CAPSTONE FINISHED

in it. Flat girl problems. This time though,
security is a breeze. I’m so comfortable, and
the TSA scanner lets me go right through.

My group and I land in New Orleans
and meet up with a woman for a tour of the
Lower Ninth Ward, the area that was hit the
hardest by Hurricane Katrina. Our tour
guide is visibly not wearing a bra. She gives
a wonderful tour and insight into hierarchies
of oppression in place in New Orleans,
explains the effects of gentrification, and is
just overall a wonderful person. The general
consensus from people on my tour is that we
all want to be her friend, but that her nipples
were at times distracting.

After this tour our group spent a lot of
time discussing poverty, which is actually
more closely connected with bras than you
might think. According to
DataCenterResearch.org, Hurricane Katrina
flooded 80% of New Orleans and left more
than half a million residents displaced even a
month after the hurricane (Plyer). We
learned how families lost their homes and
everything they owned. I tried to put myself
in the mind of someone who had just lost
everything. What would my first priority
be? I would need to rebuild my house or
find somewhere else to live and find a way
to feed my family and myself. The problem
is, bras are necessary for looking

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professional. That’s just the world that we
live in. To find housing and feed a family, a
woman needs to look presentable in order to
get a job. That includes a bra. It had never
occurred to me before that this might be
something a woman doesn’t have access to.

It’s no secret to anyone who has ever
purchased a bra that bras are expensive. A
simple “sort low to high” search on the
Victoria’s Secret website showed the
cheapest bra costs $17, and this particular bra
was highly impractical. It had a high
neckline that would show over every shirt
except a turtleneck, it had no padding, and it
was neon green. The next cheapest but
practical bra was more than $20. In case you
were wondering, Gisele Bundchen walked
the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show runway in
2005 with a $12.5 million “Fantasy” bra
coated in diamonds, rubies, and white gold
(Chernikoff). Since we’re in New Orleans
learning about poverty in the wake of
Katrina, I was thinking about women who
lacked the funds for this basic professional
necessity, excluding the extravagant multi-
million dollar bras. When I looked into this
further, I came to two clear dilemmas. The
first was that the writers of other
publications are much better at bra-related
puns and jokes than I am. The second thing I
found is that needing inexpensive or free

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bras was a predicament for many other
homeless women as well as the victims of
Hurricane Katrina.

An organization called Distributing
Dignity started by donating business clothes
to homeless women to help them get
jobs. They explain, “A woman at the day
center thanked our group for the clothes and
then told us she didn’t have a decent bra to
wear underneath them. She wasn’t the only
one” (“Our Story”). Distributing Dignity
holds “Mardi Bra” parties to collect bra
donations to give to homeless women. Their
tagline is “Lifting Up Women in Need.” Like
I said, my bra puns are lacking immensely in
comparison.

Day 5: Hold Me Down
As a part of our spring break trip, we

head to a school to volunteer. Conscious of
my whereabouts and wanting to be
professional, I decide to let my experiment
slide for the day. My first day back to bra-
abiding-citizen life is quite unpleasant. I
forgot about the pinching and the poking. I
try to remind myself how lucky I am to be
able to afford this bra, something
unnecessary to my comfort but necessary to
my professional life, but I really just feel
uncomfortably squeezed.

I started to think that this type of

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repression couldn’t be normal. The radical
feminist in me was ready to set my bras
aflame. I took to the internet in search of
scientific evidence to confirm what I had
already decided to be true: that bras are
stupid. What I found was that there is no
clear link between wearing a bra and getting
breast cancer, and that one French study
found that wearing bras maybe might
possibly be unnecessary. I’m no scientist,
but neither of these findings seemed to be
substantially supported by any research I
could find on the Internet. This is a very
different conclusion than what young adult
fiction books about teenage girls had told
me. I vividly remember a line from one of
the “Clique” books where one of the girls
said, “You have to wear a bra. If you don’t,
your boobs get all saggy and fall off or
something.” My experiment and I were
beyond relieved to find this statement
untrue.

Day 6: What Comes Next
As my time in New Orleans is

continually in professional settings such as
elementary schools and nonprofit
organizations, I come to accept that my
experiment may be over for now.

Stuck in the bra state of mind, I
remembered when I used to volunteer at the

148

Washtenaw County Jail. The volunteers
were forbidden from explicitly asking the
inmates what they had done to get arrested,
but we could pretty much guess that one
woman had been arrested for having sex in
her car in a public place. When she got out
of the car she only had time to put on her
shirt and left her bra in the car. After being
taken to the jail and receiving a jumpsuit,
new underwear, and shoes without laces, she
asked where her bra was. If they’re wearing
a bra when they come in, they cut the wire
out but allow them to keep the rest. The jail
considers bras to be a luxury item, and does
not give them to the inmates if they are not
arrested while wearing them. The jail
officials informed her that if she wanted to
purchase a bra from the commissary, or
small shop in jail that the inmates have
access to, she could have a family member
send her $60. Since she was a single mother
to children under sixteen who had to be
taken care of by someone else, she decided
not to purchase a bra. She was sentenced to
six months in jail, and had served three of
them completely braless when I met her. It
was impossible for me to imagine what being
stripped of my humanity like that would feel
like, and I truly understood why the
organization I found was called
“Distributing Dignity.”

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Day 7: You’ll be back
In sociology, systems create paths of

least resistance. This essentially means that
society pushes people to go with the flow
and do what is easiest. For me, following the
path of least resistance is waking up every
day and wearing a bra, even though I don’t
necessarily want to or need to do so. If one
doesn’t want to follow the path of least
resistance, there are other options as
well. One can rebel, as I did in this
experiment, and refuse to conform. One can
try to change the system, as the
#FreeTheNipple movement aims to do. One
can leave the system, and go and live with
the Zulu women in South Africa who
traditionally go without wearing bras or
shirts. One can work within the system,
accepting that even though bras are slightly
unnecessary biologically speaking, they are
necessary to function in our society.

Looking to the future, my conclusions
are very different than I expected they would
be. I expected to be enlightened and
unburdened by my lack of bra, but what I
found was much more complicated. I found
that bras exist in a paradoxical state:
simultaneously extravagant and essential. I
doubt I’ll be burning my bras anytime
soon. I think I’m going to choose to try to

150

work within the system. While I think going
braless is fun, it is impractical for most adult
women. Since I have the funds to do so, I
think I’ll invest in some new bras that fit me
properly and go home, collect all the bras I
no longer wear, and try to donate them to
women who need them. Many women
could really use the support.

Works Cited
"Our Story." Distributing Dignity. Web. 08
Mar. 2016.

Plyer, Allison. "Facts for Features: Katrina
Impact." The Data Center. 28 Aug. 2015.
Web. 08 Mar. 2016.

Chernikoff, Leah. "BLINGED OUT BRAS: A
LOOK BACK AT 14 YEARS OF THE
VICTORIA’S SECRET MULTI-MILLION
DOLLAR FANTASY BRAS." Fashionista.
Breaking Media Inc., 30 Nov. 2010. Web. 25
Mar. 2016.

Lis’s essay is lighthearted, yet it
manages to touch on some serious issues. On
the surface, her essay is about her
experiment of going braless because bras are
uncomfortable, and she initially thinks
wearing them is completely pointless. On a
deeper level, though, her essay touches on

151

feminism, poverty and access to bras, as well
as the right to choose whether to wear a bra.
Lis’s experiment led her to perform research,
yet she didn’t let the experiment or the
research take over her essay. She maintains
control and balance by making the essay
focus on her personal journey, which led her
to explore the broader implications of bras.

In her essay, Lis demonstrates a deep
level of reflection, which helps her essay feel
very authentic. She clues us into her
thoughts—all of them—the good, the bad,
and the funny.

If we look carefully, Lis’s essay is
guided by her reflections. Past the humor,
her relationship and conceptualization of
bras evolves throughout the essay based on
her subtle (and at times humorous reflection)
as follows:

I realize, perhaps a little bit too late,
that this might not be the best arena for my
personal feminist ideals.

¯
My first day back to bra-abiding-
citizen life is quite unpleasant.

¯
The radical feminist in me was ready
to set my bras aflame.

¯

152

I took to the internet in search of
scientific evidence to confirm what I had
already decided to be true: that bras are
stupid.

¯
I found that bras exist in a
paradoxical state: simultaneously
extravagant and essential.

¯
I doubt I’ll be burring my bras
anytime soon.

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Chapter 9: Stakes

The immersive writing journey is
never random. When you write an
immersion piece, you have a unique
responsibility in justifying to the audience
why you are uniquely situated to embark on
this journey. If you are going to do an
experiment where you live in a tent for a
week, you have to prove to the audience you
didn’t just get this idea off the internet, but
that there is some reason that you need to go
on this journey to learn something about
yourself and your understanding of the
world.

Often, this justification can be found
in what is driving the writer to write the
essay. If there is nothing driving the writer, it
will be very apparent and the stakes of the
essay will feel low. The reader will begin to
wonder why the story even matters. When
the story is exploring something the writer is
truly curious about and has some personal
connection to, the stakes will feel a lot higher

154

and the audience will understand why the
writer went on this journey in the first place.

At the same time, though, the essay
must be both about self and about something
bigger. There must be a personal stake, but
the writer also has to justify to an audience
why this piece is about more than
herself/himself. This is something that
beginners really struggle with, because they
fall too far one way or the other. Either it is
too much about them and reads like a journal
entry, or it seems too much like a journalistic
report that has nothing to do with them. A
good way to find out if your essay has
something significant at stake on greater
than a personal level is to ask yourself two
questions, why does the audience care? and why
am I uniquely situated to write this essay? If you
can’t answer those two questions well, you
should reconsider the stakes of your essay.

Eun Young Park’s essay “The
Koreans” is an example of an essay with high
stakes. She explores what it was like for her
grandfather to be a soldier in North Korea in
1950, trying to imagine and recreate on the
page what his experience was like based on
the stories he tells her when she visits him in
Korea. When you read Park’s essay, think
about what the driving question is and ask
yourself how she was able to write an essay

155

that seems to be about someone else in order
to better understand herself?

The Koreans
Eun Yung Park
The view reminded me of Van Gogh’s
Arles: View from the Wheat Fields, except there
was only dirt and no wheat. I should
mention this was an isolated province in
North Korea though, not Western Europe.
Huge cumulus clouds loomed overhead the
vast landscape, which stretched for acres on
end in all directions. The atmosphere had a
singed quality from the summer heat, tinted
with lackluster orange that let off the
slightest aroma of smoke. In the distance,
rolling hills that complemented the rural
skyline triggered a sense of seasickness.
On a July afternoon in 1950, a young
man stood there at the foot of those hills,
observing the view. His mind wandered in
and out of abeyance, at times from the heat
and at others from the animalistic survival
instinct that sharpened his senses into a state
of acute awareness. Yang Mo Sin, my
maternal grandfather, trudged alongside his
friends turned comrades in a somber march
toward the nearest trench. About half of the
platoon, which totaled roughly twenty men,
split off to the farther trench and the rest to
this closer one. Yang’s lean build and the

156

naïve curiosity in his eyes revealed his
adolescence – it would have been his
eighteenth birthday soon. Approaching the
ditch in the ground, he hopped in with a
grunt, leaving behind a cloud of dust while
the others followed suit.

As he perused his surroundings from
where he was hiding, the teenager squinted
in an attempt to undo the optical illusion that
the summer heat was playing on him. Hot
road mirage made his world wavy and
refracted. Before he knew it, the hurtling of
bullets began. It seemed to last a lifetime. He
had neither the time nor the hand stability to
aim properly, but he peeked his head and
rifle just above the ground and fired
continuously. “My arm!” “Fuck!” Expletives
and woeful cries of pain became his oxygen –
the only definitive way of knowing that he
was still alive. With each pull of the trigger,
Yang felt a part of his warmth and childhood
leave him like a casing on the bullets he
fired. He ducked momentarily to reload his
weapon. While rummaging through his
pocket for ammunition, Yang felt piercing
pain as a bullet nested itself in his upper
back. The area numbed quickly, but he could
feel someone else’s memories and emotions
— the longing for home, bitter regret toward
the meaninglessness of his final words to his
mother — seep into his bloodstream through

157

the tiny capillaries, displacing his own blood
outward through the open wound.

Yang wondered what all this fighting
could be for as a mutilated, bloody hand hit
his chest. Out of monstrous fear, he resumed
shooting senselessly. He vaguely tried to aim
at the silhouettes that were climbing out of
the trench and running toward him, noticing
how their chests jutted like the arch of a bow
before they fell limply to the ground. Yang
watched as a man sprinted toward him,
paralyzed with amazement that he had made
it so close to their trench without being shot.
The face gradually became etched with
details as it approached – first the ears,
attached to the sides of his head as if they
were unkemptly glued on, then the eyes and
mouth that made up a terrifying expression.
As Yang aimed to shoot, the man was
punctured by simultaneous shots to his face
and stomach, falling limply. He left behind a
cloud of dust.

Just then, Yang was pummeled by a
series of bullets that punctured his forearm,
left shoulder, and finally his upper abdomen
as he turned away from the combat in
stricken horror. He curled into a fetal
position, letting go of his rifle to cover his
ears, and noticed how the dirt wall was
pulsing rhythmically against his spine. For a
moment, he lost touch with reality in a futile

158

attempt to retreat into a safe place that
existed only in his mind. As he did so, a
deafening boom reverberated through the
walls of the trench and the explosion sent the
sharp fragments of a grenade flying like the
stars of a firework. One of the pieces grazed
his jaw, leaving a trail of open flesh as it
ruthlessly continued its trajectory through
the air.

Yang pressed the palm of his hand to
his jawline to suppress the bleeding, trying
to ignore the stinging pain. While removing
his hands from his face to hoist the rifle back
onto his shoulder he noticed that his hands
were sticky, smeared with dirt and dried
blood. He looked across the trench at the
others, whose faces were bloodied and
covered in dirt too. They were
indistinguishable from one another, and
Yang imagined it was the closest he could
get to looking in a mirror. They nodded in
silent agreement before crawling over the
sides of the trench. They sprinted across the
expanse of land toward the bridge that
would lead them into wooded Northern
territory – a temporary haven from the
combat. For just a moment, Yang stopped on
the bridge. He panted, hands on his thighs,
trying to catch his breath.

Sixty-five years later, on an uncannily
similar July afternoon, I stood on that same

159

bridge. I had flown to Korea by myself in
early May, staying with my maternal
grandparents in Incheon until my parents
and sister arrived about a month later. That
summer was the first time I recall having a
memorable conversation about the Korean
War with my grandfather. I wondered if he
had always wanted to tell me about his war
experiences, but hadn’t thought I was
interested or old enough to listen and
understand what he had to say. Either way, I
felt conflicted. On the one hand, I felt like a
gift was bestowed on me with no strings
attached, while another part of me perceived
a burden of responsibility – as if my
grandfather expected some reaction to his
courageous decision to open up about his
past. I felt that I’d discovered something
about myself that implicated my core
identity. I just wasn’t sure how. Most of our
interactions, as I would soon realize, left me
with this kind of ethereal sensation of
epiphany. I couldn’t find a way to articulate
what I felt like I’d realized.

I stood there with the wooden boards
creaking beneath my feet, watching the
young man caress the permanent scars with
a solemn silence except that now his face was
covered in wrinkles and his body shrunken.
Even in his old age, my grandpa retained a
certain dignity in his gait and the way he

160

spoke. My mother had told me stories about
how my grandpa would demand that she
and her siblings greet him at attention when
he returned from work every evening.
Despite his small stature, he had a
disproportionately large presence when he
was around.

My grandfather extended his arm
toward me, pulling up the sleeve of his shirt
to reveal the remnants of a wound that never
fully healed. I observed the textured scar in
its imperfection, thinking about whether the
internal pain of the war lingered as
stubbornly as the injuries did. Growing up in
America, I’d internalized the Korean War as
a national issue that was warped into a
vague political epidemic. I mostly learned
about my Korean heritage through osmosis
from limited anecdotes from my parents,
textbooks, and the media. The superficiality
of what I knew had created a smudged
political and historical lens that filtered out
the emotional stories of debilitated
individuals and families. However, as my
grandfather’s scars brushed underneath my
fingertips, I felt as if I was touching the
emotional pain in its physical form. In the
moment, his poignant smile seemed all
knowing of my self-revelation.

Earlier in the summer, before the rest
of my family had arrived in Korea, my aunt

161

had brought me here to Hwacheon. At the
time, all I knew about it was that my mom
had spent her childhood here. The most
memorable moments from that day had been
eating wild berries off of bushes and
drinking fresh lake water from a wooden
ladle. Today, I saw Hwacheon as a province
whose northern border parallels North Korea
as close to nine kilometers in some places.

Having grown up so far away from
my country of origin, I had taken my Korean
identity for granted. I knew it was a core part
of who I was but I’d never felt compelled to
explore it further, although the visit to
Hwacheon triggered a partial epiphany as it
occurred to me that there was a gold mine of
rich history in both my family and myself. It
was an unresolved notion that demanded
my conscious attention. For the rest of that
summer, it preoccupied my thoughts.

I stood on the bridge facing the vast
landscape, basking in an atmosphere of
tranquility. I could visualize what this barren
place might have looked like when my
grandfather had been here all those decades
ago when it served as a battlefield. I played
out imaginary combat scenes in my head,
trying as hard as I could to place myself in
my grandfather’s shoes. I flinched when his
rifle slid off the edge of his shoulder; all the
while, time seemed to stretch into an infinite

162

continuum. I felt estranged intimacy with the
soldier as he stood there, his scars visible and
breath audible. In my mind, men in
camouflage uniforms were one-dimensional
figurines that killed on instinct, whose
capacity for remorse was hopelessly
shriveled into near nothingness. It wasn’t
necessarily their fault that bringing
respectable honor to a uniform while
retaining the essence of one’s humanity —
universal human experiences like love and
empathy — were irreconcilable. Placed onto
the foreground of crimes against humanity to
save themselves, men in uniforms never
struck me as particularly human, but merely
props that complemented a stage framed by
some dystopian world of war.

I wondered: had he stood by a friend
on his wedding day, wishing him all the
happiness he could imagine? Before going to
bed, did he make love to a woman he
thought was all-deserving of his loyalty,
confident that she felt the same way about
him? Was he forever a child to a woman who
loved him more than she loved her own self?
I wanted to ask this nameless man because
my preconceptions of a what it meant to be a
soldier were paradoxical in comparison to
what I saw and felt in that moment. It made
me ache. When he finally looked up, I saw
the stoicism in his dark eyes that veiled any

163

traces of warmth. He finally punctured the
silence and warned with a forbidding,
authoritative tone: “Don’t stop the vehicle or
step out of it until you’ve reached the other
end. There are guards posted along the road
and they won’t hesitate to shoot.”

The South Korean soldier looked
squarely at us. He commandeered our
consent forms and pulled the stiff beak of his
camouflage cap further down his face so that
only his prominent jaw line was visible.
From the backseat of the rickety navy truck, I
watched in complete stillness as the soldier
flipped through our papers. His muscular
build and towering height gave me full
shade from the scorching July heat. As I
stared at his face glistening with sweat, I felt
small and unprotected, even though I was
sitting between my mom and my younger
sister. I remembered reading about a
temporary border shutdown following the
deaths of two South Korean citizens who
were traveling to North Korea. I reminded
myself that civilian deaths by paranoid
military personnel were taken seriously by
both the media and involved governments.
Surely these soldiers understood that
endangering the lives of United States
permanent residents was no light matter.
Yet, here we were signing away any liability
on their part, should any of us fail to make it

164

out of the Demilitarized Zone alive.
As the soldier waved his hand, the

large metal gates swung open and I entered
the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between
North and South Korea in which only
authorized military personnel are allowed
entry. It was a politically and historically
significant area where one breathed the same
air and felt the same rays of sun on her
forearm as the North Koreans who lived on
the other side of the barbed wire fence. Even
while I spent most of my life nested in the
safe suburbs of Cupertino, California I knew
that the topic of North Korea was a cultural
taboo that was often mentioned, but never
really discussed. In that moment, being in a
place that symbolized the complex
intersection of my ethnic heritage triggered a
novel awareness.

Our truck was cruising peacefully
along a short overpass when a rumbling that
resembled a small earthquake started to
shake our vehicle. Before we could make
sense of what was happening, a battle tank
whizzed by and a camouflage patterned
pickup truck carrying armed soldiers its bed
followed closely behind it. The wooden
planks of the bridge rattled ominously.
While the oncoming parade of military
vehicles continued loudly, I felt miniature
and almost forgotten, as if my life had been

165

trivialized in the grand scheme of all the
commotion and weapons. Was this anything
like how my grandfather had once felt?

** * * *
Although I stayed with my
grandparents for nearly four months, most of
my time there was uneventful. My
grandparents lived orderly lives, their weeks
cyclical with routines that had been
established since long ago. By about three
weeks into my stay, I could say with
confidence at any given moment where they
were and what they were doing. My
grandmother spent a majority of her
weekday afternoons volunteering as a
crossing guard at the elementary school
down the street. If she wasn’t there and not
with any of us, there were only two other
places she could be: either at home or the
local supermarket. On Saturday mornings,
my grandfather hiked up a mountain behind
the apartment complex to an isolated hot
spring. He always returned promptly at
noon. At any other time of day, it was a
reliable bet that he was reading something –
the daily newspaper, a book, or a random
magazine – on the living room couch. In
retrospect, though, this ordinary life that I
witnessed my grandfather living was what
made his dramatic past so perplexing and
impalpable. This made him more accessible

166

to me, and it was relatively easy to seek out
his company when I grew curious about the
conversation we’d had the evening before or
wanted to hear a new story about his
childhood.

Some of the memories he shared with
me were darker than others, repressed
somewhere deep in the crevices of his mind.
One afternoon, my grandfather and I were
sitting next to each other on the couch. He
was reading the newspaper, and I was
working on a personal essay when he
abruptly reached over the arm of the couch
and began sifting through a messy stack of
papers and other random assortments of
objects. I watched silently, my work
disrupted by the clattering and rustling that
signaled whatever he was looking for was
urgent.

He handed me a disc in a transparent,
pink case labeled “KBS” in green ink and
asked me if I would play it on my laptop. I
hesitated because the CD was familiar and I
had already tried to play it for my
grandfather – last summer. It hadn’t worked
so I still had no idea what was on that disc
and it made me all the more curious about
what it meant to my grandfather.
Abandoning any expectations or hope that I
might find out the contents of the disc, I
inserted it into the disc drive and waited as

167

my laptop began to whir suggestively. Much
to my surprise, a small window featuring my
grandparents on the couch that I was sitting
on popped up. I maximized the volume,
entered full-screen mode, and sat at the edge
of the couch. Next to me, my grandfather
adjusted his hearing aid as he leaned into the
screen with eyes wide open. In the video, he
began to speak, “My name is Yang Mo Sin. I
was born in Pyongyang, North Korea in
August of 1932 and am the fourth of five
brothers. I haven’t seen my family since the
war broke out on the afternoon of June 25,
1950…”

*****
Earlier that July day in 1950, Yang
looked distractedly out the window with a
lethargic gaze as his teacher droned
endlessly about the Great Leader Kim Il
Sung and his axiomatic political ideology. By
this point, the tension between North and
South Korea had long been sizzling in the
sultry atmosphere. While the Cold War was
in its early stages, it quickly transpired into a
sinister sentiment that blanketed entire
countries. Fear and skepticism were instilled
across the world, leaving politicians and
civilians alike in an inescapable shiver. The
very notion of politics was undermined by
instability that reached an unprecedented
extent.

168

Yang’s daydream interlude was
abruptly interrupted by a group of men that
barged into the classroom. Two of them were
uniformed military personnel and the other
three were clad in pristine, white lab coats.
With a sweep of his arm, one of the doctors
cleared the teacher’s table at the front of the
classroom, sending stacks of books and
papers flying in the air.

A uniformed man announced, “The
North successfully invaded Seoul with a
flanking maneuver tactic earlier this
morning, but now faces a shortage of men
for the war.”

The men’s mechanic, urgent
demeanor sent a jolt of contagious energy in
the room so that the students who had been
reclined in their chairs now sat up, attentive
and vigilant. Their eyes sparkled with wild
fright. The uniformed officers stood next to
one another off to the side, ready to divert
any trouble from the students; meanwhile,
the doctors opened their briefcases and
began to set up makeshift stations.

The same uniformed man stepped
forward and barked, “Get in line to serve
your country.” It sounded patriotic and
inflated the room with comradery and
unexpected effervescence.

Following the uniformed man’s
orders, the male students formed a line

169

behind the teacher’s desk, which now
resembled a counter that one might find in a
doctor’s office, while the female students
trickled out toward their homes and to their
families. Yang watched as his classmates
were sent to one side of the classroom or the
other. Only the one crippled student who
was partially paralyzed was leaning against
the right wall, and Yang knew these men
were conducting physical exams to draft
healthy males. He looked up to see one of the
doctors motioning for him to come over as
he pointed a classmate toward the group of
students that been drafted. At first, the
doctor seemed to go through the standard
procedure – checking vitals, asking about
medical history – until Yang saw a glimmer
of hesitancy in his eyes as he marked the
column labeled “unhealthy.”

Leaning in with a stethoscope, the
doctor whispered in his ear, “I’m a good
friend of your father, so I owe him this. Go
home while you can.” On that fateful day,
Yang didn’t leave school immediately after
this encounter. He insisted on staying to
accompany his friends to the train station,
where they would be deported via train to
the front lines. This day is one of many that
remain vividly embedded in my
grandfather’s memory. Even as he
approaches his mid-eighties, he describes to

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me with unwavering recollection the
landscape of the isolated station and how it
was filled with throngs of families that came
to bid their sons and husbands farewell. As
men, both young and old, boarded the train
my grandfather stood where the concrete
ledge was just slightly separated from the
train tracks and tried not to lose sight of his
friends for as long as he could. A woman
standing behind my grandfather was
sobbing as she extended her arm forcefully
over his shoulder to draw nearer to her son,
who had already boarded the train. My
grandfather occasionally looked back,
irritated at how hard she was shoving him.
She didn’t notice.

When the train finally let out an
exhausted sigh and began to accelerate, it
drove the crowd into a frenzy of shouts and
cries. The woman gave a final shove toward
her son as his hand slipped away, pushing
my grandfather onto the train just moments
before it picked up speed. In that moment,
my grandfather – at the age of seventeen –
was instantaneously thrust not only onto a
train that would separate him from his
family forever, but also into the vortex of
adulthood that nothing could have prepared
him for. As the train pulled away from the
station, he watched the woman grow
smaller.

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The train continued southbound
toward the 38th Parallel, where the Northern
army was working to expand their territory
by pushing the border further south. Yang
looked out the window with crestfallen
dejection. As the thicket of trees gradually
thinned, he noticed the scenery growing
increasingly familiar – the obscurely tall oak
tree that he passed every day on the way to
and from school, the pebbly road that let off
the prettiest blue hue at the right time of
day… and his home! There were white linens
strung on a wire that stretched across the
front yard. The summer breeze made them
dance, and as one of the towels was thrust
upward, he saw a woman crouched over a
basket, reaching in for more laundry to hang
on the clothesline.

It happened all too fast. Yang placed
the palm of his hand against the glass
window and squinted to get a better look.
The woman raised her arm as if to push her
hair back – the wind had sent jet black
strands of hair flying in every which way. As
he watched her, Yang remembered
something his mother had said to him the
day he and his best friend had gotten
suspended from school for playing a prank
by hiding all the female students’ shoes: “I’m
your mother, and you could never hide from
me.” The train continued ruthlessly toward

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an impending life a North Korean soldier
and he wondered if what his mother had
said so long ago was really true. He had
wished it wasn’t at the time, but he most
certainly did now.

During my stay in Korea, a highly
anticipated and equally sensationalized film
was released. The Northern Limit Line was a
film depicting the little-known confrontation
between the North and South Korean
marines that occurred during South Korea’s
game against Brazil in the 2002 World Cup. I
went to watch the movie with my mom and
my sister about a week after it came out. The
unique part of the experience was that a
large group of marines had come to watch it,
also.

“Fuck that,” a marine sitting in front
of me whispered to his friend as a soldier’s
head was blown off on screen. He must have
been around my age — his early twenties at
most. As he turned his head to look away
from the grisly scene, the brightness of the
screen reflected off a tear in the corner of his
eye. “I love this country, but not that much.”
The film had reawakened a part of the
Korean consciousness that had long been
dormant. Underneath the booming economy
and globalization of its cultish entertainment
industry, South Korea is nothing but a tiny
peninsula less than a fifth of the size of

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California. My peers see my Asian features
and ask if I am Chinese or Japanese. When I
respond that I am neither, they apologize for
generalizing – I must be Vietnamese. As a
Korean-American whose identity was
formulated at the crossroads of two
divergent cultures, I often find myself
indignant and angry when such an
important part of my identity goes by
unacknowledged, let alone appreciated.

It was in this quiet, unsung way that
the young marines in the film sacrificed their
lives. In all honesty, I think the humility and
selflessness of the soldiers uncomfortably
touched on the pride that all of us in the
theater wore like a superficial mask of
bravery in our everyday lives. Our self-
perceived sense of patriotism faltered as if
we’d taken a sharp kick to the back of our
knees. As civilians who hadn’t experienced
the Korean civil war firsthand, we
subconsciously lived in denial that our
country was politically unstable, protected
from violent chaos only by a flimsy armistice
agreement.

Armistice. Cease-fire. After getting a
glimpse of my grandfather’s young adult
life, these words became frustratingly
transparent. I could see through their
specious neutrality the reality that Korea is
still in a state of war. Those words are

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nothing but pathetic euphemisms to cover
the ugly scars of pain and turbulence that
remain on the course of Korean history and
the lives of its veterans. The trauma of the
war lingers not only in the physical division
of the North and the South, but also in
individuals like my grandfather who have
yet to obtain closure in their lives —
whatever that might entail for them as they
approached the ends of their lives.

*****
In the summer of 1953, General Nam
Il of North Korea and U.S. Army Lieutenant
General William Harrison, Jr. convened to
sign the Korean Armistice Agreement. By
that time, my grandfather had steadily
climbed the ranks in the Korean People’s
Army and was offered the option of
relocating to what is now known as
Hwacheon, in South Korea. One of his close
friends had migrated south toward the 38th
Parallel over the course of the war. He told
my grandfather that he believed his family
had moved near Seoul — a city quite far
south. Relocate to the South, he urged my
grandfather. Better to leave your hometown
than your family, at least that’s what he said.
It’s true, that statement. I would have
advised my grandfather the same, except
that his friend turned out to be mistaken. My
grandfather found out the truth — that his

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parents and four brothers were still in the
North — only when it was too late to reverse
his decision. By then, the barbed wire fences
had been erected and armed soldiers placed
in towers that overlooked the other side, on
constant watch for defectors. I still can’t
fathom what it must have felt like to start life
from scratch in a new country. My
grandfather had just turned twenty-two.

After relocating, Hwacheon became
my grandfather’s home. The government
decided to keep soldiers stationed there
because it was so close to the border. Should
anything unexpected happen, the South
would be ready; after all, Korea was and still
is technically in a state of war. Even today,
Hwacheon is known as a military town, used
as a training and base site. It was here that
my grandfather eventually met my
grandmother, and raised their three children
— the youngest of which is my mom.

*****
One of the last things I did during my
stay in Korea was to visit the World Peace
Bell Park. With the help of my mom and
sister, I pulled back the massive wooden rod
and listened in awe as the beautiful sound
chimed for kilometers on end. Just before we
rang the bell that symbolized world peace,
our tour guide explained that the bell had
been made by welding empty cartridges left

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over from the Korean War. I remembered
something my grandfather wrote in an
autobiography that he sent to me:
“Some day in the distant future, when the
reunification of Korea allows me to stand
once again on North Korean soil and meet
my descendants, I will tell them that the man
they thought had died has been living,
restlessly aching for my hometown and the
brothers I lost all the while.”

-Yang Mo Sin
The sound of the bell rapidly decayed
and I tried to imagine it was this statement in
my grandfather’s voice, traveling across the
mountains and to wherever his long-lost
family might be. As I lightly placed my
fingertips on the side of the bell, lumpy with
the textures of imperfect war remnants, it felt
oddly similar to the moment I had felt the
scars on my grandfather’s body. I stood there
atop a rocky ledge, thinking of the bullets
that remained, deeply nested in my
grandfather’s skin.

Hopefully, you were able to see that
what’s driving Park’s essay is her quest to
understand her complicated heritage and her
identity as a Korean American. Her essay is
an investigation which focuses on the
implications of the Korean War. Anyone
could do research about this war and visit

177

Korea to see what it is like now. Park
demonstrates her personal connection to this
war through her grandfather in order to
justify to us why she is the woman for the job
when it comes to writing this essay. She does
an excellent job of writing the war stories
that her grandfather tells her, while
intertwining her reflection and the
implications these stories have on her
identity. Because of her grandfather’s stories
that demonstrate his immense loyalty and
patriotism, Park feels proud of her heritage
and her identity. However, as a person living
in the United States, she is surrounded by
negative attitudes about North Korea, so
much that she is almost supposed to feel
ashamed about where she comes from.

Park’s essay makes a history lesson
very personal. She explores the physical and
emotional trauma that individuals and
families faced because of the Korean war.
She thought she knew all about this war, but
it wasn’t until she listened to her
grandfather’s stories and felt his scars that
the war became something personal for her.
Beyond her personal experience, she also has
something bigger to say about war and about
its effect on families.

Her essay matters because we might
already know that death is a consequence of
war, but Park shows us this is not the only

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consequence. We learn the effect it has on
families by learning what happened to her
family, and how they got separated. The
larger stakes are evident when Park writes,
“Armistice. Cease-fire. After getting a
glimpse of my grandfather’s young adult
life, these words became frustratingly
transparent. I could see through their
specious neutrality the reality that Korea is
still in a state of war…The trauma of the war
lingers not only in the physical division of
the North and the South, but also in the
individuals like my grandfather who have
yet to obtain closure in their lives—
whatever that might entail for them.” Park is
offering a new perspective on this war—
people might not be dropping bombs or
firing across the border, but it isn’t really
over. She drives this home with the ending
where she rings the World Peace Bell, which
is ironically made out of bullet cartridges
from the war.

Park’s essay is about her complicated
relationship with her Korean-American
identity, but also about this larger issue of
war and families. This essay is very well-
developed and shows the Park is a very
advanced creative nonfiction writer. Her
level of reflection is something that may take
significant time for young writers to
accomplish. Creative nonfiction is not

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learned overnight and the level of
complexity in Park’s essay “The Koreans”,
shows she has been at this for a couple of
years. Don’t feel discouraged if your first
couple essays are not as nuanced as Park’s
because this fluency is something that is
developed through practice and much
revision. Still, this complexity is something
that you should strive for, because it is
something you will be able to accomplish
with practice.

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Chapter 10: Finding a New
Truth

Most creative nonfiction essays can be
boiled down to some common themes or
plotlines. Park’s essay, “The Koreans” is
about heritage, while Lis’s essay, “I Got 99
Problems But My Bra Ain’t One” is about
feminism. The reason that these essays are
still important is because they successfully
make us see what they are writing about in a
new way. How does Lis’s essay make us see
feminism differently? For me, Lis’s essay
introduced for the first time the complicated
relationship between feminism and bras—
whether they are a right, a privilege, or
unnecessary. Her essay made me see
feminism in a new light, because after
reading it, I saw feminism as the right to
choose, the right to have my own opinions
about things like bras.

Park’s essay offered a new perspective
on heritage through the way she explored
her own experience by putting herself in the

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I was at a machine pitch baseball

game the very first time I ever so slightly
suspected something was wrong with my
dad. I was on the yellow team that year with
all the boys from St. Martha’s parish. My dad
had come to all of my games, so his absence
was noticeable when I look over to the
stands at my first time up to bat. I anxiously
looked up into the stands every so often,
expecting to find him sitting on the
bleachers, but he never showed up. My mom
picked me up, and on the drive over to my
aunt’s house, she told me that he was stuck
at work with a client. My mom told me in
excruciating detail what he was doing at
work, as if she were trying to convince
herself that was where he really was. After
all, why would she be explaining the
logistics of patent law to a second
grader? But, I had no reason not to believe
that my dad was not at work. I did not yet
know that parents lie.

Neither of my parents were at my
next couple of baseball games either. They
said they were on a business trip. When they
came home weeks later, my dad looked
different than I had remembered him. His
eyes, stained with blood, bulged out from
behind thick glasses that he had traded in for
his usual contacts. His flowing coffee colored

184

hair that he would normally spend twenty
minutes in the morning blow drying seemed
to be thinning. He looked like he had aged
twenty years over the course of a couple of
weeks. The dad that taught me how to ride a
bike, kick a soccer ball, and take a jump shot
now could barely even stand on his own. He
shared a few vague details about their
business trip, so that my brothers and I
would not suspect a thing.

The Saddlebrook Resort was unlike

anything I had ever seen before. I cannot
think of a better place for a last family
vacation. Each room was equipped with flat
screen TVs, video game systems, and a
whirlpool jacuzzi. Each family received their
own golf cart to navigate the countless
amenities of the resort. I had never been to
Tampa before, but the moment I stepped off
the plane, I knew I was going to like it there.
The air was sticky with heat and humidity so
strong that if sat down for too long, you
would have to peel yourself off the chair.
But, I like that kind of unbearable heat. My
dad was huffing and puffing before we even
made it out of the air-conditioned airport,
but he proactively assured us all it was just
the weather. I fanned him with my boarding
pass and told him to hurry up. I was eager

185

to get to the resort.
As my brothers and I argued over

who would get to press the button in the
elevator and who would get to put the key in
the door, my mom carried my dad’s bag and
steadied him with her other arm as he took
each step. My dad collapsed on the nearest
bed when we finally made it to our room. I
did not understand why he was acting so
miserable. We were surrounded by pools,
spas, tennis and basketball courts, and
restaurants and shopping; I could not
understand why all he wanted to do was
sleep. I pushed my way past my brothers
while simultaneously ripping through my
bag for a swimsuit and calling dibs on the
bathroom. When I came out, ready for a
swim, my dad was already fast asleep.

I do not remember much else about
the Saddlebrook Resort, but I remember it
being a high point in my life. The kind where
everything seems so perfect, that it is almost
a sure indication that everything is about to
come crashing down. And it did. When the
excitement of the trip faded as we unpacked
our bags upon arrival home, I finally realized
that something was terribly wrong. My
father had been sick for nearly a decade and I
did not comprehend it until this moment. All
the times I pulled off his socks, because his
ankles were too swollen for him to get them

186

off himself; all the times I held a plastic bag
under his chin while he vomited, I told
myself, that is just what all kids do for their
parents.

I was fourteen now, and I was
growing tired of pretending to be too young
to understand what was going on. My father
was sprawled out on his bed sleeping, as my
mom unpacked his things. The Saddlebrook
Resort had taken every last ounce of energy
that his deteriorating body had in it. I saw it
quitting on him right before my eyes. I tried
to shut them to pretend for a moment I was
not aware of his misery, but I could not even
fool myself any longer. I could tell that he
really wanted to fight, the way he had all
vacation, but his body was overpowering his
will. His loud snore that normally rocked the
entire room like a chainsaw against a tree
suddenly turned into shallow breathing.
After sharing a hotel room with him for a
week, you might think that we would be
grateful for a break from the snoring, but
usually a lack of snoring meant that his
breathing had stopped— something that
frequently happened in his sleep when he
was not hooked up to his special machine.
We were quickly relieved when his silent
sleep was interrupted by high pitched
wincing— the kind that I had only heard
before from my dog when I accidentally

187

stepped on his tail. Even if he was in pain, at
least we knew this meant he was still
breathing. I asked my mom if he was going
to die, and she told me no. I believed her.

I finally realized that parents lie when
we buried my father. I remember picking up
the shovel for the Jewish tradition called
filling the grave and barely being able to
scoop the dirt. My arms felt too weak. As I
dropped in a small pile of dirt, I heard a thud
as it hit the casket. I had a hard time
believing my dad was actually in there. As I
heard the thud of each subsequent family
member’s scoop of dirt, I felt a distance
between my father and I. It took quite some
time for the line of people to all participate in
filling the grave, and I stood there, still, the
wind on my back, running each memory I
had with my father through my head. I was
harvesting each moment with him, playing
them over and over to be sure I would not
forget. Fourteen years seems like a long time,
but after it was over, after he was gone, it
seemed so short. It seemed like I did not
have enough memories. I wanted to know
more about who my father was.

My dad grew up in Burlington,

Vermont and worked at his father’s grocery
store after school. He told me that. He had
the same love that I have for Bob Dylan

188

music, billiards, a good pair of aviator
sunglasses, and diet coke— but only from a
can. His father was also sick for most of his
life. Our family shares a genetic mutation
called Autosomal Dominant Polycystic
Kidney Disease. When I was four, I was
diagnosed with ADPKD, and I became the
fifth person in my family, over a four-
generation span, to have the disease. Despite
the improvements made in treating the
disease over each generation, it is still
incurable. My father died at fifty-seven, my
grandfather at forty-eight, and my great
grandfather somewhere around fifty.

I never did meet my paternal
grandfather, he died nearly twenty-five years
before the thought of me even existed. My
dad was just nineteen when he lost his
father. He spent his afternoons helping out at
his father’s grocery store, and from what I
have been told, my grandfather loved that
store. The gentrification of downtown
Burlington between the time my father grew
up there and now is apparent. Currently
sitting at 62 Church Street is an upscale
boutique. The grocery store that meant
everything to my grandfather now sells
cashmere sweaters and diamond earrings.

I remember my dad telling me about
his favorite memory at that store. Every
November 1st, the morning after Halloween,

189

my dad and my grandpa would take the
candy and cookies that did not sell over to
the orphanage across the street and give
them to the children there. My dad told us
stories about the children he met there, but I
do not really remember the specifics. He did
tell us the children were treated really badly;
I remember that. I think he was trying to
make us feel appreciative that we had
parents who wanted us. My dad rarely spoke
of my grandpa, so hearing about their trips
to the orphanage was one of the only times I
heard about him. I would never stop my dad
to tell him I had already heard that story
before. I let him tell it over and over.

St. Joseph’s Orphan Asylum also does
not exist anymore. Today, it is owned by
Burlington College and is home to many
classrooms where students go to learn every
day, but not about the history of the
orphanage. I cannot help to think about how
disappointed my father would be to know
that all has been forgotten about the history
of the orphanage and the children who grew
up there. I wonder who those children grew
up to be. The Burlington Free Press printed
that the orphanage was sold for over six
million dollars to Burlington College to pay
off settlements for hundreds of sexual assault
lawsuits against the orphanage. I remember
once asking my dad why he and his dad did

190

not take home some of the children. He said
they did not have the money.

I also know that Herman Fox, my
grandfather, was an honest man. I remember
my father telling me that much about him.
He worked hard to put food on the table for
his family, my father would say. I wanted to
know more. I searched every corner of my
childhood home, looking for clues, but I
found very few. I did find an old picture of
him in his military uniform. He was in the
Army Air Force during World War II from
1943 until 1946. He worked as an electrician
for a short period of time after that before he
found his place at M.H. Fishman Retail Store
and worked his way up. If my grandfather
was anything like my father, he likely quit
his job as an electrician because it lacked
rigor and he dreamed of being a
businessman. My dad worked on political
campaigns, for a couple of newspapers, and
as a freelance journalist, until eventually
finding his place as the president of a
corporate law firm. He had a head for
business. I can only assume he got that from
his father. As I hold up the picture of my
grandfather, I have a hard time seeing
himself in my face. I try to imagine what he
was like. Did he play catch on the front lawn
with my father? Was he tough like my
father? Because of our shared faulty gene, I

191

never got to meet him or find out what else
we had in common. I wonder if he would
have liked me.

When I was really young, probably

six, I remember asking my dad how come he
did not have a dad. My dad was not a
particularly religious man. He did not tell me
how grandpa had gone to be with God or
how he was in a better place now. He told
me he was dead. Dead was the word he
used. I did not know anyone that was dead
at that point in my life. I remember asking
when he died and why he died, even though
I did not really know yet what it meant for
someone to be dead. My dad explained that
the doctors tried to give him a new kidney
because he had bad ones, but it did not work.
He told me that my grandpa died on the
night September 16th a very long time ago
and that is how come I was born on
September 17th. I asked if he died the day
before I was born, and my dad said not
exactly.

I wonder if my dad grew up knowing
how sick his father was. I wonder if he
pretended not to know the way that I had. I
never asked him. My father was just as
complicit in pretending not to be sick as I
was in pretending he was not sick. Dads are
supposed to be strong; they are supposed to
be the pillar of the family. My dad did not

192

want to let go of being that person, and we
wanted him to be that person for us. We
pretended he was not ill, because it was our
only way of coping. Sometimes I can barely
remember the sound of his voice, but ever so
clearly I remember the sound of him
violently retching after every meal. I could
recognize that sound of vomit hitting the
toilet water from anywhere. When I close my
eyes, I cannot always see his face, but I can
see his bloody fingers, as he injects insulin. I
can see his bruised arms, all kinds of shades
of blacks, blues, and purples. I open my eyes
and I have to come to terms with the fact that
I must have known the whole time that he
was sick.

I remember the whispered phone calls
between my dad’s hospital phone and our
house phone. I remember hiding in my room
with a cordless phone, pressing mute on my
end, so I could listen in on the conversation.
My dad would tell my mom not to bring us
to the hospital. He said he did not want us to
see him like that. He was fearful we would
remember only his days of sickness and
despair. And that is exactly how I remember
him now. There were a few occasions that
my mom took us to the hospital to see him
anyway. I imagine she knew our days with
him might be numbered, and felt too guilty
to keep us away.

193

There was one day in my father’s last
November, right before Thanksgiving, when
my mom took us to the hospital to see him.
Thanksgiving was my dad’s favorite holiday,
because he was born on a Thanksgiving Day
in 1953. When we entered his hospital room,
he looked terrible. He had blankets pulled
over him, so we would not see all the
machines hooked up to him. He always
brushed off why he was in the hospital with
some downplayed explanation of a fall or a
pesky cough. We waited in the hallway
while my mom dressed him and got him into
a wheelchair. My mom wheeled him out of
the hospital in a well-tailored suit, but I was
not surprised by that. He cared a lot about
appearances.

I would have been happy to have a
quiet Thanksgiving at home ordered from
Chinese take-out menus, but my dad was not
going to let his favorite holiday pass him by
like that.

We did Thanksgiving at our local
country club, where we had done holidays a
few times in the past when my mom was too
busy caring for my dad to cook. My dad
could not really hold down any food at
dinner, but he tried his best. He told us he
was happy. He did not look happy. He
looked like he was dying. For someone who
looked like hell, the man sure smiled a lot.

194