Tag: my korean american story

Beginning each morning by writing a to-do list, I feel immense satisfaction whenever I cross things off. It signals that I finished this, that I made something of my day. This compulsion for constant productivity, I am sure it stems from the way I was raised. Famously coined by legal scholar and writer Amy Chua, the term “tiger mom” refers to a parental figure with an incredibly authoritative child-rearing style—in other words, my parents. Like many other Korean parents, my mother and father were tiger parents for sure. Never accepting anything less than the best (my best was not enough, for I had to be the best out of everyone else as well), I strived to live up to their expectations.

I should be writing a personal statement for a doctoral program I’m applying to. I should be writing a one-page fluff essay talking about how much my dreams are important to me, how I’d be a good fit for the doctoral cohort, and how much I want to pursue an advanced degree.

The process of creating a book, regardless of the target audience, is deeply involved and requires a plethora of patience and many hours of revisions.

My name is Brian Bomster-Jabs, and I am a Korean Adoptee. I was adopted when I was 5 months old and grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. When I arrived, I had a brother waiting for me.

Each time I walk by a dry cleaners in the city and see an Asian couple behind the counter, my chest tightens. And here at my parent’s store on Long Island, where I intend to spend the rest of the day, I start to feel the pressure.

Probably each one of us said it at some point when we were small children. Some of us said it almost every night. Some begged and pleaded. We laughed and giggled and screamed when our pleadings were granted.

I’m a 21 year-old college student living in the Midwest. As the number of years I’ve spent in the States started to catch up to the number of years I’ve lived in Korea, my Korean-ness began to blur.

What’s the worst part about living with a parent who has Alzheimer’s?  Their repetition of words and phrases is a simple annoyance, the frailty of their human body is understandable, and their inability to feed themself is predictable.

One summer my wife and I toured half of the Silk Road through China. We were dating then. It was my first time traveling in a guided group—I had always traveled alone, cut off and trying for immersion, which might have been a way of reliving of my adoption.

Growing up, my mother did not teach my sister and me about Korea. She did not teach us Korean. She did not feed us Korean food, and by middle school, my sister and I balked at her stinky jars of kimchee.

In popular culture, Asian Americans always seemed concerned with building bridges from old country to new country, first generation to second generation.

I’m 42 and I’m not successful, but I’m Korean American.  (Am I allowed to say that?)  My story begins in Seoul, Korea in 1970, the year of the dog, when I was born.  I was born into a very broken family.

“What’s your middle initial?” adults would demand as they filled out my forms.

Somewhere in Korea, deep in the heart of Pyuang Chang Kun of Kangwon Province, a young mother stands alone.

I was eleven when my father, a Korean immigrant in the U.S. army, tried to drag me to a psychiatrist. My symptoms? Unusual thoughts, erratic behavior, filial disobedience: I suddenly refused to eat meat.

Ever since I left Southern California for college in Connecticut, my mother has always waited while I wind through the airport security line. She smiles and waves wildly until I make it past screening and turn around to wave goodbye one last time. Except once.

I’m not the only Korean kid whose parents acted as if becoming a lawyer or a doctor were the only career options. For my parents, the doctor path was the first line of offense.

In the late fifties, following the Korean conflict, things were so bad in Korea that people tried to leave the country any way they could. College students were no exception.

I am reading I Wish for You a Beautiful Life right now, for the first time, suggested to me by another Korean adoptee. It is a book of letters from birth mothers to their babies, letters I wish had come packaged with us.

I thought that way for many years because I had experienced much despair in my life. For a long time, despair kept me from thinking that my immigrant life would change.

The cost of a slice of pizza is $1.99. For the average tax payer, the New York State DREAM Act wouldn’t even cost this much. It is a small price to pay for a bill that would provide all New York students, regardless of immigration status, equal access to state financial aid for college.

My relationship with a certain pickled cabbage, you could say, is complicated. Kimchee became symbolic of my Korean identity, for obvious reasons and otherwise.

Our daughter Yunhee is getting married this weekend. With the enthusiastic support of her non-Korean husband-to-be, she’s chosen to have a traditional Korean ceremony tonight, followed by a white-gown-and-tuxedo wedding tomorrow.

The day after my father attended a PTA meeting at my high school, a teacher stopped me in the hall. “Your father is a remarkable man,” she said. I thought my father, who rarely went to PTA meetings, was an embarrassment.

In Genesis of the Bible, there is a story of Abraham being tested by the Lord to offer his only son Isaac as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah.  When Abraham was about to kill his son, he is stopped by the Lord

I was born in 1971 to a Korean mother and an African-American father. My parents met in Germany while my mom was in nursing school.

I grew up in Culver City, Calif., close to the MGM Studios. I was fascinated by the studios’ larger-than-life presence in my hometown. As I noticed the lion on the logo when we drove by, I dreamed of one day being a part of that exciting world.

I was never that type of Asian girl in elementary school, you know, the quiet one that has all the answers to the math problems. But I always felt like I should. Well, my father did, at least.

Virginia Boys State is held at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. The same Liberty University founded by Jerry Falwell in 1971.

Like many Korean-American families, my parents expected certain things from me as I was growing up.  I had to be a good Christian; I had to be a good son and brother; and I had to study hard and attend a good college.

In August 2010, my autobiographical play entitled “MISS KIM” premiered in the New York International Fringe Festival. It was one of 197 plays featured in the festival and listed as the top 10 hottest shows in the Fringe.

Back in 1981, when I was ten years old, my life had become a foreign-language film without subtitles.

Two weeks ago, I officially became a citizen of the United States of America. Took me long enough…I’ve been living in the US for the past 27 years and have been a permanent resident for 22 years.

Twenty years ago I went to Seoul to visit family and to see Seoul. Twenty years before that I had left Seoul as a five-year old child.

Born in Seoul of a Chinese father and a Korean mother, people have always tried to locate my identity in fractions, particularly in America.

“What possessed you to write a book?” I am most often asked, the reference to “possessed” always accompanied by a smile.

My family arrived in New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport in July of 1973, and like most immigrant families, with little money, few personal belongings and the hope for a brighter future.