Origin Story: Part II

"So, what are you?"

About the series: Origin Stories includes a series of essays I wrote on my personal blog in 2018, as I prepared to return to Korea for the first time with a group of fellow adoptees. In the series, I scratch the surface on racial and cultural identity issues as I emerge from the “adoptee fog,” and also share initial worries when I learn I will be reunited with my birth family.

To view more adoption related posts, click here.

A very important author's note on this essay:

Written in the spring of 2018, this essay reflects information I had at the time—both in how I was coming to terms with the racial, ethnic, and cultural identity I had lost at birth, as well as the evolving information available to me via tests from 23andMe and Ancestry.com. Addressed (briefly) in other posts in the Origin Stories series, I would later learn that my 23andMe test was not accurate, and that I am in fact 100% Korean, both genetically, and in my familial ties.

Specifically, 23andMe's genetic models were later updated when their East Asian DNA data set grew substantially, which in my case, resulted in the elimination of all other attributable ethnic and regional groups. (Let me state what I hope is obvious: that the company could've released ancestry proclamations without being assured of their accuracy is disappointing (if not appalling), especially in the context of the many early customers who were transracial adoptees desperate for information about their origins.)

The final word lay with what my family had to say on the matter: my mother and late father are both Korean, with no Japanese or other non-Korean family members in anyone's memory.

VM, Aug 2023

2018.

I’m on my back, right leg in the air, and a woman I met less than half an hour ago is making casual conversation with me while spreading hot wax on my netherbits. She doesn't know it, but she'll soon be the second person in my entire life with whom I'm able to share details of my ethnic background.

You have questions, I realize. First among them: Don't I have one dedicated, regular person I task with this torture every 4-6 weeks? I do! In fact, when it comes to these types of very up close and personal self-care rituals, I'm quite loyal. But my regular aesthetician—a kind-hearted French woman named Marion—is unavailable, and I'm desperate. My backup waxing salon exists for this reason alone, and here I find myself, prone on a foreign table with a stranger as intimately placed as one could be.

We've covered the usual topics: relationship status, jobs, where we are from, and I mention in passing that my husband is Indian.

"That's cool," she says, popsicle stick spreading molten blue lava carefully. "So he's Indian…what's your background?"

I perk up as much as one can in my position.

"I'm half Korean," I say excitedly, "And then the other half is a mix of Japanese, Chinese, and other mixed Asian from all over."

She hasn't registered my excitement. "Oh cool," she repeats in that off hand, slightly-interested small talk way, concentrating on her task.

"Yeah." I'm quiet for a few seconds. "Actually, I have to tell you—you're only the second person in my entire life who I've been able to say that to. I only found out my ethnic background last summer. I did a DNA test."

Now she really stops and looks at me. That is cool.

She was the second person; the first was an Uber driver who asked, "What are you?" maybe three months before. That a livery driver should be the first person to ask me post-test was ironic and yet not at all surprising, since cab drivers have the highest ethnicity inquiry rates based on my non-scientific tracking over the last 15-odd years.

And they're not the only ones. To be sure, wherever I've gone throughout life — college, convenience stores, conferences; on dates, to the dry cleaners, to the drive-thru —I've heard this same question, or some country-specific derivative of it.

"So, what are you?"

"Are you Chinese?"

"Are you Korean?"

"Are you Japanese?"

"Are you Filipino?"

Maybe this experience isn't unique. I've actually never asked anyone else if they get questioned like this, so now seems as good a time as any to wonder: do you get asked this too? I'm assuming everyone does at some point, but my guess is the more "exotic" you look (whatever the eff that even means), the more you get queried.

The difference, for me, was I never had an answer I knew to be true or held my confidence. In those same cabs, Joe could answer quickly: Indian. If the inquirer was Indian and wanted to know more, he had an equally fast follow up response: Gujarati. Second generation.

My answer always took a different, meandering route, because to be honest, I had no idea if I was full Korean. Sure, I'd been born in the country, and yes, I definitely look like I'm from East Asia. But I can't tell you how many people have told me I do not look full Korean. Scores. In fact, this was usually the response I would receive when telling someone I was Korean. “Really? You don’t look Korean.” Japanese people would tell me they saw Japanese in me. Chinese people would do the same. Filipino people too, especially when I lived in L.A. and would return to Southern California for a new school year, tanned from the Texas sun.

And despite the conviction in my answer, whatever ethnicity I supplied always felt like a lie. The world would see me as one thing and expect that culturally, I’d identify with my external appearance. But I didn’t, and at least as of this writing, I still don’t. Let’s get real here: I grew up as the only child in a white family, with an Irish last name, in central Texas. I had little exposure to Korean culture where I grew up (visits to the lone Korean restaurant in town were about as close to my birth culture as I got). There was one other Korean kid in my grade, and beyond that, a smattering of other kids with East Asian backgrounds. When I moved to Los Angeles for school, the overwhelming feeling I remember isn’t one of excitement, or anticipation of adventure, but of relief: for the first time in my entire life, there were Asian people everywhere. I didn’t have to think about looking different.

The flip side of moving to a place with a lot more Asian people was more people talked about their ethnic backgrounds, and in turn, assumed I identified culturally with an Asian heritage. This became a constant tension in my identity—you see me one way, yet I feel another. It has sometimes felt like it requires constant explaining. I always feel like me, but that person exists in some strange in-between to others—Asian, until they realize I'm not, but I still kind of am?  

If I had to make an official count of the votes I've received for my probable ethnic background, mixed Korean and Japanese would win the ballot. I've always found this to be a nice bookend to the story I tell myself most often about who my birth mother was and where I came from. In an unsurprising twist of events, the beginnings of that story also came from—you guessed it—a cab driver.

2007.

I’m in the back of a taxi, headed to meet friends for dinner.