Mom took me to a boo-hoong-eh (special night time worship service) where the famous visiting pastor was slaying folks by the hundreds on an auditorium stage. it's the early 80's, in Philadelphia, and these are all the rage. In line I can see and hear everything but the thing that terrifies me is the pastor shouting how our faith would allow the spirit to take us, meaning if we were real Christians then we'd be slain in the spirit but if not then our disbelief would be revealed. At that time and still now to my mother and most of her generation, I think to not be a real Christian is the most devastating thing that could happen, only a notch above being gay which in itself for them is the same as not being Christian.

I am so nervous because though I thought I was Christian I could never really know for sure and even up to the moment when the pastor grips my forehead while shouting in tongues and prayer I was pretty sure you could just see all the disbelief blinking loudly in my face. My mother goes down quickly, no surprise there, she just falls backward, limp as can be on the ground, a fitting reward for her tremendous faith and before I know it the pastor has gripped my forehead tightly with his fingers shouting in tongue above my head and with a mighty thrust he shoves me backward into the arms of his assistant who I didn't realize was behind me. The assistant catches me gracefully, laying me down in the same beat, moving onto the next person, before I even knew it.

I laid there, eyes closed, waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, I realized I had fooled them. It was such a relief. I was not going to be humiliated and exposed in front of hundreds of people much less my mother. I was going to get to keep my rock tapes. And my cigarettes.

I'm feeling so relieved and out of the spotlight I turn my head ever so slightly to check in on my mother and see what a real slaying looks like (where does the Holy Spirit take you? how long are you unconscious?). I open my eyes infinitesimally and then a little more because... my mother is peering right back at me.

Our eyes fly open and despite her desperate blinking at me to close my eyes again we can't stop the convulsions of laughter ripping through our bodies.

Recently, a Korean-American friend of my husband’s found my blog and declared she hadn’t realized how Korean I was. The comment gave me pause for a number of reasons but first of all because it was ironic – I’d started this blog as a place to wool gather about things I love about Korean culture but really it was also a way to define things as well. Anyone who knows me would answer in kind, “She’s not Korean Korean, she married white-latino and doesn’t hang out with Koreans.” Because, you know, Korean Koreans pretty much only hang out with other Koreans especially if they are a part of a church and while they might socialize with their work or school buddies they don’t date or have intimate relationships with non-Koreans.”

It’s an odd divide when I think about it, and kind of huge really. Because for some reason, there are very few who mix as easily in both cultures and two of those few are my sister and brother. I used to think it was a generational thing, that 1.5’ers being the first to truly assimilate either became Americanized or they clung together and formed their own identity, which we now call Korean-American. And even within those who clung together there were degrees, mostly determined by how fresh off the boat they were. Literally. And all of this came about because the seventies and eighties were not so much kind to the minority folk, it was not cool to be ethnic even if affirmative action was big. It really took the late nineties for people to internalize the great multi-cult message and I remember my amazement still at watching my brother and sister date across the ethnic lines at the very same high school where a popular boy told me that I wasn’t really Korean but very pretty. To my own shame I took this as the compliment it was meant to be – at that time I was the second Korean/ethnic girl ever to be popular, a path trail blazed by the wondrous junior Juyoung (she used her Korean name even!) who dated the most popular senior in high school, well on my way to finding out that the path to cool was even more treacherous than korean.

So what is this invisible wall exactly? Why can’t Korean Koreans mix as intimately with non-Koreans and why don’t KA girls like me feel as comfortable in the KA world?

(A sticky note on a piece of junk mail mom forwarded to me about an outfit I wore months prior)