1. Are Korean ‘eyejobs’ basically a form of internalized racism?

2. When Koreans (esp. family) tell you how fat you’ve gotten, oh every time you see them, – is it just plain rude or some ineffable cultural thing I’m missing?

3. And why is it homemade jajang-myun is never as good as the restaurant?? Do they use MSG? And why, when the restaurants are Korean run for Korean customers, don’t they just serve kimchee since the dak-kwong just doesn’t cut it alone? (Or am I the only one who craves it?)

*Eye jobs = Plastic surgery to create a fold in Asian eyes to look more Western. Very common, like buying new shoes. Nose jobs are almost as popular. For examples, see any Korean television show.

*Koreans will always greet you with a comment on your appearance, whether it’s as common as saying you are “yep-poh” which means pretty/cute/lovely, or if you’ve lost weight or just as easily if you look old or gained weight.

* Ja-jang myun is a beloved Korean dish of fresh cut noodles in black bean sauce. Because the dish was originally Chinese you must go to special Korean run Chinese restaurants to get it, and because the cuisine is supposed to be Chinese, they never serve kimchee but the traditional side dishes of raw onion and dak-kwong, a bright yellow pickled radish.

*Note: I’ve had two friends tell me recently their mothers make restaurant quality jajang-myun, I will amend this post once I’ve tried their recipes.

Finally made it to the Korean market in Jackson Heights and came home with these beauties. This time of year makes me long for the garden I had in LA and I just learned these melons are easy to grow at home...

One interesting thing about our Korean music group is that all the kids except one are bi-racial. This means one of the parents, usually the mom, married caucasian or in my case Latino-Irish but pretty much looks caucasian, and an early irony a few of us chuckled over was how much we'd spent our youth breaking from Korean tradition and how now as parents we were trying to find a way back.

I've had the great opportunity to get to know some of the parents better outside the group and inevitably much of our discussion centers around what the group brings up for us - what our families were like, how we rebelled as kids, how much we actually understood of Korean language... my friend who started the group dubbed me as the most Korean of the group which shows you how low the bar is for us and just how complicated our relationships were with our identities. Nothing new of course we're classic 1.5'ers but what is new is that we are now parents and are suddenly conscious of the environment we want/need/are creating for our kids.

Social anthropologists have a classic model of assimilation for immigrants and as 1.5'ers we can probably find ourselves uneasily somewhere well past the first step of having lost our language and the fourth step of only the food from our culture remaining. I imagine if our kids marry Caucasian, it will not be long before their Korean heritage is completely buried and the thought makes me sad despite having no real regrets with the decisions I've made to get here. How much longer before we are like the west coast Japanese, many of them now fourth and fifth generation, their own histories not so much connected to thousands of years as a culture but newly forged, in decades really, and as American as anyone else.

Except that we are the new Americans. And that is my point really. I can mourn the loss of tradition (what I'm really mourning is my own childhood probably, my own eventual demise) but have it consciously inform the choices I make now.

It's the thing I love about Brooklyn - that most of us have chosen to be here and that we have self-consciously created our lives. I cannot imagine a group of people more aware of the choices they make, with an even greater awareness of how other folks live including the way we were brought up themselves. This of course is our own worst fault as well, often getting in the way of being able to relax or relate simply because we are in the same space but then I look at my kids- my eldest at three has memorized all the Korean songs phonetically and can just as easily switch to Spanish lullabies, and my younger son, who is still discovering food, can be coaxed out of a tantrum for the moment with some dried squid or seaweed- and I can't imagine them being allowed to be themselves in this way, so freely, anywhere, or anytime else. (okay except parts of the west coast, and vancouver maybe)

Little about it is easy of course, and I don't want to gloss over the many tensions that still exist, will always probably exist for anyone bi-cultured. ( I am still shocked when we go to Europe, which has always symbolized post-modernity and progressive lifestyles for me, and we are confronted regularly by folks who need to discuss our cross racial marriage, and not just discuss in general but discuss actually whether it's right or good and then the inevitable shrug, "But that's Americans - they marry anyone over there.") But for now, here in Brooklyn, we've managed to do one thing right.

We have a Korean music group for tots here in Brooklyn and had our first dinner together at our place, a bibimbop party where everyone brought one of the sides. It was great fun and something about the smells of bulgogi (that was my offering) sauteeing while little Korean feet ran about made me feel as though another unnamed something has come full circle in my life.