My halmeoni (grandma) and I eating kimchi and rice, circa 2007, Maryland

I’ve always loved my mom’s stories about growing up in Boston. Stories of afterschool dance classes set to Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical,” watching rowdy teenagers cow-tipping in the park and walking the red-brick streets to school with her sisters in ‘80s pompadours and puff sleeves, the only Asian girls at their high school of 4,000 people.

I’ve never visited, but when I imagine New England, it is a place for the scrappy and courageous and brutally honest. New England is a place for firsts: for first declarations of independence and first-generation college students. For the mythologized, coloring-book-naivete first Thanksgiving at Plymouth, but also for the first American Thanksgiving enjoyed by a family of Korean immigrants at the rural homestead of Aunt Kay, the only Caucasian relative in the family. The onus of simultaneously learning and creating for oneself what it means to be American.

Similar experiences to my mom’s are shared by Asian immigrants around America, and they’re often reflected in popular media about Asian Americans. Books like “The Joy Luck Club” and films like “Minari” position their Asian, usually immigrant and first-generation protagonists in situations where they are navigating a predominantly white America with a grueling sense of grit and only the warmth of family and incredible ancestral soup recipes to carry them through. 

I am, thankfully, no stranger to delicious Korean soups or the warmth of family. But as a third-generation American growing up in Southern California, my upbringing doesn’t really fit neatly into any of the archetypes associated with growing up Asian American.

On one hand, my hometown is one of the more conservative SoCal suburbs that fancies itself part of the Midwest. I was the only Asian girl in my elementary Girl Scout troop and one of three Asians out of over fifty total people in the cast of my community theater’s annual musical. On the other hand, my high school was 25% Asian – a demographic that steeply increases each year as more and more Asian Americans move to our city. (My little brother is seven years younger than me, and unlike me, has never known a world where he is the minority.) But I also was fortunate enough to find community with other Asian Americans – I joined our city chapter of Dear Asian Youth in high school, an advocacy organization where I met some of my best friends. 

Reunited with my high school pals whom I befriended through Dear Asian Youth, Desiree (center) and Pratika (right), over winter break of our freshman year of college. December 2022, California

When I moved to college and discovered just how many of my Asian friends grew up in predominantly Asian communities, I was wowed — and a little scared. When I joined a campus organization composed mainly of Korean American students, I listened, impressed, as they oscillated fluidly between English and Korean, teasing each other with phrases that sounded vaguely familiar to me, their meanings lying just beyond reach. A litany of inside jokes about popular Asian hangout spots in Orange County that I’d never visited flew over my head. 

I thought: I didn’t have the character-building experience of assimilating myself into American culture as an immigrant speaking only Korean. But I also didn’t have key experiences associated with Asian Americans — attending an Asian church, hanging out with friends at The Source, or posing for Instagram pictures in hanboks in the motherland. 

Just how many defining, crucial moments of the Asian American experience had I missed? 

My melancholic musings followed me across the country this past summer as I visited family in Virginia and Maryland. My family and I found solace from the sweltering July humidity at my grandparents’ condo, where we ate kimchi-jjigae around a flat foldout table as my mom and grandma argued in Korean about the nutritional value of collagen vitamins. We visited a family friend’s church and, in true Korean American fashion, stayed there for three hours while my parents chatted with their college friends. And of course, every time we visited a restaurant my parents would argue with my aunts and uncles over who would foot the bill. 

For maybe the first time in my life I felt distinctly Korean. 

Perhaps culture is not just the way you are raised, I thought, but a continual lifelong discovery. 

Later that summer I visited some friends in the 626 — the part of LA known for being an ethnoburb, an Asian American enclave. Though I was the only Korean in the group, I had never tried bingsu – Korean shaved ice – before. 

At first I felt embarrassed, but as my friends and I giggled as we fed each other spoonfuls of bingsu, it dawned on me: How lucky am I to experience this facet of my culture at all with people I love? 

Bingsu with Lauren Chiou (hey, that rhymes!), August 2023, California

I will tell my children stories about growing up in California. But I’ll also be telling them about the cultural discoveries and adventures I experienced in adulthood – a little later than most, but no less special. 

My America is also a place for the scrappy and courageous. A place for firsts: for trying hot pot for the first time with new friends in the Anacapa dorms, but also for the first pair of cowboy boots purchased as a little reminder of my hometown. A place where shared cultural experiences – the good and even the bad  – have brought me countless enriching conversations that led to meaningful friendships. A place where I can simultaneously learn and create for myself what it means to be Asian American.

Emily Yoon’s new favorite word is “ethnoburb.”