I am of English and South Korean descent. The English is from my birth father’s side and the Korean from my birth mother’s side. I know my birth mother’s name and where she currently resides in Korea, but all I know of my dad is that he was a tall blonde visiting from England and and his name was Michael. As you can tell, I am adopted. I have a full Korean adopted sister who is two years younger than me.
I was an interesting case for the adoption agency in Korea, as they had never had a biracial child before. I received much attention from all the workers there, or at least that is what they told my parents. I can believe it, judging from the fact that I was a blonde Asian baby.
I always felt like I fit in as a pre-adolescent. I looked more white when I was younger, and I had white parents, so most people generally just considered me white and I never really had identity issues. I was always very accepting of the fact that I was adopted and never really gave it much thought. My life was to me just as normal as anyone else’s. I was a hyper and active child, and had many friends.
As I aged, though, I began feeling a little more self-conscious of exactly who or what I was. I began to realize that not everyone is adopted or even educated about my situation. Being from a small private school with a very small number of students in each class, most people knew my situation and accepted me for it. But when I went to high school, I began to feel much more aware of what I was.
In larger classes I began to be picked on quite a bit for being Asian, and would receive the stereotypical Asian names, and chastisements. This made me start to turn my back on my acceptance of my Korean heritage and made me wish that I was just my parents biological child and was full white. I just wanted to be more accepted and less trivialized.
As I grew out of high school, though, I began to realize that much of this was my own insecurity and wasn’t really reflective of everything that was really going on (though the bullying was still very real). I do still carry around a lot of the thoughts that are implanted in my brain from the stress I went through in my younger years. I am 20 years old now and having been out of high school for two years now I can safely say that I am much more in tune with who I am now than who I was then.
Hapa Voice 