Note from the writer: I wrote this for a Medill class as a final story and initially didn’t have plans on publishing it anywhere. However, with the recent, jarring attack against Asians in Georgia, and the widespread fear and anger felt by Asian Americans, I had no excuse to keep this story to myself.
This story focuses on first-generation Asian immigrants to the States. It’s all in here: hope, fear, microaggressions, questions, shared experiences. It’s a reminder that we were never fully welcome, and we never will be until we stand up for ourselves and make a change. We are hurting.
Please check in on your loved ones and your friends. Educate yourself on the history of racism against Asians in America. It hasn’t only happened in the States — it’s been perpetuated through American imperialism and extends to the sexualization and fetishization of Asian women (here’s a link to a book about it by my friend Joyce Park at Northwestern).
Link to donations:
https://twitter.com/driftinghouse/status/1372048957061357569?s=21
The Land of Dreams
“Ah, our time in New Jersey was such golden times,” said my grandmother, Sookhee Kim.
“Yes, I used to love driving near the Hudson River and to West Point Academy with our family,” responded my grandfather, Changmoon Sohn.
Kim and Sohn moved to Palisades Park, New Jersey, from the still-developing South Korea in late 1979, towing their three children along. Sohn had been appointed the manager of Daewoo International Trading Company’s local branch. With limited knowledge of English, the family hopped on a plane to start their new, American lives.
“Back then, everybody was so jealous that we moved to the States,” said Kim. “It was good for women and kids. The best thing was learning how to drive!”
The couple’s neighbors were kind to them. They were from Japan and helped the Sohn family adjust to suburban life in the States. The Sohns soon figured out how to live the most “American” life possible. Kim sent her kids to public school, and put her sons (my uncles) in little league baseball teams. She enrolled her daughter (my mother) in ballet classes. Sohn quickly learned the ropes of corporate life, with little worries of discrimination at his office with nearly half of the employees being Korean like him.
Life was good. Then, three short years later, headquarters called Sohn back to Korea.
“I cried. I didn’t want to go back,” said Kim.
Leiah Abroguena Verdone was born in Saudi Arabia in 1989 to her single mother and was soon sent to live with her relatives in the Philippines. When she was four years old, she boarded a plane to O’Hare in Chicago, Illinois, and her life as an Asian immigrant began. She joined her mother, who flew straight from Saudi Arabia, and her step-father in Prospect Heights, Illinois.
Before moving to the States, Verdone had thrived in an environment with “open air, greenery and lots of space.” In the Philippines, owning land and having maids and drivers were indicators of “having that good life,” according to her.
“When I was born, I had a home that belonged to me. I also had a papaya farm,” said Verdone. “In America, we lived in an apartment first. Taking a girl and putting her in a building where she lives with however many other people, and telling her this the only space you can be in — it was a little weird.”
The stark contrast made Verdone realize that her old life no longer existed.
“It was just very different. As a kid, you don’t know any better. You’re like, ‘Okay, this is America. I guess this is what it takes to have all those nice things you said we’re going to have.’”
Wei Pan moved to the Bay Area in 2003 from Jiangsu, China. She wanted to join her husband who had immigrated there earlier. She didn’t travel alone, though. She took her three-year-old daughter, Stephanie Zhu, with her, who is now a junior studying journalism at Northwestern University.
“On the plane, I remember I didn’t know how to speak English. I couldn’t even ask for water,” said Pan.
The subtle differences, like fewer pedestrians and more cars in the streets and more expressive speaking mannerisms, shocked Pan. She was most impressed by people’s sense of personal space, through people standing and waiting in lines, instead of people shoving and pushing each other to get to the front in China. But it was these very nuances that made her more open to accepting her life in California.
Pan formerly worked as a teacher in China but decided to shift career paths after immigrating. Pan and her husband were expected to send money back to their parents in China. She enrolled herself in community college to learn English and studied to become a nurse to help with family finances.
“It was really difficult for me to handle nursing school while taking care of Stephanie,” said Pan. “I eventually decided that it would be better for me to send her to her relatives in China and have her move back after I had a job.”
After living with her grandparents for three years, Zhu returned to the Bay Area in 2008. One of her first memories was being forced to complete English workbooks by her mother.
“Apparently these workbooks had stickers on them. My mom would be like, ‘You can’t touch these stickers until you know how to pronounce whatever word correctly,’” said Zhu.
“I tried my best to teach her, even though my English was not that good,” said Pan, laughing along with Zhu as they FaceTimed me.
The Land of Dissent
Kim and Sohn re-immigrated to the States in 2005, settling in California. They obtained permanent residency in 2008 and now live in a senior apartment in La Mirada. On March 5, 2018, a decade later, they became naturalized citizens.
Ironically, it was that very day that Sohn felt aggressive racial undertones from a fellow American in a short exchange for the first time.
“I remember we were in line at the office to get our citizenship. I was talking to an African American man, but I guess I wasn’t good enough at English to understand him,” said Sohn. “He got mad at me and ignored me. It was a small incident, but I felt really bad.”
Experiences with simple, snarky remarks continuously reminded Pan that she was an outsider in the States.
“When I was a nurse intern, one of my patients kept asking me, ‘Why couldn’t you be a nurse in China?’” said Pan. “I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. I never confronted anyone. It didn’t feel good, but I just always thought that maybe I was too sensitive.”
Zhu, too, was confronted by cultural differences at school. She was just seven years old.
“After getting that Chinese education, everything in America was kind of shocking to me,” said Zhu. “In China, you have to stand up to answer questions in class. Obviously, in America, you only have to raise your hand. I didn’t know that, so I stood up to answer a question and everybody just stared at me like, ‘What?’”
Zhu also received comments about the smell of her food or her not being great at English when she was younger. “We experience a lot of microaggressions,” she said.
On a similar wavelength, Verdone grappled with her identity as a young Asian woman during high school. She participated in a program at Bartlett Academy, which focused on math, science and technology. Many of the students in the program were Asian.
“Everybody made jokes that ‘You’re in the program because you’re Asian, or you’re smart,’ things like that,” said Verdone. “Thinking about it further, there were definitely people who would ask me out to go on a date with me simply because I was Asian and they wanted to check that checkbox off.”
These seemingly harmless attitudes and acts toward Asians imprinted a common sentiment among these first-generation immigrants. While they might be American on paper, this was far from the reality.
The start of the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with the harmful rhetoric of former President Trump, who coined the virus as the “China virus,” brought upon an onslaught on the Asian American population in the States. In 2020, the NYPD reported that hate crimes prompted by anti-Asian sentiment increased by 1,900 percent in New York City.
On January 28, 2021, Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old immigrant from Thailand, was shoved to the ground during his daily morning walk in San Francisco. He died two days later from his injuries. A week later, on February 4, a 91-year-old man was pushed to the ground during a walk in Oakland’s Chinatown in California. On February 5, a 64-year-old Vietnamese grandmother was assaulted and robbed in San Jose, California.
What these elders had in common were their age, their race and the fact that they were simply minding their own business when they were attacked.
“With the previous administration no longer in office, there are a lot of people looking to just let out some unsubstantiated anger,” said Verdone. “Unfortunately, our elders are easy targets. There are individuals in our country that have let those types of actions go unchecked and without proper justice.”
Like many young Asian Americans, I’ve become concerned for my parents’ and grandparents’ safety and health. In light of the rise in anti-Asian violence across the nation, particularly in Asian neighborhoods, elders and parents have been taking precautions to stay protected. They limit their time outside of their homes and avoid going out at night in the dark.
“I do feel pretty safe where I live, but my husband and my son tell me not to go outside unless I really have to,” said Pan.
While security and safety are at the forefront of Asian American families’ priorities, the pressing thoughts and unanswered questions linger in our minds: Why our elders? Why now? Why at all?
“A majority of the individuals who are perpetrating these crimes are in my age range,” said Verdone. “It makes me wonder if the things that I did growing up, such as laughing along with them or accepting the jokes that they made about me, just so I could be accepted or fit in or belong were some type of negative seed that I planted.”
The model minority myth is cited as a potential trigger for violence against Asians. According to Time, the “false idea, constructed during the Civil Rights era to stymie racial justice movements, suggests that Asian Americans are more successful than other ethnic minorities because of hard work, education and inherently law-abiding natures.”
While there are rifts in the nation as a whole, the community finds solidarity and unity in their identities as Asian Americans, and not their individual ethnic groups. Asian Americans and supporters have been participating in #StopAsianHate, with prominent figures like Simu Liu and Daniel Dae Kim speaking up about racism and hosting dialogues to spread awareness. Instagram decks have been shared on social media to educate people about the history of Asian racism, including American legislation that barred entry to the nation for Asian immigrants in the 19th century.
“When I first heard about the violence, I was so mad. It’s not just the Koreans who are suffering,” said Kim. “It’s the first time that I felt that I was part of a larger group, as an Asian American.”
For Verdone, identifying as an immigrant to the States is important now more than ever.
“I took the naturalization test” to become a citizen “when I was younger, but it doesn’t define my story as a person more than being an immigrant does,” said Verdone.
With President Biden publicly condemning the hate crimes against Asian Americans, young activists calling out the news media to properly cover the issues plaguing the minority group and optimism that the pandemic will soon be over with vaccines rolling out, Asian Americans hold out hope for the future.
“I can’t help but wonder, will it be over soon?” said Kim.
Kim and Sohn’s interviews were translated from Korean to English by the writer.