I am writing my piece on race and I thought, I wonder if Jenna wrote hers yet? Then BAM, your story was first in my list of newsletters. I would love to hear your kids' perspectives on this, too, although I'm sure they are very busy people! I just love that they embraced their Korean background and want to hear how your 2nd chose to study about it.
Jenna - great article and one that hit home for me. I was born and raised here in the U.S., about as white mid-western farm boy as they come. I married a sassy Peruvian girl who immigrated to this country because she couldn't resist me. Or at least, that is what I tell myself! Our children are biracial obviously. Our son, who is in college, looks Hispanic. Black hair, brown skin, etc... easily gets mistaken as Mexican on a regular basis. Our daughter, who is in high school, has lighter brown hair and ivory skin. She more normally passes for white but it depends on the group she is in. Growing up in the U.S. they had mostly American tendencies a kids even though we frequently visited my wife's family in Lima. As they have gotten older they have embraced their multi-cultural heritage which is beautiful to me. I think that having a biracial, multi-cultural home gives our kids a world view that many don't get to experience. Thanks for sharing your family's story.
I feel so much joy reading that your kids embrace their Korean heritage! Sadly it’s not a universal experience for many mixed people growing up in the US, especially in white dominant spaces. It’s been a joy for me as a mixed person to grow into my Taiwanese-ness. Hope that in a world where diversity is increasingly celebrated, this becomes more the norm!
Wonderful essay! My kids are 1/4 Japanese, 1/4 Lebanese, 1/2 white. Thanks for openly talking about this subject, it’s still hard for me to write about it publicly. Race is such a touchy issue in this country but some of us have to think about it all the time and it’s stifling when you’re afraid to offend people by bringing it up.
Loved this essay, Jenna! I’m half Japanese and half white. Growing up, I was always very proud of being biracial, but never understood why others didn’t seem to get this concept. I remember a cousin telling me people didn’t know how they could have an “Asian cousin”—they thought they only could be white. 🫣 I was “too Asian” for my peers in the states but considered “gaijin” at my mom’s old Japanese school. (They wanted pictures with me!)
I recently wrote a post about keeping up with my Japanese grandparents and the funny mistranslations that have come up. I’m still sorting out a lot in terms of racial identity, but happy to be who I am and embracing it.
Thank you for sharing this and being so open about it.
My wife was adopted and born in Korea. So, my kids are half Korean and half white, with no Korean family but their mother.
One of our three has experienced racism, while the others have not.
When my wife died, I immediately panicked because I would never be able to relate to the experiences my kids will have growing up as it relates to their ethnicity. And now they have no one to share that aspect of their lives with.
I ask them as much as I can how they feel about being biracial and what side they identify with more. I have no idea if that is even a good thing to do, but I want to have the conversation.
At best, I can be a safe space for them to share. At worst I’m making their life harder.
But, I found they tend to want to dive into their Korean side more to connect to their mother.
Anyway, thanks for helping me see more perspective.
It’s heartwarming that your kids are embracing their heritage. It’s a constant struggle here with a Canadian dad and no Korean-speaking relatives around. We do Korean school and I try to take them to Korea every couple of years.
Funnily enough my brother and I found out the hard way that we were both Korean citizens, despite him being born in Canada, and me in Bahrain.
The first time my brother entered Korea after age 18 was when he was 20 to work/spend the summer there. To my dad’s surprise (he lives in Korea), the army called him a week later to tell him my brother was to report to duty. Needless to say this was huge shock, which led to months of calls, paperwork, and dad not telling us about the call but waking my hungover brother up at 5am to hike in swamps for 10 hrs just to see if his Canadian-born soft son would be prepared to handle the army if the matter couldn’t be resolved (it was eventually, and in true Korean dad form, he didn’t tell us about the whole situation until years later!).
I have been thinking about this post all day. On the one hand, it really does a great job of bringing me into a life experience I can barely comprehend as a US-born white guy. On the other hand (at the risk of straying out of my lane), it also really helps me think about the liminal class experiences of my mother (who grew up working class but married a lawyer/law professor) and my kids (who grew up with plenty of cultural capital and material security, but in a working-class neighborhood with a working-class income and who were scholarship kids at fancy colleges). Thanks for writing and sharing!
Did you see the WaPo article about Siavash Sobhani, a 61 year old doctor who found out he was not actually a citizen when we went to renew his US passport?! Brutal shock and bureaucratic oversight. 😵💫
Wow this is so interesting! Thank you for sharing this very personal experience of yours, Jenna. And yes, I've also found out that various US governmental agencies don't talk to each other. I am on a work visa and yet I received a jury duty letter from my county last year... apparently they just don't know the citizenships of their residents..
Thank you for sharing your experience. I am half Japanese, half white living in New Zealand. I probably “passed” at being white. So I was really really happy that I had a Japanese name, so I could hold onto my identity of being Japanese in a different country.
There was some racism growing up in primary. “Jap crap” and the typical kids making their eyes slanted in my face etc.
My three brothers and I are all tall and my mum is an adorable short Japanese woman. When we returned to Japan, I loved being affectionate to my mum (which isn’t something you do in Japan) to freak people out on the trains (why is this “gaijin” (foreigner) linking arms with this Japanese woman?!?!)
I really regret not speaking Japanese growing up. English was definitely my first language. I can understand my mum perfectly (thank goodness), but I was lazy and answered in English. So consequently, I’m not good enough to integrate it into our kid’s lives.
We have 4 kids now and they are proud of their Japanese heritage. I’m so glad that we have my mum around to expose them to the food, culture and all things Japanese. It’s a reminder to me that I need to record all her recipes because they are all in her head!! 🍛🥟🍜🍚🍙🍢
Thank you for this, Jenna. So much of it resonates and it warms my heart to see how much it resonates with others too. My father was Japanese and my mom is South African and I spent so much of my childhood desperately wanting to be blond haired and blue eyed like my cousins. Some of my earliest memories are my white grandmother telling me to stop squinting so much and open my eyes more. I was a child of the 90s and didn't have a lot of biracial friends so that didn't help either and although I can pass for white, I'm also the most Asian looking of my three siblings so when I was with my mom I remember so many people, absolute strangers thinking I was adopted which both confused, incensed and embarrassed me depending on how old I was. Now I'm proud of my Japanese heritage, although I will say that because we live out in the middle of nowhere Virginia I still get plenty of comments about how exotic I look or someone asks where I'm from. But I've finally learned to laugh these things off. Anyways, thank you for sharing. I always enjoy your thoughts.
So many thoughts came up reading this. I weirdly related as a mix culture (albeit English Irish not Asian American) and how I resemble the English side but not the Irish (though I don’t want to belittle Asian experience, just a connection I felt). The complexity of mix heritage and how we connect with the world.
I recently watched the film Past Life and had similar feelings. Have you seen it? I really enjoyed it.
I am so curious about this middle school grad photo with the big hair.
I am writing my piece on race and I thought, I wonder if Jenna wrote hers yet? Then BAM, your story was first in my list of newsletters. I would love to hear your kids' perspectives on this, too, although I'm sure they are very busy people! I just love that they embraced their Korean background and want to hear how your 2nd chose to study about it.
Jenna - great article and one that hit home for me. I was born and raised here in the U.S., about as white mid-western farm boy as they come. I married a sassy Peruvian girl who immigrated to this country because she couldn't resist me. Or at least, that is what I tell myself! Our children are biracial obviously. Our son, who is in college, looks Hispanic. Black hair, brown skin, etc... easily gets mistaken as Mexican on a regular basis. Our daughter, who is in high school, has lighter brown hair and ivory skin. She more normally passes for white but it depends on the group she is in. Growing up in the U.S. they had mostly American tendencies a kids even though we frequently visited my wife's family in Lima. As they have gotten older they have embraced their multi-cultural heritage which is beautiful to me. I think that having a biracial, multi-cultural home gives our kids a world view that many don't get to experience. Thanks for sharing your family's story.
I feel so much joy reading that your kids embrace their Korean heritage! Sadly it’s not a universal experience for many mixed people growing up in the US, especially in white dominant spaces. It’s been a joy for me as a mixed person to grow into my Taiwanese-ness. Hope that in a world where diversity is increasingly celebrated, this becomes more the norm!
Wonderful essay! My kids are 1/4 Japanese, 1/4 Lebanese, 1/2 white. Thanks for openly talking about this subject, it’s still hard for me to write about it publicly. Race is such a touchy issue in this country but some of us have to think about it all the time and it’s stifling when you’re afraid to offend people by bringing it up.
Loved this essay, Jenna! I’m half Japanese and half white. Growing up, I was always very proud of being biracial, but never understood why others didn’t seem to get this concept. I remember a cousin telling me people didn’t know how they could have an “Asian cousin”—they thought they only could be white. 🫣 I was “too Asian” for my peers in the states but considered “gaijin” at my mom’s old Japanese school. (They wanted pictures with me!)
I recently wrote a post about keeping up with my Japanese grandparents and the funny mistranslations that have come up. I’m still sorting out a lot in terms of racial identity, but happy to be who I am and embracing it.
Thank you for sharing this and being so open about it.
My wife was adopted and born in Korea. So, my kids are half Korean and half white, with no Korean family but their mother.
One of our three has experienced racism, while the others have not.
When my wife died, I immediately panicked because I would never be able to relate to the experiences my kids will have growing up as it relates to their ethnicity. And now they have no one to share that aspect of their lives with.
I ask them as much as I can how they feel about being biracial and what side they identify with more. I have no idea if that is even a good thing to do, but I want to have the conversation.
At best, I can be a safe space for them to share. At worst I’m making their life harder.
But, I found they tend to want to dive into their Korean side more to connect to their mother.
Anyway, thanks for helping me see more perspective.
It’s heartwarming that your kids are embracing their heritage. It’s a constant struggle here with a Canadian dad and no Korean-speaking relatives around. We do Korean school and I try to take them to Korea every couple of years.
Funnily enough my brother and I found out the hard way that we were both Korean citizens, despite him being born in Canada, and me in Bahrain.
The first time my brother entered Korea after age 18 was when he was 20 to work/spend the summer there. To my dad’s surprise (he lives in Korea), the army called him a week later to tell him my brother was to report to duty. Needless to say this was huge shock, which led to months of calls, paperwork, and dad not telling us about the call but waking my hungover brother up at 5am to hike in swamps for 10 hrs just to see if his Canadian-born soft son would be prepared to handle the army if the matter couldn’t be resolved (it was eventually, and in true Korean dad form, he didn’t tell us about the whole situation until years later!).
We both renounced our citizenship after that!!
I have been thinking about this post all day. On the one hand, it really does a great job of bringing me into a life experience I can barely comprehend as a US-born white guy. On the other hand (at the risk of straying out of my lane), it also really helps me think about the liminal class experiences of my mother (who grew up working class but married a lawyer/law professor) and my kids (who grew up with plenty of cultural capital and material security, but in a working-class neighborhood with a working-class income and who were scholarship kids at fancy colleges). Thanks for writing and sharing!
Did you see the WaPo article about Siavash Sobhani, a 61 year old doctor who found out he was not actually a citizen when we went to renew his US passport?! Brutal shock and bureaucratic oversight. 😵💫
Wow this is so interesting! Thank you for sharing this very personal experience of yours, Jenna. And yes, I've also found out that various US governmental agencies don't talk to each other. I am on a work visa and yet I received a jury duty letter from my county last year... apparently they just don't know the citizenships of their residents..
Thank you for sharing your experience. I am half Japanese, half white living in New Zealand. I probably “passed” at being white. So I was really really happy that I had a Japanese name, so I could hold onto my identity of being Japanese in a different country.
There was some racism growing up in primary. “Jap crap” and the typical kids making their eyes slanted in my face etc.
My three brothers and I are all tall and my mum is an adorable short Japanese woman. When we returned to Japan, I loved being affectionate to my mum (which isn’t something you do in Japan) to freak people out on the trains (why is this “gaijin” (foreigner) linking arms with this Japanese woman?!?!)
I really regret not speaking Japanese growing up. English was definitely my first language. I can understand my mum perfectly (thank goodness), but I was lazy and answered in English. So consequently, I’m not good enough to integrate it into our kid’s lives.
We have 4 kids now and they are proud of their Japanese heritage. I’m so glad that we have my mum around to expose them to the food, culture and all things Japanese. It’s a reminder to me that I need to record all her recipes because they are all in her head!! 🍛🥟🍜🍚🍙🍢
Thank you for this, Jenna. So much of it resonates and it warms my heart to see how much it resonates with others too. My father was Japanese and my mom is South African and I spent so much of my childhood desperately wanting to be blond haired and blue eyed like my cousins. Some of my earliest memories are my white grandmother telling me to stop squinting so much and open my eyes more. I was a child of the 90s and didn't have a lot of biracial friends so that didn't help either and although I can pass for white, I'm also the most Asian looking of my three siblings so when I was with my mom I remember so many people, absolute strangers thinking I was adopted which both confused, incensed and embarrassed me depending on how old I was. Now I'm proud of my Japanese heritage, although I will say that because we live out in the middle of nowhere Virginia I still get plenty of comments about how exotic I look or someone asks where I'm from. But I've finally learned to laugh these things off. Anyways, thank you for sharing. I always enjoy your thoughts.
So many thoughts came up reading this. I weirdly related as a mix culture (albeit English Irish not Asian American) and how I resemble the English side but not the Irish (though I don’t want to belittle Asian experience, just a connection I felt). The complexity of mix heritage and how we connect with the world.
I recently watched the film Past Life and had similar feelings. Have you seen it? I really enjoyed it.