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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-09-14
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny0TPC_SbJQ
your story scenes that calm seas organized by students headaches youth and SEC I had to describe my life as an immigrant in one way I would say it's a life between perspectives economize view of one of my favorite books and it's from the series his dark materials by Philip Pullman and part of the concept is about these different worlds stocked on top with each other yet
occupying the same space and I and the character with the subtle knife that gives me the ability to cut into layer by layer I'm talking about the reality that lives inside my house out my dinner table the reality outside the lives of my parents versus the lives of many of my peers teachers and %HESITATION pits up friends parents I can see the merits and the values
and shortcomings of both of these realities with the people with them then are stuck in their own reality because they don't how the subtle knife they don't realize that the ground they walk on is part of more than one so let me tell you a little bit about my Julia my American reality and my immigrant reality they clash often for example they give me different ideals
on love I finally American reality in the romantic stories like teachers telling in school stories abound you know spying vegan pizza for your million light protest Valentine's day or running errands for your wife accidentally running into your students at Victoria's secret and showing your girlfriend your college a whole house infested with cockroaches without windows and disgusting but her marrying you anyways I don't feed off the
stories sometimes make them draw me perfect circles when I know my parents will drop and first we unfunny and reassuring optimistic I share them with my mom to humor her and she laughs but she doubts them yeah actually know how people live and what they think and what they feel from a distance you Chauncey the reality of being in love it's too far from here for
her to believe in its success my parents tell me to be practical because when they went to school and they were publicly rate how their classmates didn't get into college and because they were raised by parents who watch the country be torn in two and claw its way back to prosperity because for women who want to give up her dreams the world is a competitive a
lot less unforgiving place and because entitlements is not in our vocabulary literally and figuratively my teacher summing do what you love do what makes you happy do what you're passionate about life will be sweet success will be yours they speak from the heart believing that what they're giving me are moral truths but to me they're only perspective %HESITATION and all those things to realities may seem
at odds with each other they're actually drive from the same sources they both come from the backgrounds and experiences of the people who live with them and so naturally they are different so let me tell you a little bit about how my parents got to adopt their perspective my parents and I immigrated here in the year two thousand when I was only eight year olds my
mom is a hot %HESITATION six city girl from soul and in college she majored in Thai but just because she didn't make a copper English she's got a lot of fun though she broke up with guys should our too short too needy too bad looking she yeah %HESITATION caught so drunk at a party on beer she fell off her chair she was not and it's kind
of hard for me to imagine my mama's this ruthless reckless unfair %HESITATION on it apologetic college girl though because in present day it she hands barebones liking proofreader emails she smiles quietly abandoned mines and I've never heard her speak Thai when my dog left for America my mom lingered I think clinging on to life that Sheila but eventually is suicidal and parents will pressure squeeze the
buy out of her until she was left with two options either stay in Korea %HESITATION raise her baby daughter alone in divorce or your old husband early and you chose the second and but after a few months in America my mom quickly realized what she'd given up proximity to our family the companionship of her friends and her independence all fizzled away in the face of five
thousand six hundred fifty miles of ocean the language barriers and the life of a stay at home mom position my dad thoughts a lot I remember my uncle came to visit me so far Jassem home crewmen that none could Monday hello please stop no please stop but they didn't stop and the title of my talk comes from a book that we read in AP English language
it's called white teeth by sunny Smith and I think a quote from acting perfectly sticks plane why my parents are this way Smith sons this is the thing about immigrants they cannot escape their history anymore than you yourself can %HESITATION escape your shadow and so my parents could not and cannot solve fighting because they're too much history between them to share the same bed and dream
the same dreams people are chained hand in the past is always gripping them in the press every day they live in this reality my mom laughs the most when she calls my brought her brother my uncle her favorite days Saturday because that's when my sister goes to green school and she got some coffee with the other models there's some of the few people who she believes
understand Sir she finds joy in walking my dog and listening to Korean talk shows the reality she listen is too far from the reality of my friends and their parents and my teachers for her to have the same world view she is here and she could have been somewhere else she is here and she didn't want to be and she still doesn't want to be but
she cannot change your situation I'm telling you this story to show you from where my mom has gotten her perspective that these experiences and what they're made her life to be have given her her worldview for example when I asked for this very simple question in preparation for this talk what have you learned from your life isn't it her response was quick and certain I'm I
think I learned that it's best for Koreans to live in Korea and I think also shot a gun among I think people need to give up their fantasy about immigration will make their lives better or help them achieve their dreams in anyway I felt frustrated at her cooled Harvard on inspiring reality I thought angry that she didn't give me something funny and sweet and reassuring optimistic
some sort of silver lining that made all our disappointments worth it and mean a happy ending but I knew she could because the reality she Linton made her beliefs sometimes my two different realities threaten to crash missing unswerving right to Carson tangents circles a friend's parents or a teacher asked me if they want if they can have dinner with my parents at some social not maybe
and I smiled actual genuine excitement but I know that it won't help my parents sign up to volunteer youth worker's I hope those that are not the toward committee planning needing I know they will not make any difference sometimes I want to force my to reality set up I feel frustrated at my friends my teachers and their parents because they cannot see the college girl was
reckless and ruthless and unclean promising in our own way I can't imagine how I would tell them the how why my mom gave up that girl when she left Seoul city lights for a quiet suburb playing and how the title mother for her is a shock cool a a disappointment a generalization stereotype and a reality I don't know how I can explain to them that I
myself can't believe in the existence of love for goodness or the diss my peers to find it and control and they're in tight sense of entitlement but sometimes their happiness and their hopeless seem to me like nightmares and other world I don't know how to explain to them why police once a month my dog comes softly patting inspiring and I close the door I don't think
they can see beyond the woman who smiles softly and hunts your phone to proofreader emails because they are not looking they are stock and I don't frustrated on my parents to I feel frustrated that they don't let me trust and happiness and love and passion in all these nice things that the only just pointing out the weaknesses that Achilles heel my parents are not looking either
and sometimes I would tell them what I read Jones told her parents in the novel white some people other people other families open a door and all they got behind is a living room or a bathroom just neutral space and not this endless maze of past rooms and present rooms and being summoned them years ago and everybody's historical stuff all over the place I want to
wave my American reality in front of them like a big fat red flag saying we'll need these people exists I'm telling you the biggest dramas of their lives or things like re carpeting bill Payne date fixing and they don't mind what their kids doing live as long as they're you know relatively happy wealthy I want to tell them some people I'm not like you but I'm
afraid that my speech like I really will not change my parents my because I know that I can never dig my parents or my friends or their parents or my teachers out of their realities unless they realize that they were stopped so if only we conversed with the prior understanding that these barriers exist around us to prevent us from truly understanding the others meaning and that
these barriers exists as a product of the rainbow of lives that each one of us has tasted unknown then we wouldn't need to wish these barriers didn't exist you can appreciate them and cherish them from a different values instilled in us a different world views they give us and know that nobody's world your opinion is wrong there simply different it kind of reminds me of the
way my friends and talk %HESITATION you my best friends we always somehow our conversations come back to a different heritages and I always end up talking about what life was like in her reaffirming parents now immigration us change them and me into who we are for better or for worse and this is one on purpose it's simply not the fact that I'm an immigrant is so
what thoroughly it %HESITATION inextricably integrated into my life that I can't really tell where one strand begins and the other ends which is a product of which reality and it's a beautiful thing it's authentic we know that we are a product of these different histories and yet we are more than the sum of the sisters my sister is that thirteen year old girl who is listening
to a Hamilton rap song well you know Asian pears and she does and I am a sixteen year old girl who sits on a couch from world market putting a dog from Central Valley reading a time magazine article on the Korean presidential scandal so yes there is a social divide their many social divides and it's undoubtedly hard to merge the realities that exist on either side
of them together but it's not necessary to force these realities together like magnets the same charge it's enough to let them co exist side by side holding hands briefing to the same rhythm because my acknowledging that these divides exists we are giving ourselves the power to overcome them thank you
