SoundBites

• Coming back from dinner on Friday nights to a packed living room of people watching iconic movies and tv shows while drinking wine. Danica has expanded my movie arsenal with the classics. I will never get over Johnny Depp in Cry Baby and the trauma that is Black Mirror.
• Friday nights where we're all a little bit rosier and a bit warmer on the inside and ordering Domino's en masse. Cheesy bread is overrated, yet Domino's pasta is a surprising competitor. Will we ever accept those who partake in pineapple on pizza?
• Having my Monday nights occupied by a really eccentric bunch of hooligans who war over whether Truly or White Claw is the drink of choice. Never would have learned to play Social without them. Also wouldn't have had to stand in the entrance of FoCo handing out missing garden gnome flyers with out them either. 
• Saying goodbye to my beloved '17s who have taught me so much about resilience and self-love and care. 
• Kelley and I never reaching our 100 day snap streak because we suck. I get that you're working in NY and have a career and stuff, but this is important, ok? 
• Never leaving my house for a period of three months while studying for the MCATs as one does when one is sufficiently fed and watered in confined spaced. 
• Spending my days after the nightmare of the MCAT volunteering at Elderhaus and being surrounded by so much compassion. I will never forget the times when she would actually eat what was put in front of her and the times when he sang Dean Martin's That's Amore. 
• Trying my hand at conducting the Dartmouth Chamber Orchestra, only to realize I don't know a damn thing about wind instruments. So I faked it based on the things I remembered old directors griping about. Can you guys anticipate the beat a little more, you're lagging a bit?
• Going to a brewery in the New Hampshire wilderness with 17's that are the kind of laid back cool I know I'll never be and making a pit stop at a pizza place hidden literally on top of a hill in who knows where. 
• Every frat boy meeting in history, but the one this past fall particularly. The birth of Chad was a revelation of the darkest parts of my soul. I will return to this earth as Chad, if I live in sin.
• 21 coming and going. Was still studying for the MCAT at this point, so no revelry was had. Someone ID me, please.
• Going to my first wedding to see my friend Tarryn from high school get hitched. Impressed at how Mormons know how to have fun sans imbibing. It was a lovely service for two lovely people who are ready for that part of life even before I've even shaken hands with a man. 
• Coming back to campus after a 6 month hiatus and feeling so loved by my circles. Solidifying the friendships I left with and letting go of the ones that I'm ready to move on from. 
• The copacetic vibe of this school years Theta CAB. My gosh is there a lovelier bunch of people in the world? Probably not. 
• Being the New Member Educator for our newest fledglings and sharing their energy and excitement. I adore the memes and the idiocy that is shared on the daily.
• Cabin retreat with my family on campus with an unanticipated 2 mile hike vertically in the dark to even get to the cabin in the first place. There were no lights. We did everything by moonlight like a bunch of witches. Wine, friendship bracelets, life stories, and breakfast on the patio in the morning. 
• My first protest to support DACA students on campus. A moment of definitive action that I'm proud of despite the feeling that nothing I do is enough to make change for a cause I believe in. A moment of fear in the face of a grown adult man, parent of another student, hurling insults and having the audacity to put his hands on my body in aggression. Feeling choked up because we are not supposed to engage, but feeling the dire need to hurl a verbal tirade back in retaliation.
• Stung for the first time in my life by a bee that flew into my shoe while apple picking. Surprised at how it was weak tea compared to the agony I thought I was going to be in. 
• Proceeding to go to dance practice after the fact because Street Soul has become such an important part of my life. Something I truly love every moment of. Learning to find beauty, power, and strength in the movements my body can produce. Relishing in the feeling of confidence that dance gives me. And finding new people, like Karen and Tiff, to admire and love for their passion and hilarious personalities.
• My first dance show at Chi Gam. Decked out in all black, matching shirts, and brand new kicks. A ridiculous number of people in a space, we would have all died if someone's vape had accidentally blown up and started a fire. 
• Taking on mentorship positions on campus and learning that I enjoy being a resource that others can rely on for support. Making relationships with 21's that I adore.
• Running around organizing a formal I'm not sure people actually wanted while stressed out of my mind. Rash all up and down my legs that basically consisted of burst capillaries due to my body attacking itself out of immune depression. Don't worry I'm not dead yet and the rash just left some faint bruising. 
• Working on a documentary for the first time for a class project and getting high praise from our famous documentary producer professor. Learning more about Jess' experience as a golfer and getting to collaborate in the one group project that didn't make me want to choke out my fellow compatriots. 
• Gaining confidence to pursue what I want, when I want it. Not feeling reservations about the body I possess and the space that I occupy. 
• Finally finding the balance between spending time with the people in my life and my academic and career commitments. Finding success from that balance. 

Tell Me I Did Well

Growing up, my family went to service every Sunday at our local Korean church. I remember having to learn about the stories in the Bible in a room in the church with the other children, all of whom were younger than I was. We were taught the books of the Bible and watched the Vegetales retelling of David and Goliath. But even as a child, I was never moved by any of the displays of spirituality or felt as though I was making contact with something bigger than myself. They were always just stories, like the ones I learned in Korean school about the bear who became a woman after eating only garlic in a cave for 100 days. I chalked it up to the fact that I knew as a child that faith in a god was for those who needed it and I did not. Over time, I developed this view, modified it with the atheist analysis and found answers in science. Religion stemmed from the human need to explain phenomena that were out of our control and to find solace from the harsh realities of daily life. I thought I had always already disavowed that sort of spirituality. I was at the center of my life and ultimately it is my radical choice and consciousness that has any bearing on how I navigate the world. My studies in college in philosophy provided further rational responses to faith and religion. The Sartrean notion of radical freedom and bad faith were particularly seductive, yet harsh, way of conceptualizing the human experience. However, I never registered how truly bleak the notion of finitude was. I used to contemplate death a lot for an elementary schooler and I don't think I was ever truly scared of death. Death was always a void and definitive end. Afterlife sounded to fantastical to be something to invest in as a possibility, reincarnation even more so.

When my grandmother, aunt, and uncle passed in a sudden and horrific car accident, my family flew out to Dallas to take care of their affairs. The only person to survive the tragedy was my baby cousin, who was protected by his mother's embrace upon impact. I was too young to really understand what was going on at the time. We were camped out in their still home in the spring. The house was slightly musty and only seemed to ever be lit by the streams of soft, faded light coming through the windows. I only have a vague memory of the sense of anxiety in the air, like no one could stay still for too long. Hushed conversations had in Korean that I didn't understand. The smell of rain outside and the images of my brother and I collecting the small snails, no bigger than a bead, drawn out by the moisture, in styrofoam cups. I don't think anyone explained to me in so many words what had happened. We just picked up and went. I don't remember any tears being shed, oddly enough, but everything was covered in a layer of silencing dust. 

Looking back, I wonder what was running through my mother's mind. She had just lost her mother and sister. She doesn't ever mention that time much, except to say that it was true that she didn't cry. She says it's because she just had too much resentment for her mother to feel loss. Maybe that's her truth. I never really knew my grandmother and aunt. I remember them visiting us and having gone on trips to the mountains and hot springs. I remember the dolls and clothes that my grandmother sent me every so often before she passed that I treasured because I never had anything so girly. I remember the time she tried to walk me to the bus stop to go to school and I cried and threw a tantrum because I was embarrassed she couldn't speak English. I was unkind in the way only a naive child can be. It was clear that she loved me as a grandmother should, yet when she passed I could only muster forced tears because I knew that's what people did when someone dies. 

When I was in middle school, a girl I knew since kindergarten passed away after being struck by a car on her way to her first day of high school. I think we were closer when we were still in elementary school. She had a younger sister and her family lived in the same courtyard we did, so we must have played together before one of us moved away. The only thing I remember for sure is that she used to sell jewelry she made on the bus when we both were in middle school. The first thing she said to me after we hadn't seen each other for a while was to give me her best sales pitch on her most recent pair of earrings. On the day she passed, she was biking to the nearby high school to catch the bus to take her to her high school of choice further away. The car hit her on the road right by my house. Her family held a memorial service that my family attended. I remember seeing the room filled with the students from our schools and feeling overwhelmed by the people going up and detailing fond memories and stories they shared. I remember rehearsing what I wanted to say in my head while others went to the podium. I eventually made my way up and everything came out wrong. The phrases I practiced in my head got convoluted and were articulated too forcefully. I wanted to say how the sheer number of people in the room was a testament to how she had touched so many people's lives. Instead I said that her death will affect all of us, like I was the oracle of bad things to come. I remember becoming more and more incoherent as I suddenly started to cry, even though I didn't feel the sadness I felt was justified because I wasn't even that close to her. My friends who had also know her as an acquaintance came after the service to comfort me and the extreme guilt I felt for making this somehow about me made me cry harder. I don't remember why I cried because I truly didn't know her well enough to feel the sort of loss one does. Maybe it was the mixture of embarrassment at fumbling for my words or the realization that our possibilities in life can be cut short by forces outside of our control. Every year, her friends hold a memorial at the spot of her accident and leave flowers and a poster wishing her well on the corner street light. Seeing the traces of what's left there after a few weeks leaves me with a sort of emptiness I feel when I see the guitar in our house that used to be my aunt's. 

Maybe I don't know how to grieve. Or how to meet death. Recently, a truly talented and incredible artist passed away after grappling with his depression. I usually don't take much note of the passing of celebrities, but his passing was haunting and what I think was the first time, I cried over someone's death with sense of genuine grief. Bizarre, I know, given that I can't even muster that kind of emotion of my own loved ones. My mind keeps ruminating over how much he created and how much he suffered. And his suffering never made him cruel, but only kind. In his last words to his sister, he asked for her to tell him that he did well in his life. That despite his inability to continue with the pain, that he did well to come this far and have endured so much. In my thoughts, I caught myself hoping that he would find peace and happiness wherever he was or in his next life time. For his sake, I wished that there was some relief he could find in death. That death was not just the erasure of someone's life. That all he did in his life somehow carried some cosmic justice for him in death. But how can I reconcile that hope with the utter lack of belief in such powers that be? Maybe I'm more spiritually inclined that I realize. In times of guilt, I do imagine my grandmother looking down at me. It's not so much that I think that there is a heaven or a hell, but that the things that one does in their lifetime carries through in those still living. That their energy doesn't just dissipate, but becomes a part of the people who learn from their lives and their passing. To guide them to kindness and patience. To appreciate what you have when you have it. To live so that people can say that you did well.

A Critical Look at Okja

When I first previewed the film Okja, written and directed by Bong Joon-ho, I had initial reservations regarding the casting of Tilda Swinton. Swinton has proved herself to be a persistently stubborn and insensitive actor who does not understand the significance and nuances of representation in Western media, as is evident by her response to charges of whitewashing in Doctor Strange and her interactions with Margaret Cho. In light of these events, it was not immediately apparent to me why Director Bong would opt to feature such a problematic actor at the center of this film that does so much to contribute to Asian representation by casting Korean actor Anh Seo-Hyeon as the main character Mija and by featuring other Korean actors, such as Steven Yeun and Byun Hee-bong. Despite being set in Korea for a major portion of the film, Okja maintains a predominantly white cast, featuring Lily Collins and Paul Dano. Despite these facial failures, the film lodges a far more pointed and caustic critique of white dominance and Western hegemony that runs beneath the surface.  

At face value, the film is a critique of commercial animal exploitation and cruelty. It not only engenders an acute sense of revulsion towards meat producing practices in the way that The Jungle does, the film prompts evaluation of multiple issues ranging from corporate exploitation of native populations to the hegemonic dominance of white culture and history. The outsourcing of labor to countries outside of the US to cultivate the initial population of “super pigs” smarts of the labor practices that the US commonly uses in its commercial enterprises. This capitalistic intervention in non-Western countries is coupled with the exploitation of those native populations for Western interests as is exemplified by the forceful separation of Okja from her home with Mija in rural Korea. This power dynamic is additionally punctuated by the racial dynamics of the exploited Korean natives and the exploitative white, American corporations. The subtle presence of American GIs that appear in the film serve as an additional reminder of such white imperialism. 

Tilda Swinton as Lucy Mirando, a particularly egregious and despicable character, is an interesting choice. The role seems befitting, to say charitably, because not only is she portraying an exploitative and crass character, as a white actor who has no conception of her own exploitative practices, the character and the artist are hard to distinguish. Additionally, the protagonist force called the Animal Liberation Front is also American and predominantly white. The whole onslaught of the PETA-like force in Korea to rescue Okja is reminiscent of the interventions of white “liberators” that form the white savior narrative. The ALF is a caricature of itself, however, with the character Silver, played by Devon Bostick, who starves himself to the point of collapse because all consumption is exploitative and the constant verbal reminders from the group that they are anti-violence as they try to keep back armed forces that are trying to stop them. This by no means is a way to undermine the importance of advocacy for such issues, but is rather a way to highlight the occasionally misguided and almost naive intervention of Western philanthropes and advocates. 

Steven Yeun’s character K is a particularly refreshing and entertaining character who seems to be in the film just for the benefit of Korean Americans. His clumsy command of Korean characteristic of second-generation Korean Americans is endearing and the comedic moments that come from the interplay of English and Korean operate as a critique of the dominance and supremacy of English. In one scene, K speaks to Mija in Korean and says that his name is actually Koo Soo-bum. The English subtitles, however, deliberately mistranslates this into “Try learning English! It opens new doors!”. The use of Korean dialogue itself breaks the pattern of normalizing English as standard. Director Bong plays with his command of English and Korean to critique the practice of learning English in order to cater to American standards of communication.

My Father, The Man

My father immigrated to the US carrying with him very little and quite a lot at the same time. What he lacked in material possession, he made up for with his aspirations to give a good life to his only daughter, whom he carried through customs. There’s an old photo of me in pink overalls, burying my head in his shoulder, refusing to see the alien place where we arrived, as he’s striding through the airport lobby. The man in this photo is still young and still so full of energy. His smile is a testament to that. Over the years, however, as my mom and dad attended state college to obtain degrees, as was a necessary condition of their visas, that smile slowly faded and only left behind sad ghost ridges on his face. Those ridges gradually blurred into deeper lines of fatigue. His intelligent mind was not enough to compensate for his unnatural tongue that could never wrap itself around the edges of American English. The raw investment of time and effort was not enough to obscure away his foreignness and it was not enough to make him worthy enough of the respect he truly deserved. I always likened my father to Stephen Hawking for this reason. The wisdom of both men is trapped by their circumstance: one in his non-responsive body and one in his unreceptive tongue. Neither of them have control over their everyday lives. They say that the smartest people make the best liars, which explains how my father was so good at keeping me so blissfully ignorant. He never let on to how much he had to endure and how much he had suffered at the hands of the United States of America. To live without respect for 15 years. Not from his colleagues and not from his ungrateful, naïve children. What a terribly cruel Herculean trial.

My father doesn’t live in the US anymore, even though my mother, brother, and I do. He’s taken refuge in his motherland from the onslaught of forces that chipped away at his dignity. I think he had to get away before there was nothing left to erode. At first, I truly despised him for his weakness because I felt like he was abandoning us to save himself. Just another failure to be a good father and a good husband and a good man. I don’t blame him anymore. I bleed for him with his blood in my veins. How can I begrudge him for wanting to escape the perverse feeling of always being an idea and not a human being? For wanting to not be constantly pestered by that nagging voice in the back of your head that tells you that you don’t belong here? For wanting to dispel the feeling of lingering eyes that leave behind a dirty film on your body, a trace of who they want you to be? For wanting to be able to breathe without thinking about how that breath should be perfectly enunciated?

My father comes to visit us every so often for big holidays. It must be odd for him to repeat his arrival at the airport time and time again, but without the burden of having to carry me with him. I guess the lessening of his baggage has lightened his soul as well. His smiles have returned with him and they feel as full to the brim as his backpack is that bears gifts for his expectant children. There’s something quite different about my father now. He carries himself with a confidence that roots his feet to the ground and lifts his chin to the skies. While he’s physically absent for most of they year, he’s not an absent father. If anything, being away from this place has made him a better father. And better yet, it has made him a better man.