We never talked about it, you know. I think with older immigrant parents, no matter what race you are, you know, white immigrant parent, you know, European immigrant parents, you know, African immigrant, like South American, whatever it is, older immigrant parents kind of, they don’t talk, you know, they just want to move on, you know, let’s move on, let’s forget about that history, you know, let’s go to Disneyland, let’s be American. And so yeah, that was stuff that my parents never really talked about, and it was stuff that I found out later.
In fact, my mom never talked about the Korean War. My dad never talked about the Korean War. Every time I asked them about the Korean War, they just shut down. We don’t want to talk about it. My father passed away in 2016, and for the first time my mom started talking about the Korean War, and I was horrified to hear the stories of what she and my dad went through when they were 8 and 12 years old. This was a civil war. Millions of people were killed. I mean the stories she told me, it felt like an Oliver Stone movie. I’m just like oh, I can’t believe you’re telling me this.
And it made me deeply regret not pushing more as a kid, saying Mom, Dad, you have to talk about your past, you have to tell me about this; otherwise, at some point you’re going to leave me, and I’m just going to have to guess and fill in the puzzle pieces ’cause I’m missing pieces of this jigsaw puzzle. And that’s something I really want to emphasize. All young people, no matter what your background is, whoever your family is, whoever your legal guardians are, your parents, whoever are raising you, find out as much as you can about your family.
And if there are things that people don’t want to talk about because it triggers them, it traumatizes them, I understand and respect that, but understand that somehow you have to be a detective about your own family. So yeah, and I think that’s what drives me still to keep writing because I’m like a detective. I’m trying to figure out more about my country of heritage, my upbringing, my Asian-American, my Korean-American family, my Korean family.
So, I think I’m less of a writer and more of a detective and a witness to just trying to keep this history alive so, you know, we don’t have to keep repeating this pattern of erasure and discrimination.
