Pegasus2001

Song of the Secong Generation
Sonia Kim
First Place, Prose
Roswell High School

Sacrifice. To me, sacrifice is a lost half-hour of a TV sitcom that I really wasn't even interested in when I should have been doing my homework anyway. To them, sacrifice is a lost job, a lost homeland, a lost country, a lost lifestyle, all given up on purpose for a trip across the ocean to the land of milk and honey-- only to have to start all over again from scratch. To me, sacrifice is a lost five minutes of phone time with my friends from an already hour-long giggling, gossiping conversation. To them, sacrifice is a lost tongue over the telephone in a foreign language, their broken English and thick accent incomprehensible to the closed-minded, closed eared operator. Me-- I can't even begin to fathom the true meaning of sacrifice. Them-- they are my parents. Sacrifice is their ever-present shadow, reflected in all that they do. They have learned and taught me the true meaning of sacrifice.
        I can feel sacrifice in my mother's hands-- coarse and rough, yet beautiful. The are the hands that know the price of hard, painful labor but can still rub an aching tummy and braid my long black hair. I can taste sacrifice in the bitterness of the grass that my father was forced to eat, as he tells me stories of growing up, starving and homeless during the Korean War. I can smell sacrifice in the aroma of the herbs and spices as my mother prepares dinner, pork chops and applesauce, side-by-side with sticky white rice and spiced Korean cabbage. I can hear sacrifice in my father's melanges of two languages-- Korean mixed-and-matched with English-- his Konglish. I can hear sacrifice in my mother's  quivering voice as she cries to her children in Korean, "You think your mother is stupid just because she can't speak English as well as you?!?" Their sacrifice is defined through their every action, inaction, and interaction as they struggle to make ends meet in their present lives-- lives that are directed toward making a better place in the world for their children rather than indulging themselves with the material comforts of the elusive American dream.
        But what was their sacrifice for? I can't help questioning its purpose when every new person that I meet barrages me with those two inevitable questions: "What are you?" and "Where are you from?" Knowing that my answer will not satisfy these strangers, since what I assume they shall assume, I still manage to take a deep breath and reveal my true identity.
        "Well, I was born in New York, but I grew up in Virginia."
        They respond to my answer with doubt in their eyes. "No, really. Where are you from?" they do not know how sadistic they are being.
        I don't understand. Just because my skin is not white, I am not an American?
        Closet prejudice. Close racism. That is what I have dubbed it. Well-meaning people who end up being the rudest people that I have ever met. You would never be able to tell by the way they act, but that's just it: it's all in the way that they act.
        As I struggle to receive the best of both cultures, I end up being shunned by both! I can still remember at age six, running home from the bus stop, straight into my mother's arms, sobbing and asking her why the kids called me "chink" and "rice-eater." Even other Korean kids have condemned me as a traitor. A banana. A Twinkie. Yellow on the outside and white on the inside. I can never win, or can I?
        So if this is what I constantly have to endure, then what was my parents' sacrifice even for? If they have gone through all this pain and trouble, the why should I have to?
        What was their sacrifice for?!?
        I close my eyes, staring at the black insides of my eyelids, and I begin to examine myself: up and down, in and out. I understand what their sacrifice was for. For me. For my brother. For my sister. For a better life for us all.
        Now, I know how to answer that once-harrowing question.
        "What am I? Why, I'm an American, just like you. A Korean-American at that. GRITS. Girl Raised in The South. That's me. Born here of parents not born here. My parents are from Korea. I was born in New York."
        And now that I know what I am and where I'm from, realizing the richness of my dual inheritance, I celebrate myself.

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."   -- Eleanor Roosevelt