Younger-Generation Korean Experiences in the United States by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

A Box of Crayons

When you’re young, you can see but can’t yet comprehend what makes people different. It never struck me as odd that the girl on my right could speak Russian, that the boy on my left could read Hebrew, and that I could understand Korean. I was a transfer student, the new girl from Brooklyn. To my new Queens classmates, Brooklyn seemed like another world, a place that they had only heard of. When I think of it now, my classmates didn’t ask me about Korea, they asked me about Brooklyn. People, especially other Koreans or East Asians, tried to talk to me and befriend me, to be a part of their group, as if it was by invitation only. Even in elementary school, I never felt that connection with the general Korean-American crowd. They would talk to me about K-pop, Asian actors, and a whole lot of random topics I didn’t know anything about. I was asked questions about Brooklyn, why I had moved, and what toys or new gadgets I had, as if they were trying to label me into one of their categories.

Randomly, a girl came up to me, introduced herself, and simply asked if we could be friends—nothing more. Her name was Gladys, and she was Guatemalan. I had never even heard of Guatemala before I met her. She had no idea where Korea was on the map either, but who could blame us? I ran to a map, looked for something vaguely familiar (trying to cover my bluff until I found China), and moved my finger slightly to the right of the map, and showed her where Korea was. This was the beginning of a life-long friendship, with a person I didn’t know I’d have a world of connections with.

Queens is the most diverse place in the world, with residents that collectively represent over a hundred nations and roughly two-hundred languages. My fifth-grade classroom was a microcosm of the population of Queens. We were a box of crayons, different shades comfortably nestled in the same room, the same school, and the same neighborhood. We were all different, but in some ways, we were the same, and we all knew that too. In the end, we were all crayons.

At school, we were all the same. We primarily spoke English (minus the non-native English speakers), had the same teacher, and loved similar books. But at home, it was another world. As soon as school was over, we lived our other lives. We’d come home, shut the door behind us, and the rules and social norms changed. Some of us spoke a different language, and/or practiced a different culture at home. Some ate different foods, and had different routines. Whether our families were Korean, Russian, African American, Spanish, or Caucasian, home was a different place entirely. While many of our families shared similar socioeconomic statuses, our home lives entailed very different cultures.

Junior high wasn’t so different from elementary school, at least in the beginning. As we started getting older, cliques started forming.

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