4 Min Read Published on: 4 hours ago Over the past few years, I have been going on an identity journey. This journey has been revelatory in many ways. Very little is known about my origins and beginning. I know I was born in Korea and was in an orphanage in Incheon by the time I was 21 months old. There isn’t a trace of who my birth parents are, but a couple who hailed from the giant state of Texas came into the picture who wanted children but found it impossible to build a family traditionally. Growing up adopted didn’t seem out of the ordinary. I didn’t feel a twinge of stigma or any sense of indebtedness to my parents. All along, the sense of family was natural and normal. I was not cognizant that people instantly recognized that I was adopted and had started out in a different country. As a young girl, I was interested in learning about Korea and my roots, but I didn’t feel that I was missing a piece of who I was at that time. There were just a few books in the local library about Korea that I read for research papers. Even though I knew that kimchi was an important staple in the Korean diet, I had never tasted it until I was in college. Curious children asked if I was Chinese or perhaps Japanese. Back in the seventies and early eighties, it seemed as though no one really knew about Korea. I vaguely recall children taunting me about my almond-shaped eyes and pulling the corner of their eyes into a slant and pretending to speak an Asian language. I shrugged those moments off. I tried to ignore the feeling that I was a novelty, or worse, “inferior” to some when I entered high school in a predominantly white high school in South Carolina.