The Namesake

Because of this book called The Namesake, I am here (there's a wikipedia link, but it's probably not enough to explain what I'm really here about, unless you've read the book/are a second or 1.5th generation immigrant from not Europe etc.).
Here, sitting at my desk instead of in bed
Here, hunched slightly toward this blog entry instead of watching the Sound of Music as I had planned, as if the thoughts will run away from me if I don't concentrate.
Which, I guess, they could - in a sense.

Anyways, so I am here. Here because I am bothered, reassured, relieved, scared, whatever - all at the same time. And I'm not sure if all those emotions will be conveyed coherently, so I'm tagging this post as "incoherent" and that's your warning.

It's about this boy Gogol-Nikhil, who has a big problem with his name. He is American-born, but Bengali by heritage and his parents yearn for their home in Calcutta and throw huge Bengali parties to which they invite every Bengali person they have come to know in their years in this foreign country. The whole problem with his name is long and complicated and unfortunate - having to do with "pet names" and "good names" and mail getting lost and the confusion of a scared kindergartener. And although it sort of serves as the crux around which the whole story evolves, it's only a small (well, however "small" a hated name can be for any person) example of this guy's life as an in-between. Always wanting, and eventually (to a large extent), relishing in a life so different from his parents', which he sort of despises for its backwardness, "unnecessary worries," and general un-suave-ness. After quietly rebelling for years through his choice of life in the city (in NYC, away from his parents' seemingly suffocating address on Pemberton Street), career choice (distinctly not medical, engineerical, or economical), and girlfriends (basically, not Indian), he eventually marries an old family acquaintance dredged up from his old life of attending those giant Bengali parties when they were both kids despising their parents' America-noobishness, at the urging of both mothers. They are no longer the overtly insecure kids they used to be - both have grown up to be city-savvy and proficient in wine knowledge - adults living a more or less glamorous, young life in the city, and find each other attractive and comforting and exciting all at the same time. Comforting because both are hurt from previous relationships that couldn't stand the difference in cultures, families, secretly really Bengali lives. Exciting because neither had imagined a future with "an Indian boy/girl;" because for the majority of their lives they had both been so inherently opposed to marriages like the ones through which their parents had lived so obediently and complacently.

And in the end, they fall apart, too, because of insecurities - of being complacent, of being predictable, of being defeated in a sense. Of being too...Bengali (? I'm sorry if this makes no sense. It makes sense to me, except I have to insert Korean in place of the Bengali).

It was a well-written book with a story that moved along quickly and seemed to move quickly even when it wasn't. Personally, for the majority of the time I was reading, it was a depressing experience that I felt like I had to endure - partly because of the fact that I like finishing books, even if they aren't a super happy-dandy yayayay of an experience the whole time, but also because it was so accurate in the descriptions of guilt, shame, embarrassment in all the little things that come with being a ______-American, owning enough of both sides of the hyphen to feel all those emotions about one's heritage and place in the world. So weirdly close to my own experience as a Korean-American living in Charlottesville, Virginia.

...basically, because Gogol-Nikhil's words and feelings so closely resembled similar versions of the same things in my life:
A heightened sense of the other-Asians-in-the-vicinity radar.
The slight embarrassment of finding myself in the midst of a loud group of fellow Koreans in a public place - my voice getting louder and louder somehow, too, although...I feel like maybe I kind of just talk really loudly a lot of times.
Having to explain a certain weird aspect of my culture, my heritage, in words that usually don't elicit the sympathy and understanding it deserves. Finding myself ineloquent and too jokey or oddly defensive.

But mostly, and ultimately, the loneliness of not really belonging in any one slice of humanity, except maybe the small one (well...relatively small) occupied by other 1.5th generation Korean-Americans who grew up in the States but understand Korean and eat 미역국 on their birthdays (listening to k-pop doesn't count - sorry. too globalized.). Not belonging truly to America as a native, because I cannot claim this place as my "MATERLAAAND" and because we eat kimchi with our Thanksgiving meals, but also unable to be Korean in a way that I would've been if we had never moved out of the country. There is a distance, and a difference, and I belong in neither place. Neither culture. I just exist in the weird overlap.

Mulling over all this in the shower after having finished the book, I was sad. Because this story, so similar to my story, had ultimately been a sad one. And even worse, a realistic one. I was forever (forever = the 14 minutes that I spent in the shower) doomed to this sad destiny of letting my heritage and family and chance for true happiness in life slip by because of the selfish and self-destructive desire to fit into something I will never really be a part of.

But then I realized something - something so stupidly clear that I had missed because maybe I enjoy moping and dramatizing my life and relating to book characters too much (Holden Caulfield, OMG).

H.C.

I am not Gogol-Nikhil. In so many senses of the sentence. Not only am I not a skinny but attractive male Bengali architect living in New York, but also I...love being Korean. Maybe I've never said those words together arranged like that before, but I do. I am proud of my heritage and my family and my parents who have survived this thoroughly American experience and were open-minded enough to let us have sleepovers and get real Christmas trees, but still quietly, passive-aggressively want me to marry a Korean guy. I guess this is where all those aim usernames were coming from...(krnpridexoxo, aznluvr123, krnbabie_love, etc. ohhh aim in 6th grade...(note: mine was candyluver something something, though)) But yeah all in all, I am not Gogol-Nikhil.

Wow. What a relief. And a new regret that I've made such a long post that no one will want to read. Oh well.