Tina Firesheets
Associate Creative Director, Pace Communications

I’m Korean. I was adopted from Seoul by a Japanese mother and a Caucasian father, and I grew up on an Indian reservation in Western North Carolina. I didn’t know another Asian person except for my mother until I was 18 years old and went to college.

That’s my elevator speech. 

Most people who hear my story for the first time are pretty amazed by it. Because most people can’t imagine growing up knowing just one other person who is like them. Now, the kicker to this story is that my grandparents, aunts and uncles, and even my father were racist. 

My parents separated for a couple of years when I was in first grade. My mother returned to her family in Japan, and my father returned to the tiny Western North Carolina town where his parents had lived their entire lives. I hadn’t been at my grandparents’ very long when my grandfather told me to go back to where I came from. Hot tears poured down my face, as I ran out of their house. My father found me sobbing on the bank above the house, and when I told him what my grandfather had said, he had a word with him. I only felt a little better. 

Ever since then, I’ve been trying to unlearn racism. But my journey of learning about my Korean culture and being proud of who I am wouldn’t begin until my junior year in college. Those years between my grandfather telling me to go back to where I came from and my last years of college were mostly spent trying to assimilate. I was THE ONLY Asian kid in my school. Always. I didn’t want to learn to speak any other languages because I didn’t want to be more different. I grew up eating the food of Appalachia – pinto beans, fried potatoes, cornbread and lots of vegetables cooked with fatback and lard. I grew up trying to tease my hair and hating the shape of my eyes. 

At UNCG, I got the chance to attend KASCON – a Korean American Students conference in San Francisco. It was incredibly transformative for me. It was the first time I had been around So. Many. Asians. Not just Asians, but Asian Americans like me, who spoke English without an accent and grew up watching American movies and listening to Top 40 music. 

I returned to N.C. with a newfound sense of pride in who I was. I no longer was ashamed to be Korean. I no longer wished that I had rounder, larger eyes. I felt beautiful and empowered. I was determined to return to California to work with the Korean community in L.A. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I just wanted to be where there were more people like me.

But my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer in my senior year of college, and I didn’t feel that I should move across the country. I had also met my husband, and by the time my mother passed away, his father was also diagnosed with lung cancer. When he passed away, we were committed to taking care of his mother for the rest of her life. 

I never made it to L.A., but that’s okay. We have a son now. He’s 10. And there’s plenty of work to do here and now. 

Recent attacks against Asians and Asian Americans and ongoing systemic injustices have prompted many of us to move outside of our comfort zones and inspired to action. 

Perhaps sharing our stories won’t directly stop acts of violence or end injustices, but I do know that minds can be changed when people get to know each other. When we realize commonalities around the things that matter most – love for our families, a desire to do the right thing, the desire to be loved, the enjoyment of delicious food or beautiful music – we realize that our differences don’t have to divide us. 

 

Tina Firesheets is an associate creative director at Pace Communications, a marketing agency in Greensboro, N.C. She is a former journalist and magazine editor. She’s also a wife, mother and a lover of food and a good party with diverse groups of people. 

Contact Tina via email at [email protected].