korean american

You say it’s because of your ancestors,

not tactile hallucinations, or

a sterile diagnosis. It’s because

of all the things you saw

in those dirt bunkers of stench and uniforms

Things these young American doctors and

your American daughter

can’t fathom-don’t understand

All these years later something

in your mind has begun to rewind

and you remember

Your father, a shadow without a face,

crouched down, his body eclipsed

by gunfire and hunger

Your mother, cutting the flesh of

a burnt orange persimmon while

the leaves curled outside

Knife in one hand, love in the other,

a wisp of a November memory

miracle that survived a diaspora

Ghosts now live in your mouth

where she once filled it.

You slice the cadmium-colored sun in half

to find a star-once-seed –

a resurrection sermon. Koreans say,

“We should always leave

a few persimmons on the trees for the magpies”

The bittersweet bites of fruit

received, pieces of hope like little anchors

sinking into my sadness

I swallow them. I ask Jesus

to leave a few memories like persimmons

on the trees for my mom and me

Originally written for The Mudroom.

I was young when I first realized that my biracial existence inhabits liminal space.

We piled into the sticky church van, and left the Californian mountains where I’d spent a week at an Asian American Christian summer camp. It was my first experience at a summer camp, my first experience with a large group of Christians, and my first time exclusively surrounded by other Asian Americans. As we drove down the mountain, away from late night campfire worship songs and Bible stories I’d heard for the first time in my life, a friend in the van turned towards me and announced, “You should’ve heard how some of the boys talked about you in our cabin last night. They are obsessed with mixed girls like you.” I could tell he thought the comment was something I should be happy about, but all I felt was the heat rising between my skin and cheekbones.

Years later, thinking about that comment would make me feel small and shriveled up inside. It weaved itself into everything. It was clear that being obsessed with “mixed girls like me” meant being obsessed with the power of whiteness more than anything. I tell a friend about it, but she asks why I’m upset and making things about race, and claims she would be happy to have the attention—however it comes.

Even before I knew his name, white supremacy was waging a war around me and within me.

Without any formal training, I learned to resist my Koreanness like I was on a strict diet. I cut things out, hid what felt most like home, brushed and beat the wild out of my mixed hair, and said no to things I’d always loved. I tried to starve the Imago Dei in me.

It took many long years before I began to realize that my biracial body was a beautiful bridge of existence.

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