불러 줄래 my name

trigger warning: racial slurs

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Before I was Amy — before I was even 84C-3093 — I was Kong Joo.  My name is the first Korean word I can remember memorizing and assigning importance to.  I have read comments, posts, and messages written by other Korean adoptees who were older when they came over.  The recurring phrase, “I knew who I was,” and the common fate of changed names and altered trajectories was a feast I gazed longingly upon — a wide, uncharted sea I didn’t know how to navigate.

Sometimes, I still don’t know who I am.

My peers are predominantly English-speaking Americans of distant European descent, and when the opportunity arises to crack a joke about how I see in widescreen instead of fullscreen, I’m always right there with the punchline.  Growing up in Hawaii, we all made fun of one another’s race-specific stereotypes.  There existed an inherent mutual respect that made the whole thing lighthearted and good-natured.  I was a member of a Xanga ring called “Flips, Japs, Gooks, and Chinky People” wherein all the members were of mixed or Asian descent.  We never talked about race in our blogs.  We complained about school; hinted at people we were angry or enamored with; and shared angsty layouts with stormy skies and Evanescence playing in the background or, by stark contrast, cheerful layouts etched in pastels and festooned with Sanrio characters.  It was high school.

Things were different when my family moved back to New Jersey and I started college.  I felt uprooted after having spent my formative years in the islands.  Suddenly, I was a stark minority — but I still made Asian jokes.  I have always been enormously proud of being Korean.  I don’t make Asian jokes to assimilate or to fit in with my white friends — I make them to separate myself from them.  I think all international adoptees struggle in one way or another to build an identity.  I don’t know if there are others like me, who depend on dicey, occasionally misinterpreted humor to get there.  COVID-19 brought about a wave of racism against Asian people that I was not exempt from, but underneath the anger and hurt I felt every time I was treated poorly by customers at the nearby Albertsons or talked down to by clients at the veterinary clinic, I felt a strange undercurrent of validation.

In 2017, I watched a video by Wong Fu Productions called In Between and found that while I identified strongly with feeling different from everybody, there were some key differences: I’ve never felt “the same as” my white friends and I’ve never striven to be.  I enjoy being different in that regard.  I’ve definitely been edged out by Asian Americans who have Asian parents and celebrate Asian traditions, but I’m so accustomed to it now and so good at self-isolating that I don’t feel the sting quite as much as the main character in the short.  I already see myself as irrevocably inferior, especially among Korean Americans who are not adoptees, so when I’m faced with the prospect of interacting with them, I do everything I can to run and hide.  They don’t even have the chance to reject or accept me.

I am an eternal fugitive, and rejection is my Javert.

The few times I’ve felt completely comfortable in my own skin are rare; they always catch me by surprise.  I felt most at home when I was studying in South Korea.  I talked to perfect strangers in Korean and felt no shame when I had to ask them to speak more slowly or repeat something.  I felt happiest when they called me by name.  My teacher alternated between using 에이미씨 (Amy 씨) and 공주씨 (Kong Joo 씨).  I always preferred the latter.  It was the first time anybody had called me Kong Joo in a way that wasn’t a mean joke — and, believe me, I’ve heard the jokes.  I’m very anti-gorilla because of them.  King Kong, Congo, “Amy want rain drink,” — yeah.  I’m not a fan of gorillas, but I do like Gorillaz.  And I like this song.

Ever since coming back from Korea and being called Amy again, I’ve felt a growing dissonance with the name and who it really represents.  My relationship with my adoptive parents is complicated, to say the least, and I am not the person they hoped I would become.  On my best days, though, I think I might be inching closer to the person I would like to become.  And I have fantasized for years about reclaiming my Korean name — my first name — but the transition has always seemed impossible.  (I’m too shy; won’t a name like mine be considered pretentious?  I’m too embarrassed; won’t my peers balk at its otherness?  I’m already Amy to so many people; won’t a new nickname be a huge inconvenience?)

For some reason, on August 18, 2020, the transition very abruptly seemed entirely possible.  If you’re like me, and you suffer from complicated comorbid disorders like depression, anxiety, and C-PTSD, you probably know what this is like.  When your brain finally shuts the fuck up and lets you do the thing, you fucking do the thing.  I printed and filled out the forms during my lunch break, and after work I went immediately to the courthouse.  A few days prior, I had posted in the KAD groups on Facebook to basically ask permission to go through with it in a weird way, but I realize now that my mind was already made up.  My mind has been made up for years.  I realized at some point that while most of the people I regularly interact with these days know me as Amy, I’ve gone by KJ for far longer — since the dawn of AOL dialup, actually.  (If you’re immediately hearing a dial tone in your head and the screeching of an ancient modem, congratulations.  You’re old, like me.)

Last Saturday, eleven days after turning in the paperwork, I wrote to Eastern Social Welfare Society to inform them of my new name and tacked on, in a fit of lonely curiosity, “Could you please tell me where my Korean surname comes from?  And may I please ask what the 한자 (hanja) for 신 (Shin) would be?”

NOTE: This explains what hanja means because I am ineloquent.

The response read, “Your surname is 신 申. The meaning is repeat.  We feel very sorry, but there was no information about your birth parents, even their names.  On the day of your birth, a nurse in the clinic named you following her last name, but her full name and other details are unknown.”  I had already been told this when I visited Eastern Social Welfare Society in person, but reading it and seeing the hanja is somehow more meaningful. I feel connected. I feel grounded.

…so, all this to say, I legally changed my name.  It was made official August 28, 2020.

My new name is a gift I have given myself.  It is an amalgamation of other names that were given to me and other cultures I have been adopted into.  It bears testament to the individuals who, in one way or another, took a chance on a nameless, homeless, clanless nobody.  I’d prefer to be called KJ, unless you know me as AK, Daerani (Dae), Txanyi (Anyi, Txi, Txa, Tex, the list continues ad infinitum), INKDOG, or any other affectionate nickname we’ve somehow conjured up over time.  I don’t expect everyone to go along with this, so don’t feel like you need to correct people.  I know some people’s vernacular doesn’t allow for change or adaptation.  Just know that even if you’re more comfortable calling me Amy, going forward, new people are going to be introduced to me in a different way.

When they say KJ, they mean me.

Those are my initials. That is my name.

(Oops, this is terrifying, and why did I think writing this out was a good idea?)