The INNERview
During my June trip to Korea, I was invited to be the subject of “The INNERview” on Arirang TV. The hour-long program, #71, aired the week of July 8. It can be viewed on YouTube here.
Arirang TV (livestream here) broadcasts 24/7 news, culture and all things Korean, in English, for overseas Koreans and the English language community in South Korea. The INNERview includes a wide range of interesting subjects – Koreans, Korean Americans, and a few foreigners like me who’ve made deep connections with Korea.
Here are a few behind-the-scenes pictures of the taping:
Kim Cha Ryung – or “Paige” – my liaison with Arirang TV, with my friend Yoo Myung Ja, who made the connection for me.
Host Susan Lee MacDonald, makeup artist, cameraman and producer reacting to my book,
The Legend of Hong Kil Dong.
The shoot, in a traditional house at Nam-San-Gol Han-ok folk village in downtown Seoul
Umbrellas over the cameras during a rain shower.
The entire experience was an honor and a delight and I’m very pleased with the program that Arirang produced.
Read MoreTeaching Korean Students
The first group was a class of 6th graders from Daejeon on an overnight retreat near Sejong City, run by the Humanity Recovery Movement Council (Huremo) a nonprofit focusing on personal development through the use of journals – called “love diaries” – to “help children think and plan for themselves and make their dreams come true.”
I talked about my own childhood dream of becoming an artist, and of how growing up in Korea gave me a vision of the common humanity of all people. Then I shared a little of the process of creating my graphic novel, The Legend of Hong Kil Dong: The Robin Hood of Korea, and some tricks for enhancing the elements of story when composing comics, such as zoom-in (character), zoom-out (setting), and using diagonals to convey a sense of movement.
What a sweet treat to spend time with such a small group of kids!
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Korea, Again
I’m writing from Seoul where I’m connecting with old friends as well as doing a few presentations, including talking about my graphic novel, The Legend of Hong Kil Dong, with a classroom of Korean 6th graders – in Korean! Quite a stretch for my language skills, requiring learning/trying to recall a whole set of vocabulary: editor, research, picture book, manuscript, theme, final art, etc. (Another group of vocabulary is easier because it’s just a Korean pronunciation of the English word: sketch = su-keh-chi; character = keh-rik-tuh, and so on.)
Next week I’ll be joined by my mother and siblings, to take some of my father’s ashes to Geoje Island for a memorial service and reunion with former staff members, colleagues and friends. (Dad was the director of the Kojedo Community Health Project from 1969-1978.)
Read MoreExploring a Bicultural Experience
One of my favorite blogs, Korean American Story, has just published a piece I was invited to write for them, “Of Longing and Belonging.”
This relatively new blog has already built a thoughtful and insightful collection of essays and fiction on what it means to be Korean and American, including immigrant, U.S.-born, and adoptee perspectives.
Read MoreA Week of Comics
At the beginning of August, I got to spend an entire week in the Cartooning Studio, an intensive workshop for adults at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. What fun!
My goal was to further develop the graphic novel that my daughter Yunhee and I have been creating, a fictionalization of her middle school experience – being teased, loving to read and draw manga (Japanese comics), and learning to stand firm in her identity, including being Korean and adopted. It’s called Manga Girl.
Here’s one of the images I went in with:
and here’s what I came out with, after the inspired teaching of the young, phenomenally talented staff (biggest change was switching from marker to brush line):
I also completed the outline of the story and 13 spreads of thumbnails (small sketched layouts of double pages). Now it’s in my daughter’s hands for scripting.
Some of the interns posted an account of the entire workshop on the CCS Schulz Library blog, from Day 1, through Day 5 (my project is mentioned – and that’s me in the turquoise shirt).
Read MoreThe Different One: Racial Identity Development
“Yoh-roh-bun-dul, ahn-nyung-ha-shim-nee-ka.” I open many of my school presentations with this photo and a greeting in Korean: “Hello, everyone. This is my picture. When I was seven years old, I moved to Korea. From then I learned two languages and two cultures. This is my eighth birthday.”
After I’ve translated the introduction, I go on to share a little about my childhood: how conspicuous I was as a tall, light-skinned, light-haired, large-nosed, round-eyed American, growing up in South Korea in the 1960s when few foreigners lived in the country. When I went to the market, a crowd of people would gather around me, marveling at how different I looked. It was kind of like being a princess, I tell the children.
This early experience provides an ideal segue for a discussion of difference. “I was treated as if I was special. What do you think I learned about being different? That it was fabulous! It was certainly working well for me. But is this how we always treat people who are different?”
I ask the students how many of them have ever been “the different one” – because of skin color, body size, learning style, language, the only boy, the only girl, and so on. Usually most children in the classroom raise their hands. “How did that feel? What happened to you?” I ask. We talk about being left out, being teased, being called names. I’ve had this discussion with children as young as first and second grade.
With older children, I then go on to share a simple explanation of Racial Identity Development – how each of us comes to understand race and to think about our own race:
“As we grow, each one of us gets ideas of who we are by the mirrors that are held up for us, including mirrors about race. You’re having this experience right now. If you’re one of many, like one of the boys on a soccer team, you don’t think much about being a boy. But if you’re one of a few, like the only girl on the soccer team, you think about it all the time, because everybody tells you you’re a girl, you’re different.
“Race is like that, too. In the United States, if you’re white, you usually don’t notice it because the majority of people are white. But if you’re a person of color, you tend to notice it a lot more. Everyone reminds you all the time that you’re the different one. So our different experiences of race give us different ideas and different ways of thinking about race.
“When I was young, the mirror of responses of other people to my difference – ‘You’re American! You’re American!’ – made me notice that I was white. Do you think that my friend Ok-soon, on my left in the photo, thought much about being Korean? No, because everyone around her had similar hair, skin color, and features. She blended in.”
Any racial experience in the lives of older children can be an opportunity to introduce the concept of racial identity development, individually or with a group, with lead-in questions such as:
– Do you notice skin color? When do you notice skin color? Why do you think certain skin colors stand out more? (Usually when a person is different from the group.)
– Do people with majority skin color stand out? Do they think about their skin color much? Why or why not? (When you blend in with the group, your skin color is taken for granted. It’s the norm.)
– How do people get treated when they are seen as different?
Racial Identity Development has much to recommend it as an introduction for young people to the topic of racism:
1. It’s a non-threatening approach that doesn’t automatically provoke defensiveness.
2. It sets up a level playing field by including everyone in the discussion and the groups that are being examined.
3. It offers a way to get white kids thinking about themselves racially, to counteract the silence and invisibility of race in the white community.
4. It’s a natural segue into the concept of socialization, including in-groups and out-groups.
For an in-depth explanation of racial identity development, see Beverly Daniel Tatum’s book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
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