A Quote by Crystal Hana Kim

As a Korean American, I grew up yearning to see actors that looked like me. On the rare occasions I saw an Asian celebrity, I adored them unflaggingly. — © Crystal Hana Kim
As a Korean American, I grew up yearning to see actors that looked like me. On the rare occasions I saw an Asian celebrity, I adored them unflaggingly.
I grew up with white parents, and until after college, it was a lot of confusion, especially because I grew up in an all-white area. So I never looked around and saw anyone who looked like me.
I grew up with white parents and until after college, it was a lot of confusion, especially because I grew up in an all-white area. So I never looked around and saw anyone who looked like me.
There's a misconception that I can't relate to the quote-unquote 'Asian-American experience' because I didn't grow up with an Asian mom and dad. And that's just not true. I am Asian American, and so playing a girl who is half Korean, half white, but her white dad tried really hard to connect with her mom's heritage - that's very familiar to me.
I always feel like people misunderstand the difference between an Asian story and an Asian-American story. That's completely different, too. I have friends who grew up in Asia, and our experiences are so different. Even though we might look the same, I feel like being Asian and then being Asian-American is completely different.
I grew up in celebrity world, so I know what famous people are like, and I've never looked up to them in that way.
I grew up watching foreign programs - American, English, Mexican, and very little Kenyan. 'The Color Purple' was the first time I saw people who looked like me.
Actors, I think, are all the same. Both Korean actors and American actors are all very sensitive people, and they are all curious to know what the director thinks of them and how they are evaluated, and they try to satisfy the director. And they like it if you listen carefully to their opinions and accept them.
When I sold my first middle-grade novel in 2005, it wasn't that common to put an author photo on the back flap, but 24-year-old Korean-American me insisted. I wanted Asian girls to see my face. And more than that, I wanted them to see what is possible.
I love Korean food, and it's kind of like home to me. The area that I grew up in outside Chicago, Glenview, is heavily Korean. A lot of my friends growing up were Korean and when I would eat dinner at their houses, their parents wouldn't tell me the names of the dishes because I would butcher the language.
I wish people wouldn't just see me as the Asian girl who beats everyone up, or the Asian girl with no emotion. People see Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock in a romantic comedy, but not me. You add raceto it, and it became, 'Well, she's too Asian', or, ‘She's too American’. I kind of got pushed out of both categories. It's a very strange place to be. You're not Asian enough and then you're not American enough, so it gets really frustrating.
I'm so used to America, used to the traffic in L.A., and I don't really feel it click with the Korean culture. But obviously, I have a Korean face, and I feel like that's just - you know, I can't walk around people like I'm, like, straight-up American. It's like, I'm Korean American. My parents are from Korea.
I know when I was growing up in New York, whenever I turned on the television, I never saw a face that looked like me. Whenever there was an Asian person on television, it would be a huge event, me calling to my older sister 'There's an Asian person on television!' It was unheard of back then.
I've been a fortunate girl: I grew up in a family that loved me from day one. I feel well grounded and lucky from that. So everything else is a bonus, because I grew up in this family that I adored, and adored me, and I think when you have that, you are already ahead of the game in the sense of how you feel about yourself.
Does people not asking me about Asian American literature mean they don't see it as its own literary tradition? I certainly believe in it as its own literary tradition, because your race plays a great factor in how you are seen by the world, and how you see the world; the fact that I'm an Asian American isn't incidental to who I am as a writer. Where it becomes difficult is defining what, if anything identifiable at all, makes an Asian American book an Asian American book, other than the fact of its creator being Asian. And I'd argue that there is nothing identifiable beyond that.
You know if you're in Rome, live in the Roman way. I grew up there, I was born there, and so I should follow its guidelines, live like a Korean. And I really love Korea. I grew up listening to Korean music, and was able to get to where I am because of it.
Definitely the Korean culture is very strong to me, and I grew up in Hawaii where Asian-Americans are the dominant culture, but I never thought of myself as the minority.
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