A Few Thoughts from a Korean, Adopted, Lesbian, Writer/Poet, and Social Worker –

Mi Ok Bruining (Taken from Lesbians of Color: Social and Human Services, Hilda Hidalgo, PhD, ACSW, Harrington Park Press, 1995)

SUMMARY.  The struggle to construct identity is an ongoing process.  Three questions can be understood as shaping that process: "Where did I come from?" "Who am I now?" and, "Where am I going? " This article illustrates the process of identity constructions within the framework offered by those questions, from the stand-point of a Korean, Adopted, Lesbian, Writer/poet.

   People ask me why I decided to become a social worker.  There are many reasons-all reflecting the elements in the title of this paper.  My reasons for becoming a social worker might be better explained if I provide some of my own "herstory."

   I was born in (South) Korea, in 1960, The Year of the Rat, and lived in an orphanage for the first five years of my life. In Korea, the "War" is known as the " American War," and in it thousands of Korean children were orphaned.  In 1966 at the age of five I was adopted by a U.S. white family.  My adoptive family lived in New Jersey and later moved to Rhode Island just before I started high school.  From 1979 to 1983, I attended art school in Virginia, but not graduate or obtain a degree.  In 1984, I moved to Boston and lived there for six years.  While there I decided to re-enter college in 1987, and completed my B.A. in Creative Writing in Vermont in 1989.  Shortly after graduation I relocated to New York City and six months later I decided to go for my M.S. W.  I entered the first and only social work program I applied to, and the one that accepted me.

   I graduated in 1992, after two and a half years of stressful, intensive, grueling, full-time studying, moving six times, three different places to live, three different relationships, having three different cars, and sinking myself into enormous debt. Needless to say, I experienced many changes-both logistic and emotional.  One year later, I am currently employed as a hospital social worker in Manhattan.

   Being adopted has always been a predominant issue for me.  As an adopted member of a typical Wonderbread white, upper middle-class protestant adoptive family, I benefited from many obvious economic and (seemingly) social privileges.  I rode horses since I was six, and competed in horse shows with my own horse for eleven years.  I vacationed in the country with my family, and was given all of the material objects I needed and wanted.  I lived in New Jersey with a family of three older, white, non-adopted siblings, and two white parents.  I was surrounded by white classmates, in a white neighbourhood. Later I lived in a rural New England town where I was the only Korean adolescent, and attended a high school where I

was the only Korean student.

   My childhood and adolescence were filled with constant overt and covert experiences of racism.  These experiences included the subtle stares of young children, name-calling by older children, verbal harassment, and verbal threats of violence, which at one time escalated into an incident of stone-throwing by older adolescents.  Adults often asked (and still ask) offensive, intrusive and inappropriate questions.

   These years of racism, in the form of verbal abuse, ostracism, and blatant hatred caused profound psychic wounds and scars.  The repercussions of society's intolerance and rejection of my Asian appearance were internalized feelings of alienation, rage, despair, sadness, self-hatred and self-loathing, low esteem, and loneliness.  As a child, I felt I was on a planet of one.  When I attempted to share my feelings with my parents, they were unempathic, and often contributed to my pain with their own form of racism and ignorance.  My parents had poor insight and still do not acknowledge the psychic damage caused.  As a child and adolescent, I internalized my rage and pain, and split into two; my outside behaviour reflecting an extroverted, athletic, seemingly well-adjusted individual with many friends.  On the inside I was in angst, felt like a total freak, an outsider, and often prayed and wished at night before falling asleep that I would not wake up in the morning, but would fade away peacefully.  I was deeply depressed for many years, but did not realize it until I was twenty-something. I always knew something was wrong, but was never able to name it.  I know now, that many of the feelings I had were related to the fact that I was adopted; some were normative emotions having to do with the torturous emotional agony of adolescence.

   I was a Korean person in a white family, and lived in a white community, in a country and society that reinforces white culture.  Until my twenties, I socialized with only white peers, and had no mirroring role models or mentors who were Asian. In my adoptive family, I was constantly conditioned by and brainwashed with racist stereotypes of Asians and I never saw one positive representation of Asian people on television or in a film.  In grade and high schools, I was taught that people of color were inferior to white people.

   In art school I discovered that I did not want to be a commercial artist/illustrator.  I refused to resign myself to creating airbrushed illustrations of mundane objects, and did not love painting and printmaking enough to accept the role of a starving artist, hoping someday to be "discovered."  I left an school, bitter, cynical, depressed, and zapped of all my passion to draw. I lost my creativity and it was years before I drew a drawing for myself, for the pure joy of drawing.  The one spark of passion that ignited for me while I was at art school was creative writing.  I took a poetry writing class for the first time, and fell in love with words.  The idea of being able to create pictures with words, and to evoke emotions with words excited me in the way that drawing excited me when I discovered at the age of six, that I had artistic talent.  I believed that I always saw things differently.  Now I could write about it.

 In 1984 I returned to Korea for the first time since I had arrived in the U .S. eighteen years before.  I toured Korea for two weeks.  It was a painful, but also very healing experience, and very necessary for my survival. The experience resolved some old issues and created some new ones for me.  When I returned from Korea, I began working at a nondescript retail job in Boston just to pay the rent.  I joined Asian American organizations, an Asian women's group, became politically active in the Asian American community, and met very strong, very powerful, smart, progressive Asian women and other women of color.  I fell in love with an Asian woman for the first time, and began accepting speaking engagements on issues of international adoptions.  The fIrst few years in Boston were intoxicating and exhilarating.  Finally, I was able to understand the oppression, conditioning, lies, myths, and marginalization I had felt all of my life.  I was able to name it all, and my rage surfaced. I channelled this rage into writing, artwork, political activities, organizing, and public speaking.  I was often unemployed between times of working at an international adoption agency, temping for several weeks to several months at a time, doing short-term bicycle messenger work, and finally working at a state human services agency two and a half years. At this agency I learned American Sign Language (ASL).

   I felt I could identify with deaf people's struggle at not being understood by insensitive hearing people and the dominant (hearing) culture's refusal and unwillingness to accept deaf culture.  I felt that all of my life I, too, had not been understood or accepted.

   In 1987, after several relationships with women, I came out to myself as a lesbian.  Two years later, I came out to everyone who was of significance in my life, including my family.  Once I was out of the closet, I was so relieved!  I realized that my reluctance and fear about coming out stemmed from the fact that being a lesbian represented yet one more identity issue that I would be forced to struggle with.  Actually coming out was healing, liberating and reaffirming for me.  Since then, I have been active in Asian Pacific lesbian organizations, and cultivated important friendships with other Asian Pacific lesbians and other lesbians of color.

   My parents were and still are homophobic, but I have made it clear to them that I visit them less often because they have not accepted my sexual identity.  It makes me very sad, but I feel that their homophobia is their problem.  We communicate regularly, but my lesbian relationships are something that I do not share with them.  My parents' attitude is similar to the nauseating "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and Don't Hold Hands" Policy.

   While finishing my undergraduate studies in Vermont, I was the token Asian lesbian on campus and in the writing program I was enrolled in; yet, at the same time I had a very strong support network of Asian lesbians in Boston.  I was thrilled to have the exciting opportunity to work with fierce, creative, brilliant, revolutionary-minded women writers and poets, such as Bernice Mennis and Irena Klepfisz.  Shortly after I completed my B.A. I began graduate school at Smith College School for Social Work.  I felt that I had a strong understanding of the macro issues, but no understanding of the micro issues-in a clinical context. One of the reasons I selected Smith was because of its strong clinical program.  I completed two

and one-half years at Smith, with two five-days-a-week/nine-month field placements, three ten-week summers of course work, and a masters thesis, entitled, "Whose Daughter Are you? Exploring Identity Issues of Lesbians Who Are Adopted. "

   In graduate school I learned a great deal about myself and social work.  I explored my role as a social worker and as a mental health professional.  I learned more about macro systems and micro issues. I studied social policy, community organizing, hierarchy in agencies, pathology, diagnosis, treatment of patients and clients, and research.  I developed my technical writing skills.  Smith, like most or all other social work programs, is a microcosm of the greater society in the U.S.A.  One does not experience there an abundance (if any) of sensitivity to those who differ from the cultural "norm. " I must admit, as cynical and realistic as I claim to be, that I was genuinely disappointed by this discovery.

   I have completed over forty national and international speaking engagements in the last ten years, and continue to be invited to address the economic, political, social, racist, cultural, and clinical issues of international adoptions in the U .S.A. I have had twenty poems and several articles published.  More recently, I have been doing local and regional invitational poetry readings, and I am working on completing two books, a collection of poems, and an article on issues of international adoptions.

   I have a strong network of friends, and a wonderful, funny cat named Fiona.  I look forward to the time when I have four things that will help make my life complete: a decent place in which to live, a rewarding job, a reliable car, and a healthy, committed relationship.  I have continued to struggle with profound loneliness.

   As a Korean, adopted, lesbian, poet/writer, and trained social worker, I do not represent each group I identify with; rather I offer my contribution as an individual member of each group with my distinct opinions, experiences, and commitment in my creative, political, personal, social and professional environments.

   I am short in height (I prefer "vertically-challenged") and left-handed (I prefer "right-brained attuned"). Humour is a powerful defence, and can be very entertaining at times.  I have been ostracized, misunderstood, oppressed, marginalized, and discriminated against-as a woman, an activist, and Asian person, a woman of color, and as a lesbian of color.

   Whenever I work with a patient or client-whoever s/he may be, despite her/his homophobia, racism, hatred or whatever negative behaviour towards me, I want to try and find something tender and gentle, some element of strength and dignity, some redeeming quality in her/him, and latch onto it with as much empathy and connectedness as I can.  Sometimes, it is a challenge and a struggle to do this, yet I believe empathic attunement, communication and listening are vital skills of a social worker.  As a human being and as a social worker, I am still under construction.

Mi Ok Bruining, MSW, is a Social Worker, Social Work and Discharge Planning Department, Beth Israel Medical Center, New York. NY.