out in conversation for weeks after because we still couldn't wrap our minds around it) He eats kimchee, rinsed kid-style, almost every day. Loves drawing on himself. Has broken 2 DVD players, our toaster, our Birthday present to ourselves Bosch IPod Player, crayoned our TV screen, and popped off the 'enter' key on our portable. All this under constant supervision! He just gets around. (His brother broke not a single thing in all his four years.)

We can't imagine life without him...

I got this lovely tip from a foodie friend recently ... (and thanks to flikr member sklathill!)

Kimchi + Tacos? I can't imagine a better way to represent my own marriage!

And here it is in today's NY Times... those guys are fast.

Back from Costa Rica without one sunburnt kid and we are still enjoying the first days of being back home. I always wonder on my trips back if I'll have that familiar feeling of being home, of loving the city and our Brooklyn nabe... or if one day I'll come back and feel nothing. I get this feeling of anticipation when we leave the airport and drive home, and my heart jumps a little when we turn onto Atlantic Avenue, just minutes from our place. Then the first few days back are like rediscovering the city you love, why you were drawn here in the first place and even the routine feels a little new.

Then, thud. Nine loads of laundry later you start coming back down and at some point you know you need to feed the kids a home cooked meal before they start turning into sandwiches and mac'n'cheese, and then the whole problem of schooling and where to live and how to live - thud.

New Yorkers will know what I'm talking about when I say that schooling is some serious business here and one of the top reasons people move away. My older one will go to Kindergarten in a year and if we want to guarantee him a spot at all we'll have to move to the zoned area for that public school. Private school is still an option but I expect if it was anything like the 2's application process we are pretty un-thrilled about it. We will know more about that in the fall but at this point we've toured over ten public schools and feel strong about several of them including the famed Park Slope, PS 321. But it would mean we would have to move. Again.

And then it wouldn't matter by the 5th grade because if we stayed in the public school system all the kids re-apply for middle school and it is the norm to end up commuting up to an hour away, for all of your kids to go to different schools in different areas, and then have to do the whole testing/application/interviewing/auditioning again for high school! No wonder the moms I've seen who've led the school tours all wear the same outfit: fitted worn black jeans, black tee, trekking shoes and and no joke, a money belt. They all have the air of being able to do anything at any moment which obviously comes with having put two or three children through school from pre-k to high school and thinking nothing of having one commute to the Upper West Side while another is bused to Coney Island.

Now why would anyone deal with this madness? Well many don't and so we have a ton of suburban neighborhoods pretty much founded by those who couldn't deal with this plus the other difficulties of urban living. And we've driven to some of those places and checked it out for ourselves. And at the end of the day we end up coming back having recounted all the reasons why we love living in the city - the lack of driving, the ethnic eating, the diversity, the creativity not to mention K-Town. We also realized that moving to a town with one school had drawbacks as well; we wouldn't have any choice first of all and we could be sure it would nowhere be as diverse as here. Our kids wouldn't be one of many mixed Korean kids but one of a few, and if the school had weak spots say in the arts or literature, we wouldn't have as many resources to draw on for support.

As a parent I've seen how hard it is to match a school to your child's particular needs and with the choices here parents always have options. Many, in fact. And having had key school experiences that were a poor fit for me I'm reluctant to give up the choices. So, back again to paragraph three. (they always say life is cyclical but i didn't imagine it this way)

Thud. Any thoughts?

We never quite got over the heartbreak of The Wire ending until we got into Battlestar Galactica. This show has got to be right up there with some of the best writing around, including what's out there in print and film and Pulitzer winning. While The Wire dazzled us with it's inventive novelistic structure and deeply nuanced characters, Battlestar takes up where Star Trek left off and does what sci-fi does best, creates an alternate futuristic world with it's own set of rules, and tells us stories about ourself in the cosmos. It is so friggin' good we will require our boys to watch it on DVD when they are old enough.

I also love that one of main characters is Korean and a cylon. Of course her name is Grace Park, just about the most iconic name for KA's... And to show you what a small world it is, it turns out she starred in a KA movie penned by a parent in our little Korean music group!

And on that random note I wanted to leave some eggbop apologies for being awol. I've been furiously working on a writing project and have also been happily inundated with Two Blue Cars stuff..... look out for our shirts in Uma Thurman's new movie Motherhood which opens later this year.

Jeong Mee Yoon's Pink & Blue project is currently on exhibition at CMA! It closes Feb. 8th so check it out!

There’s a saying of sorts in conventional blogging wisdom that every blogger has one good year’s worth of writing in them and this has been on mind in the last days of 2008. I often think about the nature of blogging, what it’s become and how it plays a role artistically. I think people know now that blogs are a ‘new’ form of writing, a digital medium in the way the typewriter ushered in well, typing, though the digital medium also seems to have some comment on form. An early commenter on my blog lectured that my entries were much too long for my blog to become ‘successful,’ by which he was referring to the phenomena of blogs becoming people’s professions. Basically, successful blogs have readerships big enough to attract paying advertisers.

This was never my goal, thankfully, and for this tiny niche of blogs about Korean related things I think all three advertisers for this audience have found places on sites like Kimchi Mamas. For me the blog was a way to explore some ideas and questions, and to share hopefully things I loved about Korean culture. It was also a freeing writing exercise (I gave myself limits as in only allowing one edit, and creating a post in one or two sittings versus the indefinitely long periods of time it can take to write a short story etc.) and at times a daunting one. The anonymity of blogging I think is attractive to artists because you can shape how much or how little you are revealed. Blogging to me is mainly nonfiction and there is always a struggle in nonfiction between the real you and the narrator you...

Which brings me finally to my point. I’ve reached a turning point with this blog, one that points in a direction more dense with some of my queries, and more revelatory. I find myself at a point in this writing discovery where I have some harder questions about myself, Korean-American culture, my family and my friends. Hard to do this when those same friends and family read this blog or can easily find this information on the Internet which is after all a public forum. Not to mention that slippery boundary between respecting other people’s privacy and at the same time being able to tell your own story that inevitably involves those you love.

But I will try. And hopefully people will continue to share their thoughts because the one great thing about this blog has been when others have responded with their own stories, however sympathetic or different they might be.

We're looking for folks interested in our Korean music group for kids, meeting in or near Boerum Hill. Times are being discussed so shoot me an email if you want more info. Meanwhile here are some of the songs we sing:

Olchengee Song (the Tadpole Song) - Picture both adults and kids on our feet acting out this song and you got a pretty good idea of our group.

Bear Family Song - One of our favorites!

Ands just because I spent too much time on YouTube and because Potty Training is still fresh on our minds:

(Okay so this is Japanese but the Korean Poop Song was too graphic even for me! Which incidentally my brother tells me is all the rage in Korea, a kid book about a Poop who transforms himself!)

Seh heh bok mani bad eh say yo! This year's seb eh was a record thirty minutes I think with grouped bowings and mass envelope giving. My sister's almost fiance has commented in the past that we were way too old to be receiving money for New Year's but we group jumped him and we haven't heard a peep since:)

Some one wonderful left a great comment about inviting guest bloggers and I'd love to explore this idea. I don't know exactly how it'd work but if anyone is interested maybe we can feel it out together? Just as long it has something to do with things Korean and is succinct'ish, maybe I can post something regularly! Just shoot me an email if you're interested and we'll take it from there.

Many blessings everyone and happy new year.

I've had a few long weeks of no Korean thoughts which is one of the down sides I am finding to a Korean-related blog. The flip side is I am making headway with my longer writing projects with KA themes. In any case, I hope everyone's holiday season is going merrily or at least healthfully. I expect New Year's is a big deal with most of you and I hope we're not the only middle-aged folk excited about sebeh because we still get money!

Growing up mi-yuk gook (Seaweed Soup) was often prepared at events or holidays so I came to associate it with making mandoo (dumplings) or rice cake, long arduous processes where I was often made to participate against my will. Hence my association with Mi-Yuk was also that it must be complicated not to mention those giant dried sheafs of seaweed that would sit mysteriously in our kitchen for well it seemed like years. What was more intimidating than that package of dried seaweed brought home from the Korean store that was as big as your torso?

Turns out, it is super easy to make. Too easy in fact and now I mourn all these years without having made it (though Korean moms might sympathize with the fact that I could not look at mi-yuk gook for months after the births of my two children!) (traditionally new Korean moms eat miyuk gook around the clock for three months and my own mom was pretty fanatic about this)

So here is a recipe for Super, Easy Mi-Yuk Gook:

1. Choose a pot for the amount of soup you want to make.
2. Fill with water 2/3. Add a generous amount of whole or minced cloves of garlic and half to a whole sliced onion.
3. If you want a beef based broth, add a pound'ish of a thick meaty shin bone or other great cut for making soup. Even easier is a a tablespoon of dried anchovy or me-loo-chi.
4. Boil then simmer for twenty minutes more or less.
5. Soak in warm water one or two paper sized portions of dried seaweed, or a small handful of the pre-cut kind for about ten minutes.
6. Add miyuk to your liking to the soup.
7. Soup is ready in about fifteen minutes. Salt and pepper to taste.

Oh my and before I forget my poor slave of a husband has finally finished the website! Our little shirts are online now and we are no longer at Brooklyn Flea so check out our new 'ga-geh' twobluecars.com out and let us know what you think!

Nothing like turkey and all the fixings plus banchan! I so strongly associate eating turkey with kimchee and rice that even if we have Thanksgiving elsewhere I have to save some turkey to eat with kimchee at home. It doesn't feel complete somehow.

Incidentally, my sister who spent the holiday at her just-about-fiance's in Maryland informed me that most of her 'Korean' Korean friends didn't really celebrate Thanksgiving. And if they did they didn't do turkey. Which made me curious as to what was on your table growing up? Did you do turkey or Thanksgiving at all?

Looking back I realized that the only reason we celebrated it was because of us kids and we had enough cousin power to insist on having turkey which we probably were roasting ourselves at eleven years old or something. Even now we tend to make all the American dishes while mom slaves over the Korean dishes which always took longer. The interesting thing is that now Thanksgiving has come to mean a doubly huge feast.

Mom was on a roll cooking wise and spent the next day making vats of kimchee. This is my younger son Gabriel watching and what you can't see is he's holding a banchan plate with his third helping of betchoo (cabbage) that's been prepped and just before being mixed with Mom's homemade chili paste.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Today's 20x200 edition features artist Juliane Eirich photography from her 1.5 years in Korea on an art grant (okay she was there to be with her Korean boyfriend also). This photo is from her series Korea Diary which is soon to be published as a book and I just think it's a perfect piece of happy in a grimly grey day...

I want to talk like this woman...

Maangchi is a one woman website/blog/podcast/video all about Korean cooking. I've already watched three youtube's since I got the link a few minutes ago. Thanks Sonia!

(Taken directly from the kimchee loving Justin's blog)

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

At night I've taken to wearing these men's nehbok my mom got the last time she was in Korea. They are just so comfortable I relax the instant I start putting them on. It's the same feeling I get when I come home and know that I won't be going out again - I usually put on 'home' clothes, something super comfy but incredibly dorky, and probably from the eighties. And before I got my hair chopped off, my hair would find it's way into whatever was at hand - a giant, bedazzled hair clip from mom, possibly a scrunchy, and definitely a bobby pin for the little stray hairs in front. All of which would come off in a second if the doorbell ever rang (as much for my vanity as for the fact that I might scare someone)

I'd read once in Korea that the idea of 'home clothes' was a practical tradition. That because Koreans dressed in their best to go out, they kept a change or two of clothes just to wear at home in order to preserve their more formal clothing. I'd add to that the clothes, almost like uniforms, also helped delineate roles - putting on one's best for interacting socially, and being plain and practical in solitude. This practice was very much a part of my growing up as well. As soon as we got home especially from church, we'd all head straight for our rooms and Mom would often emerge wearing neh-bok, usually with the waist high up over her stomach or her shirt hiked up while she scratched luxuriously at her girdle or bra marks.

At this time I was not so much a fan of nehbok as Mom would force them on me during winter days. I couldn't count the times I'd have to wear a full puffy set of nehbok under my cool jeans and fitted tops, and how I'd have to wait until I got to the bus stop or school bathroom before taking them off and stuffing them into my backpack. It wasn't until I went away to college and began to experience home coming as something to look forward to, a vacation, a place to relax that I started wearing nehbok on my own. I'd often come home to just be, and would pad around in nehbok, looking at pictures, reminiscing about family often joined by cousins who were also home from school. And yes, she'd borrow nehbok, or at least some sweats, and we'd sit around in our cocoon laughing and catching up.

This association has turned into even more as a married adult with children. My husband intones soon after we arrive at my mom's, usually my sister and I for some event, at the moment when she and I both dive into my mom's pajama drawer, " And now the big clothing comes out". My sister and I laugh because it's true, the nehbok and all of the pajamas are usually extra large, or at least the nehbok gives the impression of large since they're so full-body. These become our uniform for the time we are home and until recently my sister would even wear her giant glasses rather than her contacts, making us look at least ten years younger.

As a mom, I've developed an even deeper attachment to nehbok because I suddenly understood why my mother would get so frantic about my wearing them as a kid. I knew vaguely Korean moms had this fear of cold and attributed to it all sorts of evil but I never got past the literal nehbok to see what she was really saying and doing. The nehbok were her way to warding off the cold and the evil, of bundling me as thickly as she could before sending me out into the cold. It was her way of layering me, as much of home as possible, thickly against my skin, my only protection against the world when she could not be there.