Not Going Home

With a heavy and broken heart, I am choosing to return to the racist United States of America. For months now, I have been struggling to write the close to this chapter. There is so much left unresolved, and every word that has been forced upon me fails to speak for the dual-being that I raised to life while living in Seoul.

How can I go home to the place that has turned my motherland into a shopping mall for White tourists to buy orientalized babies?

I refuse to accept that home can be built upon the destruction of indigenous peoples, native languages, enslavement of human life, and every other form of White entitlement to the bodies, imaginations, and desires of communities of color throughout the history of United States imperialism.

I am not going home, though I refuse to be tolerated as a perpetual foreigner. America has forced itself upon me and now it must deal with me. If I can only speak English, then I will speak loudly to institutionalized violence and global systems of domination. If I am invisible, then I will sneak inside to wreak havoc on the safe spaces of racist White people.

In this sense, I will arrive to the United States this Spring as I left the United States in August of 2011. I am determined, restless, and live in pursuit of justice for peace. Despite my best efforts and fierce denial, I recognize that I came to Korea with the wish to be unbroken. I hoped that my first language would be restored and that I would come home to my first family. I may always wear this yearning.

I want to believe that with this pain, I also wear the tremendous love and grace that has been shared with me by the adult Adoptee community. I was called back to Korea, not only by my ancestors, but by my peers. And as I engage in this process of leaving, I find comfort in having heard their call and in finding this place.