The process of creating a book, regardless of the target audience, is deeply involved and requires a plethora of patience and many hours of revisions. I cannot tell you how many different goldfish I painted before finding one that my children really engaged with, or how long it took me to compile a list of animals to include in the book, in the first place. Not to mention the seemingly impossible task of actually marketing a bilingual baby book, that isn’t in Spanish, to bookstore owners and distributors.

Probably each one of us said it at some point when we were small children. Some of us said it almost every night. Some begged and pleaded. We laughed and giggled and screamed when our pleadings were granted.

Growing up, my mother did not teach my sister and me about Korea. She did not teach us Korean. She did not feed us Korean food, and by middle school, my sister and I balked at her stinky jars of kimchee.

My grandmother was born in a year of famine, a hunger she never knew. A hunger she hungered for in missionary dreams. Starving in a heartland whose pulse, it seemed, had stopped; beat on in the hearts of those who could not return to it. A pulse in the burnt and sweated temples of bent-over coolies. A rhythm in the steps of my great-grandmother, deliberate and defiant dances at the Wahiawa Korean church. Her howls pierced the silence of the temple where the Japanese prayed, her neighbors in this country, her overlords in the other.

In popular culture, Asian Americans always seemed concerned with building bridges from old country to new country, first generation to second generation. The books I read and the movies I watched featured disconnect and miscommunication between two separate worlds. Watching “Flower Drum Song” with my third-generation mother, I often felt my narrative didn’t match the typical Asian American tale of struggle to be understood.

Ever since I left Southern California for college in Connecticut, my mother has always waited while I wind through the airport security line. She smiles and waves wildly until I make it past screening and turn around to wave goodbye one last time. Except once.

I was driving home, listening to 92.3 The Beat, a hip-hop radio station, when the acquittal verdict for the three police officers charged in the Rodney King beating was announced by the DJ. This was a year or two before the takeover of The Beat by DJ Theo Mizuhara, his silky voice becoming synonymous with all things hip-hop.

I was born in 1971 to a Korean mother and an African-American father. My parents met in Germany while my mom was in nursing school.  My dad was stationed in Munich as a member of the United States Air Force.  My family resided in Germany for four years and my mother visited Korea a few times in between.  I spent my first birthday in Korea and returned twice; at the age of two and then three.  At the age of four my mother and I moved to the United States, which is where we have been ever since.

Two weeks ago, I officially became a citizen of the United States of America. Took me long enough…I’ve been living in the US for the past 27 years and have been a permanent resident for 22 years. Although I toyed around with the idea of becoming a US citizen, I just never felt the need to do so. Even this time around, the decision to become a citizen began mostly out of convenience – my green card was expiring, and I didn’t want to keep having to renew it and pay the exorbitant renewal fee. I also didn’t like getting scrutinized extra carefully every time I came back from traveling abroad.

Twenty years ago I went to Seoul to visit family and to see Seoul. Twenty years before that I had left Seoul as a five-year old child. As many Korean Americans probably feel, I think of Korea as my homeland. Yes, I consider myself American, but I am Korean-American.