Korean American Families

An engaging ethnography of Korean American immigrant families navigating the United States Both scholarship and popular culture on Asian American immigrant families have long focused on intergenerational cultural conflict and stereotypes about “tiger mothers” and “model minority” students. This book turns the tables on the conventional imagination of the Asian American immigrant family, arguing that, in fact, families are often on the same page about the challenges and difficulties navigating the U.S.’s racialized landscape. The book draws on a survey with over 200 Korean American teens and over one hundred parents to provide context, then focusing on the stories of five families with young adults in order to go in-depth, and shed light on today’s dynamics in these families. The book argues that Korean American immigrant parents and their children today are thinking in shifting ways about how each member of the family can best succeed in the U.S. Rather than being marked by a generational division of Korean vs. American, these families struggle to cope with an American society in which each of their lives are shaped by racism, discrimination, and gender. Thus, the foremost goal in the minds of most parents is to prepare their children to succeed by instilling protective character traits. The authors show that Asian American—and particularly Korean American—family life is constantly shifting as children and parents strive to accommodate each other, even as they forge their own paths toward healthy and satisfying American lives. This book contributes a rare ethnography of family life, following them through the transition from teenagers into young adults, to a field that has largely considered the immigrant and second generation in isolation from one another. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods and focusing on both generations, this book makes the case for delving more deeply into the ideas of immigrant parents and their teens about raising children and growing up in America – ideas that defy easy classification as “Korean” or “American.”

Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3 (A), Humboldt-University of Berlin (Anglistics/American Studies), course: Asian American Literature: Foodways and Cultural Transformation(s), language: English, abstract: “Your life can be different, Young Ju. Study and be strong. In America, women have choices.”1 Korean people tend to define women as wives, mothers, caregivers, or just simply as girls, always with regard to their sexual behavior rather to their individuality as a person. For over five hundred years Confucianism has been the mainstream of Korean culture and tradition, setting the social role of Korean women. Koreans still strongly believe in Confucian values, behave, feel, and think in Confucian ways, despite the fact that Koreans, particularly Korean Americans and specifically Korean American women, have experienced new social realities and such social changes as modern socialization, westernisation, Christianization, industrialization, and immigration to the American socio-cultural setting. The major premises for this paper are (1) a view on women in Korea and Confucian values in Korean society. (2) What happens when a traditional immigrant couple arrives in America and that a departure from traditional roles often results in domestic violence. (3) The role of Korean children in Korea and in America. These considerations build the theoretical background for (4) an examination of a Korean American novel of a family experiencing new social realities upon arriving in the United States. The paper will show that the Confucian values are still dominating in Korean American families and that a departure of the traditional family setting is hard or impossible for single family members, especially for the men who see their patriarchal authority over their wife and children erode. The women begin to question the superior position of their husbands and children experience a time of confusion and frustration for their parents often disagree about new ways of raising them. This paper will also show that the problems and examples given in the novel A Step from heaven by An Na are typical for Korean American immigrants and that children are again the ones that suffer the most. 1 Na, An: A Step from heaven. New York, 2000

More than 1.3 million Korean Americans live in the United States, the majority of them foreign-born immigrants and their children, the so-called 1.5 and second generations. While many sons and daughters of Korean immigrants outwardly conform to the stereotyped image of the upwardly mobile, highly educated super-achiever, the realities and challenges that the children of Korean immigrants face in their adult lives as their immigrant parents grow older and confront health issues that are far more complex. In Caring Across Generations, Grace J. Yoo and Barbara W. Kim explore how earlier experiences helping immigrant parents navigate American society have prepared Korean American children for negotiating and redefining the traditional gender norms, close familial relationships, and cultural practices that their parents expect them to adhere to as they reach adulthood. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 137 second and 1.5 generation Korean Americans, Yoo & Kim explore issues such as their childhood experiences, their interpreted cultural traditions and values in regards to care and respect for the elderly, their attitudes and values regarding care for aging parents, their observations of parents facing retirement and life changes, and their experiences with providing care when parents face illness or the prospects of dying. A unique study at the intersection of immigration and aging, Caring Across Generations provides a new look at the linked lives of immigrants and their families, and the struggles and triumphs that they face over many generations.

Twelve chapters, portraying diverse aspects of the contemporary Korean families and showing how they have come to have their current shapes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An homage to what it means to be Korean American with delectable recipes that explore how new culinary traditions can be forged to honor both your past and your present. IACP AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF THE TEN BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: Simply Recipes ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: Bon Appétit, The Boston Globe, Saveur, NPR, Food & Wine, Salon, Vice, Epicurious, Publishers Weekly “This is such an important book. I savored every word and want to cook every recipe!”—Nigella Lawson, author of Cook, Eat, Repeat New York Times staff writer Eric Kim grew up in Atlanta, the son of two Korean immigrants. Food has always been central to his story, from Friday-night Korean barbecue with his family to hybridized Korean-ish meals for one—like Gochujang-Buttered Radish Toast and Caramelized-Kimchi Baked Potatoes—that he makes in his tiny New York City apartment. In his debut cookbook, Eric shares these recipes alongside insightful, touching stories and stunning images shot by photographer Jenny Huang. Playful, poignant, and vulnerable, Korean American also includes essays on subjects ranging from the life-changing act of leaving home and returning as an adult, to what Thanksgiving means to a first-generation family, complete with a full holiday menu—all the while teaching readers about the Korean pantry, the history of Korean cooking in America, and the importance of white rice in Korean cuisine. Recipes like Gochugaru Shrimp and Grits, Salt-and-Pepper Pork Chops with Vinegared Scallions, and Smashed Potatoes with Roasted-Seaweed Sour Cream Dip demonstrate Eric's prowess at introducing Korean pantry essentials to comforting American classics, while dishes such as Cheeseburger Kimbap and Crispy Lemon-Pepper Bulgogi with Quick-Pickled Shallots do the opposite by tinging traditional Korean favorites with beloved American flavor profiles. Baked goods like Milk Bread with Maple Syrup and Gochujang Chocolate Lava Cakes close out the narrative on a sweet note. In this book of recipes and thoughtful insights, especially about his mother, Jean, Eric divulges not only what it means to be Korean American but how, through food and cooking, he found acceptance, strength, and the confidence to own his story.

Between Foreign and Family explores the impact of inconsistent rules of ethnic inclusion and exclusion on the economic and social lives of Korean Americans and Korean Chinese living in Seoul. These actors are part of a growing number of return migrants, members of an ethnic diaspora who migrate “back” to the ancestral homeland from which their families emigrated. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interview data, Helene K. Lee highlights the “logics of transnationalism” that shape the relationships between these return migrants and their employers, co-workers, friends, family, and the South Korean state. While Koreanness marks these return migrants as outsiders who never truly feel at home in the United States and China, it simultaneously traps them into a liminal space in which they are neither fully family, nor fully foreign in South Korea. Return migration reveals how ethnic identity construction is not an indisputable and universal fact defined by blood and ancestry, but a contested and uneven process informed by the interplay of ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, gender, and history.

The "1.5 generation" (Ilchom ose) refers to Koreans who immigrated to the United States as children. Unlike their first-generation parents and second-generation children born in the United States, 1.5ers have been socialized in both Korean and American cultures and express the cultural values and beliefs of each. In this first extended look at the 1.5 generation in Hawaii, Mary Yu Danico attempts to fill a void in the research by addressing the social process through which Korean children are transformed from immigrants into 1.5ers. Dozens of informal, in-depth interviews and case studies provide rich data on how family, community, and economic and political factors influence and shape Korean and Korean American identity in Hawaii. Danico examines the history of Koreans in Hawaii, their social characteristics, and current demographics. Her close consideration of socio-cultural influences firmly establishes the 1.5 generation in the mainstream discussion of identity formation and race relations.

Award-winning journalist K. Connie Kang renders a moving generational saga in this portrait of her family's passage from their ancestral Korean home. Part family biography, part history, part memoir, this book is an affecting, absorbing tale of family and country, and an essential book for understanding the greatest Asian migration in this century.