Multiculturalism - Korean Military Brides and Korean Adoptees

When doing last nights reading, I found I had a larger reaction to the essay titled, Imagined Community: Sisterhood and Resistance Among Korean Military Brides in America 1950 - 1996 by Ji-Yeon Yuh. Yuh emphasizes that one of the major struggles of military brides is becoming American while retaining their Korean identities. She talks about how the military brides kept their identities despite the American values that were forced upon them and the rejection they faced from many Koreans because of their status by forming their own communities and networks, filling them with people who share that similar experience. Although I understand the ideas Yuh presents, and it sounds like she emphasizes that these women fought against society's expectation in American and Korea and therefore the importance of embracing multiculturalism. But I feel that the last line, "Why do we have to wipe out the Otherness in order to experience a notion of Oneness" (235) kind of contradicts what she talks about in the essay. Didn't the Korean military brides use their Otherness to create a community and network of women and families with shared experiences, thus fostering oneness?

I really liked how the film, First Person Plural, by Deann Borshay complimented the reading (about Korean military brides). Although the two tell different stories, I like that they talk about very similar experiences. In both cases, the Korean military brides and Korean adoptees went to or were sent to the United States, anticipating a future full of promise and opportunity that Korea, for various reasons, could not offer to them. I feel that the struggles both groups face are very similar. For the Korean military brides, this struggle involved embracing American culture in order to succeed, while attempting to hold on to Korean tradition and values. For Korean adoptees, or specifically, Deann, the struggle involved working hard to become American and therefore a loss of her original Korean identity, which she later on strives to recover. In both cases, there a various obstacles which stand in the way from reattaining or maintaining this sense of Korean identity. For the Korean military brides, those obstacles included the husbands who insisted upon American traditions and values, and many Koreans who wrote military brides off as low class prostitutes. Deanna's family stood as an obstacle - she knew who her mother and her family was, and yet, in Korea, there was another family waiting to meet her for the first time in 30 years. I like how in both cases, the stories refuse to choose sides, and instead, embrace an Asian American identity. This really resonates with me because although I haven't been through the same struggles, I really do embrace my identity as a Chinese American.