I met this girl at the library today who is Korean and happened to be from the Midwest. In talking to her, I had a chance to reminisce on my one-year stay in Iowa about fourteen years ago. It was a brief period in my life, but perhaps the most critical in that it laid the foundations for my identity, one that still lacks clear definiton, but is my own to claim.
My family had just immigrated to the United States and my dad was able to secure an offer to lead a ministry in Bettendorf, Iowa. A dismal move from New Jersey to Iowa in a station wagon with backseat space barely enough for my three-year old sister and my six-year old body to fit in, we managed to somehow travel halfway through the country. We arrived safely and immediately noted the odd surroundings - the flat landscape, lack of trees, and a big, brown river that I had not yet learned to pronounce correctly. Iowa was smack in the middle of America, and this was where my transformation would take place.
I was a fob then. I spoke Korean fluently, and I dressed in tight fobby clothing. I always bowed ninety degrees to my elders, and I took good care of my baby sister. I couldn't attend the elementary school that was one block away from my house because it didn't offer an ESL program. Instead, I had to take a forty-minute bus ride to a bigger school that offered ESL. So I became used to waking up around 6 am each morning and being the first one to get on the bus. I sat in the first seat, closest to the bus driver. As the bus made its handful of stops, the passengers were composed of kids with mental and physical disabilities. Even as a six year-old, I was able to tell the difference and felt even more isolated because I believed myself to be normal.
My Americanization was accelerated because I never came in contact with Koreans at school. I knew there was one Korean other than myself in my school because he went to my dad's church, but he was in 10th grade and I was only in first. Plus, he didn't even know how to speak Korean, so in my eyes, he was just as "American" as the rest. I was extremely lonely for the first few months. In a school filled with Vietnamese, blacks, and whites, I could not identify with anyone.
I remember one morning during reading period looking at the illustrations in our textbook and listening to the kids re-enact the dialogue of a fable. It had a fox, a rabbit, and some other animals common in Aesop's stories. I shifted my focus from the pictures to the black-inked characters on the page, and as if I had suddenly escaped the cave, I was able to see and understand. I raised my hand and it shocked everyone in the classroom. "Peter, would you like to try?" the teacher asked in a curious tone. And so, my first successful reading took place, albeit it was filled with pauses and mispronunciations. I felt as if I had shed the chain of illteracy and moved one step closer to becoming an American. I began to make friends with everyone and it was truly satisfying even at that age to play basketball with a black kid, compare drawings with the Vietnamese kids, and talk about Bugs Bunny with the white kids.
I finished my ESL program and tranferred to the school near my house during 2nd grade. It was a completely different environment. Everyone was white and I was the only non-white. No blacks, no Hispanics, and no Asians. I trudged through the snow-covered field each day alone and it was no different in the classrom - except the snow was just people. Nobody really talked to me, and I just sat in the corner, spaced out in my own little world. The teachers thought I was a disobedient, attention-deficient kid and my peers just looked at my strangely all the time. When my parents told me that we were moving to New Jersey, I was relieved. I left that school having made no friends, remembering no names, whereas thoughts of my first school left me feeling sad and sentimental.
I had only lived in Iowa for a year, but I left it a totally changed person. I was no longer a skinny fob but a chubby cartoon-loving kid. All those buffets in Iowa had destroyed my fobby wardrobe and replaced it with larger, American clothes. I was still Korean in the way I looked, but I had lost my native tongue and embraced English as my first language. My sister had undergone a similar transformation while watching television daily. Her English would actually be better than mine, at least in terms of accent and articulation. It was strange to have my mind go from thinking in Korean to thinking in English. I could never understand how suddenly the changes came about.
I still don't know what to call myself. I know I'm as American as any whiteboy - I've played football, I love Fourth of July BBQ's, I get all tingly when they play the Star Spangled banner, and I love watching the US kick everyone's butt in the Olypmics. But then again, I rejoiced when South Korea advanced to the semifinal in the World Cup, I feel like kimchi prevents cancer, and I still feel like my children are going to be 100% "Korean." This inherent contradiction of identity can't be solved with a simple "Korean American" label. Ask me who I am. Who am I? I'm still the kid looking out the school bus window, wondering if the corn fields ever end, and asking myself if I'll make it in time to avoid the walk through an empty school yard.
