Finding myself after growing up adopted

When I was 14, I found myself conflicted with who I was. 

Before that, my whole life, my parents told me about my adoption. I came to America when I was 4 months old, and didn’t stop crying for what felt like months. I was born on the dirt floor of a farm in MokPo South Korea, and was put into foster care the day after I was born. I never saw myself as any different than my cousins, or the other kids around me when I was little. I was just another person, living.

It wasn’t until kids started getting into makeup that I felt different. Because I had monolids, I couldn’t watch the same Makeup artists on YouTube, and follow the same tutorials as them. No matter how hard I tried, it never looked the same because they had a crease, and I did not. After months of trying to find a makeup tutorial that would work on my monolids, I could never find anything comparable to what my friends could do with their makeup. At the time, the makeup tutorials for monolids were very natural and basic, geared towards the style in Asian countries at the time. 

This led me to hate my monolids and look for ways to get rid of them so I could have double eyelids like everybody else around me. The first solution I found was to train your monolids to have a crease by putting tape on your eyelids to mimic it. I ordered it and anxiously waited for it to arrive, but all it did was irritate my eyelid and not give me the double eyelid look that I was looking at. The next (and only other solution I could find at the time) was to get double eyelid surgery. I found out that it was a common sweet 16 present for girls in South Korea, and decided that when I was older, I would get the same surgery to finally have double eyelids. 

At night I would pray that one morning I would wake up with double eyelids. I would wish that I was actually the biological child of my parents and that I looked more like them. My Dad is Italian and Irish, and my Mom is Irish and Spanish, both with double eyelids. Looking back it was stupid for me to feel this way, but at the time it made such a huge impact on my life. It made me realize that I had never seen someone like me on screen.

In children’s media, there were very few Asian characters, and almost none that didn’t conform to the Asian stereotype of being a “nerd. Asian characters would also portray bullies, or the “weird” characters. They were never “normal”. The only time I felt any connection to an Asian character in children’s media was London Tipton in The Suite Life on Deck, and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and that was because London wasn’t supposed to be Asian when it was first written, it was only after Brenda Song and Ashley Tisdale were cast that they decided to switch the roles around to break the stereotype. 

This made me fear that I would only have a chance of being a successful writer if I were to create characters that weren’t pushed into stereotypical categories. I decided that I would have to make all of my stories very westernized. White characters, with white names, and storylines. No diversity, no representation. Just mirroring what I saw in the media. I didn’t want to write stereotypical characters. I didn’t know how to because I didn’t put myself into any of those groups, and I didn’t want to perpetuate untrue stereotypes in my creations either. 

2018 was the first time I felt a connection to a character. Even though Rachel Chu wasn’t adopted, she wasn’t pushed into one of the stereotypical categories of an “Asian” character. Rachel was smart, and she was the first leading Asian character I had ever seen in a movie. She struggles to fit in amongst the new group of people that her boyfriend Nick Young introduces to her in Singapore. Rachel isn’t the perfect girl that his mother wants him to marry, but she can prove her wrong by the end.

This movie saved me. It made me realize that I didn’t need to write characters that fit into Hollywood’s “mold”. That I could write whatever I wanted to write and I shouldn’t let society tell me what a good story is or isn’t. After 15 years, I finally started to find who I was. 

I began to learn more about my origins, about Korea. I wanted to create characters like me. Of Asian origin, but not stereotypical. I learned more about the culture in Korea and even tried to learn the language a little bit. I wanted to be able to incorporate that into my stories and characters while also creating a character that I, and hopefully one day, my kids would be able to relate to. 

As time went on, I realized that I didn’t have to choose just one side. Yes, I was Korean, but I didn’t know what it was like to be raised in Korea, or by Korean parents. My Dad would always joke that I was more Italian than I was Korean. Because of where I lived, my three best friends were all very Italian, and I had an affinity for eating pizza and pasta as well as cooking Italian food. Being Italian became a part of my identity too. I didn’t have to be on just one side of the line or the other. I could be a part of both worlds. 

Although this was a huge step for me, I couldn’t help but still feel like there was more representation than just Asian representation in media. I began to toy with the idea of creating a story just like my own. About a Korean adoptee. There are so many stories about domestic adoptions, that mainly focus on the parents adopting the kids, rather than the kid's adoption, but I don’t believe I have ever seen a story that focused on the story of international adoptees trying to find themselves. 

I’ll be forever grateful for my adoption, and for my friends and family, but I will never forget about my roots in Korea either. They are badges that I wear with pride and I am no longer ashamed of who I am or what I look like now.