I’m From
“Where are you from? I’m Irish-Korean.”
That is the six-word memoir of Kourtney Kang, co-executive producer of television series Fresh Off the Boat. The ABC comedy paired with the Six-Word Memoirs series of Smith Magazine to produce Six Words Fresh Off the Boat, a book that shares the short and sweet, six-word tales of immigration, identity, and coming to America, ranging from the cast and crew of the television show to everyday students and everybody in between. In short, stories pack a punch.
Kourtney’s addition to the book summarizes a frequent occurrence for many individuals in the United States. We are, after all, a melting pot. We welcome diversity; we welcome the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses of the world. The divide between “outsiders,” between new arrivals to our country and those who have been here for generations, based on distant ancestors (who, lest we forget) once made their own migrations here, often manifests itself in terms of characterizations and rough guesstimates.
A last name, a facial feature, a skin color — these are all attributes that we try to deploy when quickly trying to recognize a country of origin or a nationality of previous bloodlines.
Key words in that last sentence: quickly, trying, recognize. When we stereotype, we infrequently bother with the trouble of fully understanding someone.
As Kang writes, “Where are you from?” is an invasive question, especially for individuals anytime after that first, initial generation of immigration to this country. These four words blindly cast people as outsiders to a culture and people and land that they may have spent their lives enshrined and embodied and embedded in; these four words remind us that though we may call a certain town or state here in the United States our home, many people look at us or hear a last name and forget otherwise.
Where am I from? I’m from New Jersey. Press me, and I’ll tell you that my parents are originally from Taiwan. I am of Chinese descent. In sum, I have been to Taiwan fewer than the number of fingers on either hand of mine, but yes, at home, I eat white rice for dinner every night. I brought chopsticks to my college apartment, and I’ll eat fries with said utensils because I hate getting my hands dirty (but that’s just a personal peeve). English is far and away my native language, but there are some phrases that I learned first in Mandarin because of what my parents said (fun fact: “diarrhea” is one such phrase).
What am I? I’m an ABC. American-born Chinese, Chinese-American, Taiwanese-American; frame it however you want, but Kang’s story ultimately pushes the envelope in confronting the reality that perhaps many in our country and our friends and our society are from different places and countries and backgrounds, but who we are is not the language that we speak or the traditions that we share. Who we are, at the end of the day, just depends on what we choose to share.
“Where are you from?” is a question that defines us by our past. Yes, immigration has impacts and effects and ripples across the pond for generations after the original movers, but this transitory experience is just that — an opportunity, a movement, a change that should not define us in the present. Where we’re from is not, not always, all of who we are.
