What Does AAPI Month
Mean to Me?
Personal perspectives and reflections—edited from a conversation with Joy Lieberthal Rho, co-founder of IAMAdoptee, social worker and therapist, and Glenn Morey, filmmaker and co-creator of the Side by Side project
Recorded on 5-6-2024
Glenn Morey: It’s AAPI heritage month. I remember this acronym, AAPI, showing up on my census form back in the ‘90s. I remember checking that box. I only started to think about AAPI as a real group of people that included me sometime around 2010, so recently.
Joy Lieberthal Rho: I think it was in the late ‘90s, when I went to college, that’s when I first had to fill out my ethnic identity. In college, the question was very specific. Where exactly are you from? And not just on a form. People also wanted to know, where exactly are you from? It’s very important to say I am Korean American, Japanese American, Thai American. AAPI is such a huge acronym for people of many different languages and cultures. I feel like our community of Asian Americans have always been labeled by others for the convenience of others, not necessarily what we declare for ourselves. So I think the fact that we’re taking ownership of AAPI is a nice turn. “Model minority” was not a term we created for ourselves. “Orientals” and all these terms, these pejorative terms, were given to us by other people.
Glenn: So AAPI was something that was done to us, and to turn around and take ownership of that and utilize that for our own purposes and our own identity—that is an interesting turn.
Joy: The fact that we’re constantly evolving the acronyms—AAPI, APIDA, AANHPI—as a community, we’re finally embracing it and taking it on. It feels like our own.
Glenn: For myself, while I consider myself to be part of the Asian American inter-country adoptee community, I don’t think I have any part or role in the Asian American community. In fact, I’ve only known a few non-adopted Koreans. The truth is, outside of my trips to Korea, I’ve encountered very few non-adopted Koreans. And I admit that those encounters have left me feeling a little intimidated, like I was someone they might not want to know, because I don’t speak Korean, and I don’t know anything about being Korean. I’ve not even met many Koreans who are people who look like me and sound like me. So I feel like I have nothing to do with the Korean American community. No connection.
Joy: Does it feel missing? Is there a wanting of it?
Glenn: It feels like it should feel missing, meaning it doesn’t make sense that I don’t know Koreans outside of my adoptee friends. It doesn’t make sense that I’m intimidated by Koreans that I meet, or that I feel like they won’t want to know me. Of course, where you are today is the total opposite of what I’ve just described. How did you get there, and how does it make you feel in the world?
Living in Korea allowed me to see that there are tall and short, and good and bad, and obnoxious and arrogant and jealous—rather than the two-dimensional story that was fed to me here in the US.
Joy: Well, I’ll give you the end before the beginning. I don’t know that I have any more entitlement to my Korean American identity than I did 20 years ago. Not for lack of trying. But it is still a part of an exercise, a practice, for me to walk into a room with Korean Americans and Korean people and feel like I belong there. And it hasn’t always gone well—a lot of cultural misunderstandings, a lot of assumptions, a lot of mistakes. I think I still make those mistakes, inadvertently. But in college, in my twenties, then living in Korea and feeling like I planted a foot back into Korea for a year—those seminal experiences really grounded me to say, oh, this is a community you need to work on. And I, like you, have had very mixed bag experiences with the Korean Koreans, if you will. That’s what we called them in “adoptee land.” Yeah, the full gamut of everything from wanting to embrace everything with me—teach me everything—to literally getting up and walking out of the room when they find out I’m adopted. I think living in Korea helped me. Living in Korea allowed me to see that there are tall and short, and good and bad, and obnoxious and arrogant and jealous—the depth of emotions of the Korean people, allowed me to see them as people rather than the two-dimensional story that was fed to me here in the US.
Glenn: Your experience of someone literally getting up and walking out of the room—I’ve experienced that, too. Maybe they didn’t physically walk out. But I could tell they had no interest in me. So here’s my question: What do we, as adoptees, do with the reality that, in the eyes of some Koreans, we are less than. Castes are a big part of Korean culture. And we end up near the bottom of the barrel. What do we do with that? How do we embrace a culture, or why would we want to embrace a culture that considers us less than?
Joy: My immediate answer is something one of the kids from the orphanage said to me. We talked a lot while I was there about my life in America and their life growing up in an orphanage. One of the kids said, “I don’t know that I would have wanted to be adopted like you.” And I was curious about that. I asked why. And he said, “At least I know where I belong here.” So to your question of castes, as terrible as this might sound, he knew exactly where he belonged. And that knowing—I didn’t have anything to say to that. I couldn’t refute it. Because I don’t have that knowing here in America.
Glenn: Wow. That is so far away from the value system that is hardwired in me by my life in America. That really sets me aback.
Joy: Yeah.
Glenn: That does not make me feel encouraged to be more Korean.
Joy: So the word that I get stuck on—and maybe this is why we’re a little different—is the word, belonging. As a therapist and as a community member, having been in the adoptee community for a long time, the thing we’re always seeking is belonging. Where do I belong? How do I identify relative to others? How do I know where I belong? How do I find the freedom to find the others that belong with me? Every year, all these people who were at the orphanage get together. They all stay connected to each other. If I go to Korea and I call one, then eventually I will meet up with two or three others from my orphanage. They have created a belonging among themselves. We have that here, too, for adoptees. I think there’s something profoundly beautiful in knowing where you belong.
Glenn: You’re part of a Korean American family. How does affect your sense of belonging?
Joy: I did not intentionally find a Korean guy to marry. In fact, I think my intention was not to find a Korean guy to marry. He’s first generation, born overseas, came to the US as an infant with his parents in the ‘70s. It never occurred to me that I would be considered more Korean by being married into a Korean American family, because he doesn’t lead with that identity himself. It wasn’t until I became a parent that I felt like I had to consciously make decisions about the cultural knowledge and foundation that my kids were going to grow up in. If it had been up to my husband, I don’t think he really would have cared. There were holidays that were an absolute, like New Year’s, but not other holidays that other people honor and celebrate. It didn’t feel imperative that I maintain a very Korean identity in the family. I think I just liked it, to be honest. It’s been very joyful to learn how to cook Korean food, and watch Korean dramas, and learn the language—not so joyful, but getting there. Not painting all Korean American culture and tradition with one brush, by virtue of the family I married into, has been helpful—they have their own family culture, which is very different than Korean culture.
The most common phrase spoken in the Side by Side project was,
“I was the only one.”
Glenn: This is a big difference between you and me—I currently exist, and I have always existed in an environment that is homogeneously white or close to it. And most inter-country, transracial adoptees that I’ve talked to—no matter what their age, no matter what their adoptive country—nearly all of them grew up in and exist in a family and community that is homogeneously white or very close to it. The most common phrase spoken in the Side by Side project was the phrase, “I was the only one.” And the way that we deal with being the only one is, we don’t think about it, and we don’t bring it up. We often say, it’s not important to us. The people around us are often willing to ignore these things along with us. They say things like, “I don’t think of you as Asian”—which really means, “I don’t see the need to acknowledge that you are Asian.” So how do I ever acknowledge and come to terms with being Asian? How do I ever even want to be Asian, if that’s my environment, my life. How and why would I ever get to something that’s even close to where you are—which I find very appealing, but I can’t imagine ever getting there.
Joy: What part of it is appealing to you?
Glenn: The belonging part. That’s such a great word. In the sense that we’re talking about here, I’ve never felt that—even being in Korea among Koreans here.
Joy: Where do you feel belonging?
Glenn: I feel it with adoptees.
Joy: Do you feel that also within the world that you have right now? Even if it is predominantly not Korean? Is there a belonging there?
Glenn: To a degree, unless I catch a glimpse of that scene in a mirror. And then I’m reminded of how different I am. I don’t feel alienated. I don’t feel unwanted. But I don’t necessarily feel like I belong. That’s a very strong term. That term is filled with emotion. How does it feel for you?
If I’m able to have a conversation fully in Korean over the telephone, I feel this subversive joy, like I got away with something.
Joy: If I find myself, awkwardly at a dinner party, and I don’t feel like I want to run out of the room, I still mentally go through this little pinch-me moment, like I can’t believe I get to be here. There’s still a little bit of joy in that. If I’m able to have a conversation fully in Korean over the telephone, I feel this subversive joy, like I got away with something. I’ve felt burdened by the adoption identity as a reason why I could not belong to the Korean community. Because I am a second-class citizen. I’m not good enough. I don’t speak the language. I don’t know the culture. I’m too loud. I laugh with my mouth open—whatever the excuse. But I’ve had some really beautiful Korean friends who have warmly and kindly said, “Stop thinking that way. I don’t see you that way. You wish that you could have this experience. Well, I grew up in Korea, and I didn’t have that experience either.” So that exchange of stories with other Korean people, it makes being a part of that community a little easier.
Glenn: I think it may be hard for us adoptees to allow ourselves to be that vulnerable with Korean Koreans.
Joy: Yes. And for the record, I still mess it up. I still over-trust sometimes, or I over-share sometimes, or I pull back, and I don’t realize it, or I make a social faux pas, and I have no idea why I’m getting ghosted. I still don’t know all the rules. But you start getting enough experiences to balance out all the ways we’re being seen. So for that guy who walked out of the room when he found out I was adopted, I’ve had other experiences where people have been incredibly generous, warm, not judgmental, and not intrusive, not exploitative. I’m not going to say that it’s been easy. I’ve had more exploitative stories than I’ve had kind stories. But those few where we have sustained a relationship with each other have been my anchors. They have been the ones who I can tell the story to, and they could say, “As a Korean, that’s BS.”
Glenn: We haven’t talked about racism. If you are, like me, in an environment that is homogeneously white or close to it. You experience possibly unconscious racism, sometimes conscious racism. That’s your existence. And it impacts your self-image. We largely take our queues as to who is cool and who is good looking and who is admirable from the entertainment industry. So for Asian American men who grew up prior to five or ten years ago, we grew up in a time when Asian American men were presented pretty negatively, if they were presented at all. So why would we want that image to be part of our public lives? Our social lives. Our romantic lives? Why would we want that to be part of our identity, when we know it doesn’t play well?
I’m seeing a lot of the younger generation find each other, where our generation avoided each other.
Joy: Yeah. The good news is, it is changing. I’m seeing a lot of the younger generation find each other, where our generation avoided each other. And I think it was in response to the racism and stereotypes that were put on us. We see online groups, like Subtle Asian Traits, and 88 Rising—these young people wholeheartedly feeling their Asian identity, then they find each other. It’s like, I’m going to seek out this thing that is important to me, and then, oh, my gosh! There are thousands of other people in the same space as me.
Glenn: For many Side by Side participants, bullying and racism was part of our lives growing up, and for some, it continued to be part of our lives even as adults. I believe that a lot of my resistance to identifying as Asian American has roots in racist experiences over the course of my life. But in 2021, during the pandemic, a national trend toward violence and hatred toward Asians—it became acknowledged by press coverage, by calling it for what it was, and by analyzing what it meant to, not just to America as a whole, but to Asian Americans themselves. I felt a call to embrace being Asian American like I had not felt before. I felt like I wanted to claim that right even if I didn’t even always feel like I had a right to be part of the Asian American community. I wanted to say that I, too, was angry and hurt and…
Joy: Scared.
Glenn: Yes, as a member of the Asian American community. And that time had a real impact on how I wanted to identify.
Joy: When I think about bullying, and when I think about what happened growing up—it was a white person. It wasn’t a Korean person. And most times, it wasn’t a person of color. It was a white person. For me, it was a white boy whose face I can still see right now. And in those moments, I just wanted to hide and be invisible, and not have the face that I have. But it’s interesting to connect it to 2021. When we think about racism and oppression, it’s not our community that’s doing it to itself. It’s others doing it to us. So the idea that these seminal moments of bullying and violence and assault are all reasons to not embrace our identity out of shame, out of feeling we should not be proud of who we are—2021 turned that around and said, wait a second. Not only should we be out and proud, not only should we identify ourselves, not only should we take the mic, not only should we raise money for each other and support each other, that groundswell is takes bullying and turns it around.
Glenn: It seems like our conversation has come back around to belonging. Had I only read headlines and articles about violence and hatred toward Asian people, that would not have provoked this response in me. #StopAsianHate gave me something to belong to.
Joy: Yeah.
Glenn: That’s the closest I’ve come to feeling that. I remember how conscious I was that that had happened, because it was so unusual for me.
Joy: Do you think your identity has changed over time?
Glenn: As a young person, I created an identify for myself out of whole cloth, an identity that had to do with everything but the things I most intrinsically was—Korean and adopted. That held true until my early 40s, most of my adult life. Then I got involved in the adoptee community and first started meeting other adoptees. That’s when I slowly started including more Asian-ness and being adopted into the way I thought about myself, first, and then talked about myself, second. Then over the last ten years that change has become far more accelerated. I still live in a homogeneously white community and family, but I incorporate being Asian and being adopted into how I talk about my life.
Joy: What were you hearing, and what were you experiencing for you to think, this makes sense, or this feels good, or this is something I’d like to try on?
I wanted to be like these women. I wanted to be able to live like that. It was such a contrast to the life I was living at the time, and I knew that to get anywhere as a person, I somehow needed to live more like them.
Glenn: When I was 40, Julie and I were asked to make a film about diversity in American media and television. But I had absolutely no feeling for the subject. So we got to know a writer who had written a book about African American life experiences. We persuaded him to help with this film. And he brought an incredible group of people—people of color—in front of our camera to talk about their experiences. Two of those people were a mother and daughter who were immigrants from the Philippines. When the daughter was a child, they immigrated to the US—rural Indiana, where they experienced a great deal of racism. And the experiences they described—the difficulty and the ugliness—they were the same kinds of experiences that I’d had, but had never allowed myself to talk about, or even think about much. Those experiences were tucked way, way back there, out of sight and out of mind. And I was just amazed that these two women could sit there and talk about these things that sounded so true to me. To just talk about it, to just say it, was amazing to me. It really opened a door inside me. I suddenly wanted to be like them, to be authentic to what I had experienced in the world.
Joy: You’ve really given that to the adoptee community through your project, Side by Side. Being able to watch and hear other adoptees telling stories that were a direct connection to their own lived experience. Oftentimes they would say, “I didn’t know there were other people that live like this.” “Finally, somebody else is saying the thing that I went through.” That validation is so important and essential.
Glenn: This was such an important moment for me—to hear them talk about experiences that absolutely mirrored my experiences. I wanted to be like these women. I wanted to be able to live like that. It was such a contrast to the life I was living at the time, and I knew that to get anywhere as a person, I somehow needed to live more like them.
Joy: This may be incredibly reductive, but I think we’re both a story of resilience. And I really respect your story, in a way that is specifically male—specifically, Asian American male—in a way that I wish more other adoptees and Asian American men could hear. As a woman, I feel like I had to do a different kind of leaning in—an act of resilience and adaptability. And now in my 50s, I am finally feeling like I’m reaping the rewards of that. 15 years ago, I wouldn’t have seen our lives as different. But now I’m very aware of what you had to do to get to this place of even having a conversation with me about this—and that it was a very, very different path from mine. It feels like I might have had it easier than you, because I connected with certain people at 25, in a way that I couldn’t ignore. I couldn’t. I couldn’t walk away. I was brought into a community very early on that allowed me to try on, and speak, and talk, and do my own, like, speaking-engagement-therapy, to figure out my narrative, and to edit it, and to weed it out, and to work through things in a way that you didn’t have. That’s why our lives are different. Adoption just lands us in the place we land. There’s so much about being adopted that is happenstance and unexplainable. As much as I can be this moment, I am at peace with my adoption story. And I am at peace with the efforts I’ve made in being a part of the Korean community. I am not seeking their validation of me. I know I am adopted. I know my story. I know it to be true. And I’ve had to fight. I’ve had to be estranged. I have had to cut off. I’ve had to create firewalls to be secure in that story. And I have had to work equally hard to understand my Korean American identity and my Korean adoptee identity.
And I am at peace with the efforts I’ve made in being a part of the Korean community. I am not seeking their validation of me.
Connecting with the
Intercountry Adoptee Community
