Christina's Story

For too long, I have been afraid of holding identity as a Korean woman, for fear that another Korean would hear and prove me wrong, just by the look of rejection on their faces.

"You do not belong here, you are not Korean."

I hear these words echo in my mind as I walk through Korean markets and restaurants with my mother. The glares and stares we receive create the separation between me and my community. I am not the one to blame. As I trudge through these spaces with my mother, she is at fault. "That woman married a black man, her daughter is mixed." Sometimes they can figure out my racial background and the stares and the glares become more heated.

My mother has worked long and hard to make me a "respectable Korean." She had me participate in all of the things that her Korean friend's daughters' participated in - violin lessons, piano lessons - "be good at math and science" she says. "You must hold on to your Korean heritage for strength and success, you have my genes, my blood flowing through you. Understand this," she says.

The only understandings of a Korean identity that I held resulted from the combination of distrust from my community, and a vision of an identity given to me by my mother which I did not want to fill. My mother has endured tortuous circumstance. From enduring the Korean War where all of her possessions were taken from her in a single, deliberate, swift act, to coming to America, where many of her hardships came close to overcoming her, my mother continued to fight for her family. When my mother recounts the stories of her life, I sit, dumbfounded at her strength and courage and will. I know that she has lost her roots in Korea and is only concerned about the well-being of her family here. When I told her I was a lesbian, it was one of the only times that she has turned away from me.

She didn't understand that I wasn't all of the sudden a freak individual. "How can you be one of those people?" The words that tore through me over and over again, was my mother, crying "How can this be happening to my family? How can this be happening to my family?" I knew that a lot of the situation came from her fear that being a lesbian was one more strike against me. She didn't understand a lot of things, but I have to give her credit, she understood more than I thought she did. My mother knows all too well how the world works. If you have money, you will be protected.

This is the message that my mother gave me in response to me coming out to her. It took three months for her to speak to me again. I had wounded my mother, she was angry at me for doing this to her. You've got to understand, my mother has always worked on denial, and expected the family to do the same. Denial and guilt. This was the discipline and this was the punishment. I figure, if my mom had the choice, I would have never told her. I would always explain the girlfriend as a good friend. She would have been happy with that answer. It has been about a year and a half since I came out to my mother. I wasn't prepared for the amount of work it was going to take to open dialogue with my mother.

She wanted to read all of the books she could get her hands on about being gay, or being a lesbian. She had known nothing outside of the homophobic talk of her coworkers and my father (that is a story for another day), and she needed to break down the images to find that there were people behind all of the images of LGBT people she had seen, heard of, talked about. She needed to understand that, even though I was one of "those people," I was still her daughter that she had raised and loved for so long.

My mom still wants me to marry a guy, she wants me to have children with a man, she wants me to have the big wedding. She still prefers that we don't speak about it. She still holds on to hopes of me and a heterosexual future. But just a couple of months ago my mom met my girlfriend. We hung out and ate, and chatted, my mom was being as charming as ever.

She doesn't want me to endure the hardships she has. I figure if it weren't for the struggle and discomfort I must wade through, my mother would not care if I were blue, purple or green.

She says that I hold her strength inside of me, and that makes her feel that I am protected.

Christina, a biracial Korean and Black American Woman, is from Alexandria, Virginia. She attends Brown University ('00) and is concentrating in Psychology. This past academic year (19100-9) she co-facilitated TNT, a Queer students of color group and was a primary organizer of the 'Powerful Beyond Measure Conference,' a Queer people of color conference for East coast college students.