#memoirette

[kimyoonmiauthor]

The Slightly Humorous Story About How Straight People made me Queer.

Let’s be clear here, when I was in Korea, I was halfway tripped up on Korean dramas. Korean dramas which didn’t have kissing until much later in the series, and lots of small romantic gestures were on screen. From what I know, I liked cartoons and TV shows to block the noise from my parents arguing all of the time. I disliked the Japanese occupation drama that was popular at the time because it had loud guns in it. So I’ve always loved rom coms the most on television. They gave me comfort. I also watched Historicals with my aunties.

I had to figure this out on my own, by putting things together.

So when I came to the US (adopted), I had this really strong notion that went something like this...

I would get married, have kids, I didn’t know how. And then my husband would tragically die of natural causes or we’d get divorced or something of that sort and he’d disappear. And then I would have dogs and be a widow.

No straight person has a thought like this when they are five years old, and maybe it should have clued me in that people usually don’t kill off their spouses in their heads that maybe just maybe I was not straight.

I had bouts as a kid, too, of loving frilly pink things, then hating it, etc, though this got confused under all of the Second wave feminism my mom liked to shove on me, which often was white feminist and racist and oddly anti-LBTQIA.

I liked pink for a while, because it was girly, then converted to purple, because it felt more neutral, but then couldn’t identify with any color after that. Maybe this, too, was part of the harassment my mom had around colors, insisting that I wear black because it was “practical” but I couldn’t really perform gender that well. I would really, really try to conform to one gender, but then feel highly uncomfortable with it.

I wanted to learn girly things to know it, but I didn’t want to perform it. I wanted to do sports, and learn various types of things that were told to be gendered--but honestly, I saw it as kind of pointless to call wiffle ball a “Boys game” and girls “Cooking.” I never felt stable. I would flux and convert at turns a little, and I was comfortable with that. I didn’t see the point of gendered pronouns. WTH. I got constantly corrected on them for years probably because I couldn’t feel them in myself either. And the thing was, I liked dressing up in costumes, I didn’t care about the gender of the clothes. I also absolutely loved anything that played with gender roles and expectations. I was drawn to it.

I found myself drawn to queer books, though a lot of the romances I read were het, maybe as a remnant of watching too many het romances on television from very young and also because reading queer romances would have exposed me more.

At the same time straight kids would endlessly tease me for being a lesbian, gay, or something. And I was puzzled over sexual attraction and romantic attraction for myself. I thought people were lying in television shows--also maybe because of the gap between US television and Korean. US--two seconds, in bed. Korean 10/16 episodes in and you get a kiss. And for a kid that doesn’t feel primary sexual attraction, this was quite confusing--I didn’t know that kids could know their sexuality at five years old.

From the time I knew sexual attraction was a thing(TM), I was thinking, unlike the kids that teased me to be gay and lesbian. I was fine with “whatever” the most ace thing in the world. (Though if it was a woman in my head, I thought things like, well, if I’m attracted to women, well, the dying early thing won’t be in the cards. I’ll figure it out then.) I was fine being bisexual. As long as I could punch my schedule of having kids and a dog. (This is kinda ND to me... which might also be why I got bullied--besides being Asian. I didn’t think like most other kids and I was extremely precocious.)

At one point I was asked if the “Backstreet boys was hot” when I was nine and in a fit of NDness, probably, I watched their music videos to figure out *why* that person liked them, and I couldn’t figure it out at all. Totally went over my head. Was it a personality trait they had?

But nothing happened for a long ass time. And then aesthetic attraction happened. I thought aesthetic attraction was the same thing as sexual attraction for the longest ass time. It took me a long, long ass time to realize people actually do want to have sex upon looking at someone and saying “I’d do them.”

Even the kissing games like spin the bottle and dares, etc, I stayed out of with the thought of, “I don’t see the point if you don’t have feelings for each other.”

I also thought probably because of a steady digest of rom coms, Victorian romances, and so on, attraction would be this magical moment of floaty clouds, etc. But I found it extremely annoying in part and I wanted to distance myself from it. At other points I didn’t want to deal with it at all. And I was told it was the greatest thing in the world.

My friends asked why I didn’t date anyone and I answered with the most ND answer ever in my head. “I didn’t have a large enough pool of people to be attracted to.” The other thing I thought was, “There is no point of dating in Middle School and High School if you’re going to break up with people,” *cough* Grey-ace, maybe? Have a clue.

But I had no terms for this, or my kind of half-hearted attempts at presenting cis. Presenting fully as a woman and performing it was too much work in my head. And I know some women just don’t like makeup, and some nonbinary do, but putting the effort in to perform being a woman 24-7 felt like too much for me. I kept slipping every time I tried. I never quite felt comfortable in the gossip circles women do--it also might be because I was also extremely precocious and ND-ish that it was harder to fit in.

But straight people kept flagging me over and over trying to figure out why this or that was true. Why I had no attraction to anyone. Why I couldn’t perform womanhood, even though I knew how. The feedback from straight people told me over and over I was very queer. And I felt an attraction to queer culture, but I didn’t know how I slotted in and I couldn’t place it because the dominant labels were not me. But I didn’t feel straight either.

I semi-dated long distance a guy I felt romantic attraction to (after I got to know him for a while), but I didn’t feel sexual attraction to. In truth, I probably wasn’t that committed and the long distance hampered my ability to feel attraction since we separated in early stages.

I did finally date someone I had sex with, but I still don’t get why people love sex that much. My sex stance is sex indifferent most of the time, sometimes favorable, but rarely, so it was a meh moment for me. I liked sex for the intimacy, but sometimes I felt like it was kinda pointless. I did feel sexual attraction after knowing the person for a while. I’m not clear on my secondary sexual/romantic attraction orientation completely, though. It’s like trying to reach past a brick wall. I’m not against it being more omni/pan/bi still.

And the guy of the time was straight--also had this weird relationship with trans people where he kept harping on it. So I closeted my NBness really hard during that relationship, but I kept slipping and he kept on me for why I didn’t perform womanness correctly. lol Maybe I was also trying to get that man dies before I’m 80, but we have kids thing going too.

lol Queer people kept semi-kicking me out though I kind of had an attraction to queer people as in I think I’m one of you, but I don’t know how. So I struggled a lot to find the correct labels.

I wish I knew earlier that this was a thing, though, since I was destructive in some ways when I thought I was straight, but a little strange and trying to fit into the allosexual/alloromantic/cis box. I could have sorted it out faster and better and probably gotten past the grey-ace/aro wall by approaching it differently.

All straight people kept cluing me into the fact I was queer. It wasn’t queer people that told me, hey, you, you’re queer. It was 100% straight people--though they got the brand of queer wrong often. I just couldn’t perform their straightness to their standards no matter how hard I tried.

So no dog, no kids, but hella queer? I do have reptiles. But I do plan to eventually have dogs. The straights converted me to queer.

[eclecticcreative]

My friend was the wind.

When I was a child and lonely, because my neighborhood friends all moved away, which my Mom saw as natural and not a cause of concern, even as she badmouthed all of the children's parents and the children, I used to play with the wind which I saw as a woman. I was being teased and bullied constantly and I was afraid to make friends lest they also get teased and bullied for making friends with me. One friend had already moved schools because she was getting bullied for being friends with me.

I had no one to play with. My brother was at a different school, and our interests deviated. My parents were emotionally abusive and so saw this as not a problem. I became increasingly afraid of making friends. I thought they would either leave me, or get into trouble for being near me.

So I played with the wind. I begged her to pick me up and carry me to a better place like Mary Poppins. I thought I got the idea from a children's book were a boy made friends with the wind, but read it again and found that the wind was characterized as male. I continued to believe she was female and that my pain and sorrow would cease if she would only carry me away.

But then I eventually moved to a new school and I stopped getting bullied as much--at least the authority figres around me cared about my well being. I was still being abused, so, sometimes I would remember, but then as I got older I forgot.

Later I looked her up, remembering her from my childhood and then found in a book about Mugyo, that for my region of Kyeongsangnamdo there is a goddess called Grandmother Yeodung who is treasured there and on Jeju. She is not only the goddess of the wind, but also of fortunes. Because of my affinity towards her, I wrote her into a book as the main deity of the temple/shrine (doesn't translate well) for one of my main characters. Maybe it's an apology for calling her unnecessarily by my side as a child. Sometimes I wonder if Grandmother Yeodeung would forgive a child for asking for a friend. It also makes me wonder how much I actually remembered before my memory wipe.

[rawhomeschoolmom]

Writing Conference Memoirette

I just attended the Lorain County  Library’s (awesome!) writer’s conference led by Chuck Sambuchino. The most interesting moment of the conference was when Chuck read manuscripts and murdered them in front of us. Until that moment, I’d never actually experienced group tension in the flesh. It was like an invisible spider web stretched across the room and we all vibrated in sympathetic agony when…

[bookcheaptravels]

Tiny Confessions: The Humorous Memoirette with Sassy Drink Tested recipes

Tiny Confessions: The Humorous Memoirette with Sassy Drink Dishes #1 within Humor plus #1 within Bartending From bubbly bottles in order to baby containers, this memoirette offers a amusing look at a north american mom’s 10 years in Paris, france. Party female Vicki relocated to the City associated with Light looking to drink the girl […] The post Tiny Confessions: The Humorous Memoirette with Sassy Drink Tested recipes appeared first on BookCheapTravels.com. http://bookcheaptravels.com/tiny-confessions-the-humorous-memoirette-with-sassy-drink-tested-recipes/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Mi Says

Sayings I like to say which I made up.

"Ignorance is a shorter word for stupidity." (which is a joke) Probably should be Ignorance is an excuse for stupidity if I was being more serious. Stupidity here, being A person who is in a stupor to the point of refusing to have knowledge when they are able to acquire it.

"Well-directed anger is change."

"Revenge is not a dish served cold, but life lived well."

"Schadenfreude is satisfying, but short-lived."

"You are not helpless."

"Face, work through, and talk through trauma, so that the trauma doesn't repeat again."

"Hatred is uncreative, but easy. Love is creative, but harder to achieve. Hatred is easy because it paints everyone with the same brush. However love is more difficult to achieve because you have to face each individual with your full self and put effort into understanding them, but the rewards are sweeter. I aim for love."

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Asian Dyscalculia

So the stereotype has been since Asian professionals arrived to the US, that Asians are really good at math.

Unfortunately, for some people, this is not true. I have a learning disability, called Dyscalculia.

My Adoptive Father--Dad used to get really perturbed at my difficulty with math topics. I had particular trouble with graphs, the number line, and I still mix up numbers reading them out, much like dyslexia mixes up letters. My concept of time was messed up (also probably because part of my childhood was spent dissociating, which makes it worse because I cannot feel time then). And of course, left and right were messed up.

My sibling was and is really good at math. Though probably shakier with philosophical concepts.

Anyway, I really struggled with addition, multiplication and division. But then I didn’t really get help until about the 5th grade, but then was kicked out soon after. It really went unrecognized, I suspect because I was Asian. Meanwhile they were gungho to put me in remedial reading and writing classes, despite my scoring really high on the standardized tests. (Racist in two ways). I scored low on Math, and they still wouldn’t help me...

All through my school years there were fellow students who wanted to copy my math homework. My really bad math homework. The homework I got D’s and C’s on because my disability was going unrecognized.

My homework was stolen from my backpack once, and the teacher caught it, and about half of the problems were wrong. lol I remember since we had to self-grade.

It wasn’t Asian being humble when I told the students who wanted to copy my homework that my homework sucked and was wrong. I was being dead honest. But they persisted in not believing me.

Once I was doing a trig proof, and I made so many mistakes I ended up with the correct answer by mistake.

I learned how to make up for it a bit by learning some math theory from my Dad, but it still shows up when I’m stressed out. BTW, I’ve run into other Asians who have dyscalculia. Appa has it. He writes his 9′s backwards. And some other people I’ve talked to. So yeah, not all Asians are deficient in writing English, and not all Asians are good at math.

Despite my high scores in English/Lit standardized tests, I still, still think it would have benefited my early English to have learned Korean simulataneously. The way I thought about English improved once I learned Korean. I don’t know if there are some Adoptive Parents reading this, but it’s something to discuss with your child if they were adopted older.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

I love old cranky white Grandpa Publishing, but he needs to change.

This is an analogy I used to use a lot on the Nanowrimo forums when I was on the Nanowrimo forums. I liked to personify both Publishing and the Movie Industry together as grumpy old white men with houses, I suppose in urban centers. I was actually surprised when I saw Up, because I was like, that’s how I imagined Grandpa Publishing.

I’m fond of extended analogies, especially when talking about social justice or concepts that seem too academic to understand. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actress. My mom tried her best to dissuade me. Said I’d have to endure racism. Due to things out of my control, I ended up switching to writing. I still suppose if I grew up in Korea, I’d have been an actress. The adoptee part of me, sometimes fantasizes about meeting her--the other me.

I escaped acting to escape being hurt by the industry I loved. But finding no escape, I wandered around, trying to find an industry that couldn’t be racist. But there is no such thing. There is no place on Earth I wouldn’t be discriminated against. I realized I had to fight. But I was tired of fighting and had no tools to do so. Growing up transracially adopted, doesn’t exactly give you tools to deal with racism. Though, I’ve learned there are no good defenses against systemic oppression, whiteness definitely is the opposite of help. I had to learn.

I chose one of my first loves: Stories. And so went the writing industry. I’ve always been a self-determined type. Wanting to learn everything at my pace. I drive people around me crazy with this. “You need foundational skills first.” But then I’d always want to learn in a different way and in a self-directed way. I’d whine to my Dad constantly about the way I wanted to learn. (Maybe a self-entitled brat.)

Settling on stories on the delusion I could make it without being judged on who I was I set out on that quest.

I absorbed as many worldwide stories as I could, classics I liked and hated. stories in all types of media. I asked to connect to French TV which was blurry at the time. I wanted Latinx stories too, and attempted to ask for that in my schooling. In my quest, I decided to learn as much as I could with anything I could about writing. And so, after about 7 years of knowing I was writing crap--I hated the first story I sent out, but it was for a school assignment and I didn’t get to choose, I kept trying. I wrote a story that was well-liked. I edited it a bunch more times. I had it go through several critiques. I sent it out and got a rejection.

The rejection that sticks out the most to me, is one where it reads, “Maybe because I’m not a woman. :)” A few years later, the concept was made into a TV episode written and staring a white man as the protagonist. I know the two aren’t connected, but I still felt burnt. Why was mine which centered around a woman, less worthy than a man doing it, and a white man at that? The story was 90% concept. I’d had it checked by several people. I’d combed it for mistakes. I felt like it was my fault. Maybe I didn’t edit it enough. Maybe I missed some mistakes.

This was my first taste of Grandpa Publishing. I came to know him as grumpy as Grandpa Hollywood--the grandpa everyone assumed was gay and Jewish, even if the things he likes aren’t anything close to this, in actuality. Grandpa Publishing became “get off my lawn” type when I learned who the top executives were. I’ve never judged people for their labels that much. Maybe because I have so many. I still screw up--no doubt. But I’ve also witnessed old people change. My parents would tell me to not even try. And I refused to believe them. Connecting and respecting the core of the person--I try to do that in respect of their labels, not despite it. At their own pace. I imagined he could change, if I could understand him.

Imagining Grandpa Publishing like this, I also imagined myself trying to win his love and praise. Kill the bad grammar, so he’d read my manuscript. Write a really good blurb. Learn his history. I have his history since the first stories were told out loud. I can recite the beginning of almost all genres and debates about them. I was fine with Grandpa Publishing until I understood what he wanted for me to qualify. “Kill the Korean parts of your manuscript.” “Erase the people of color in your life.” “World Lit, where did you get the idea I would read World Lit?” Stab me in the heart--why do you want to forget your own history, Grandpa Publishing?

I asked Grandpa Publishing why he was this way... and it comes down to Grandpa Education. Equally white, often with a sick fetish for French, Roman and Greek men (as long as they don’t say they are gay) and no, he’s not going to talk like he’s really gay because somehow teaching gay history is evil, even if he worships Plato and Aristotle. The second mostly for his hate of women, because worshipping Athens’ scholars who hated women is better than studying Sparta, that upheld women.

So this leaves me with asking why Grandpa Education is this way while thinking he’s liberal. Digging back through education history in Europe is tricky, but it’s mostly down to the Victorians, who were busy conquering the world at the time under Empire for the US. Grandpa Education is wrong. He forgets the contribution of gay, black, hispanic, etc people that shaped his organs. Jane Addams. Do you know her? She made continued education possible. Do you remember her Grandpa Publishing in your push for more straight people and education?

Can you change Grandpa Publishing without Grandpa Education? A bunch of us tried that. But we’re still left with the same questions, camping out on Grandpa Publishing’s lawn while he’s shaking his cane at us--some of us more than others. How much Trauma Porn does Grandpa Publishing want, and what about the adults? What about other demographics? He’s fine with his grandchildren reading. He wants only stories of our hurt, our pain, but rarely of our daily joy or triumphs or just being normal. The coming out story, the tragic gay. Slavery stories from blacks. Korean War from Koreans. Hiroshima bombing. Indigenous people being erased. Where are the whites? Adoptees--memoirs only. He constantly asks. And he snickers with Grandpa Hollywood all the time about this. Grandpa Hollywood that likes to give out rewards to white people for being anything, but hates on minorities. He will give out money and favor his children to get closer to him by ranking them. But unlike in real life, we don’t have intermediaries, or parents to really tell us how to yell at Grandpa Publishing to get better and stop ranking us.

I keep thinking that we need a three way push on Hollywood, Publishing and Education to make an edge in the creative arts. They are more interconnected than most remember. We’ll need an uprising to get there, though because I’m tired of the stupid excuses people make. How can we pioneer our stories on privileged standards that came before it? Especially when a lot of our story telling traditions are older than the White CIS het orthosexed zedsexual land holding privileged that Grandpa has become? When will he recognize our older story telling traditions just as valid as the younger White European mostly told as Shakespearean, but really shaped by Victorian ideals and Gertrude Stein (though people still want to forget her contributions because, you know, lesbian). Argue to me why these older story telling traditions aren’t as valid when they still are used in those countries today. I’m waiting, Grandpa Publishing. What answer have you that’s not racist?

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Memoirette: How I learned about contracts and to read contracts.

Yeah, this one might sound a bit boring, but this is more along the lines of if you want to hire me for a contract job, please, please know that I’m not ignorant about how contracts work.

Also, I think that contracts (and I’ll repeat this until people get it) as the oldest piece of case law protect the client and the contractor.

About 9-13 years old, I became determined to be a writer and get published. You see, I’d been making up stories all my life, mostly to comfort myself. At the time, since not everything was digital, my Mom asked me what I wanted in the way of magazines, so determined to do this goal, and rather stubborn and single-minded as I was, I asked for Writers Digest.

I read 1 year of Writers Digest and over and over they said: “Learn to read the contracts. Don’t rely on your agent for it. Your agent will appreciate if you can read a contract.”

You kinda have to know this about me, but when I set my mind to a goal, I tend to overshoot the material that I need to achieve the goal. Even when I’m shopping for an item, I cast my net wide, research it to hell, make an internal list of pros and cons, then eliminate the things I don’t need. This means I always end up with more knowledge than absolutely necessary... but I often end up with satisfaction I got it right.

So, when Writers Digest said, “Learn contracts” the first thing I did was start reading sweepstakes contracts for limitations.

Then when I got access to the Internet, I read ALL of copyright.gov at least 5 times until I understood the entire thing. Any language I didn’t understand, I looked up or asked about. Any contract I could find, I spent time reading and trying to understand thereafter. My Dad also doubled down on it and said, it’s important to read contracts before you sign them.

Then I read every agent advice bit I could get my hands on, read about writing contracts, read about the differences between magazine writing contracts and book writing contracts, and then what I should and should not expect. I read credit card contracts before the law enacted and after they did enact the transparency with contracts. And then when I had the chance, I read lawyer advice about contracts. Pretty much, you should get it by now. If someone says to do something in order to achieve a goal I have, I always end up overshooting it. Several authors said to read everything... but I didn’t know that was supposed to be only white cishet writers in English and from Europeans and European diaspora. I thought it really meant EVERYTHING. So I read folktales, fairytales, and consumed worldwide media... and then found out that no one else was really doing that.

This meant by the time that I got pro-published, I knew contracts. Really knew contracts I’d read through every contract even when people told me not to. I had basics about contract law. I was like, I’m super ready.

In High school, I’d watched a bunch of lawyer shows and read a bunch of law cases in the past, so when we did play acting, I knew what questions to ask the opposing team to win. lol This is the typical type of thing, where I don’t know that no one else is really taking the advice that seriously, overshoot it, and then have to get my expectations down.

But this means I have and intermediate knowledge of contract, case law, from a hobbyist’s POV. I know the contract language, weasel clauses, etc. I’m not a light hitter. I know what I should expect. I know how to navigate a contracts.

Soooo.... if you want to contract me, expect that I have at least enough knowledge to know how a contract should read and function. After all, I’ve been reading them since I was a teenager.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Identity and bifurcating

I’m highly intersectional for marginalized identities so much so, that I forget it in one go because it exceeds 7 items. I used to be the type that tried, so, so very hard to split up my identity to the various parts and live in that space, but it felt like I was choking all the time. I couldn’t be that way. I couldn’t market myself as being one. thing. at a time. I get it for people who have less intersectionalities (yadda yadda there is so many times I can type the whole thing before I get tired), they can hyper focus on say 3, or 4. But then, I’m not one of those people. And the true definition of intersectionality isn’t one. at. a. time. It’s this is a brand spanking new identity when you put all of the privileges and all of the marginalizations/diversity together. It’s a whole, not separate package. 

How can I talk about something like adoption without also talking about how things overlap with LGBTQIA. How can I talk about LGBTQIA without also talking about the overlap of ableism that often comes with it? I think hard on my privileges, which i sharply aware of, because they are so few, but I also wish to not use that privilege for ill. And people who are more privileged than me often don’t know how to do that. How do you navigate the world where your privileges flux on space, yet some privileges are omnipresent wherever you go? I reflect on my own WTF gender nonbinaryness which I can’t neatly categorize. Because sometimes it is a WTF tangle. Sometimes I feel suddenly more feminine. Sometimes I’m kicking and screaming inside while I’m performing one way and then another moment, it feels alright. Sometimes it’s 100% agender. Sometimes it’s kinda bigender, but not really. Sometimes it feel like this lump I’m kicking around. And some of it is WTF, might get me kicked out for saying so. Like I’m more comfortable with my gender in Korean spaces than European because European is more rigid, but only to certain Korean time periods and places, not all of Korean culture and I hate the same kind of disciplining of Korean women that I do of American women. But how is that valid? It’s kinda like, so are you nonbinary or not if you feel more comfortable in certain time periods and places and it fluxes and is fluid on that context, but you still hate the commercialization and commodification of gender itself? I hate the privilege men have, but at the same time would not mind being a man and performing as one. And I feel active resentment towards that privilege that hates upon my existence, not just as someone NB, but also as a person of color, someone that presents a lot like a woman, and someone who is disabled. I know how the system was built, but still have these mixed feelings inside about how gender is and isn’t defined. Might also fuel my dysphoria. So where does that put me?

But then how do I separate that from adoption, race, class, etc? I don’t know where start and end and how much it’s all one inexplicable lump that makes up me.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Mi and writing adoption.

I haven’t yet been able to successfully write a story about adoption in fictionalized form. Maybe because I see the beast as so complex, and I’m intimidated by my own label. It’s so nuanced and it’s so easy to get wrong. People also assume I’m not really, PoC if I’m adopted, and that’s I’m not really white because of my appearance. People like using my label as an ambassador for race, sex, gender, etc. Or to air out their fears of parenting by making adoptees demons, aliens, etc. People don’t even recognize adoption as a kind of diversity. We are a minority and we do get prejudice, but organizations won’t see it because we are written in so often, but so incorrectly at the same time. So I end up starting stories that I haven’t quite finished. I reversed the adoptee is an alien and did adult human is adopted by aliens, but I got stalled because while I picked an ending, I was wondering if I was being to polemic. Short stories always take more time than novels for me to write. I can finish a novel in a month or two, though some take longer--the so-called long projects. But short stories I can end up brewing for years on end while they sit on my harddrive festering. Incidentally the one short story I got published I finished in under an hour, got it critiqued and sent out.... was published within the year. I write adoption adjacent thing, but writing adoptees is unreasonably difficult to do well in a short story.