안녕하세요!

Welcome!

My name is Erikka. I am half-Korean, half-Connectican. I don’t speak, read, write Korean, but I have fond memories of 트로트 music and Korean hymns playing softly in the kitchen while my mom prepared my favorite foods. Kimchi or ban chan or ramyun or kimpab, the smells of spices and soy sauce and sesame oil the fragrances that clung to my clothes like they cling to my memories.

I often feel like my brain is American and my heart is Korean. But it’s a weird place to be. I don’t quite fit in with Americans (we just weren’t raised the same way!). And I don’t fit in with Koreans. I become quite stupid around Koreans, in fact—I want to be seen as one of them (on the inside, I feel like one!) but on the outside, I am not. It’s not just how I look. I act like an American. It’s my culture. I’m an American.

I’m Korean-American, but not in the same way Korean-Americans born to Korean parents (and who speak Korean) are Korean-American. I’m just a poser!

I have a Korean mother and everything we have ever communicated to each other has been in English. It means there are limits to how well I can know her, how well she can know me. This breaks my heart—but it took becoming a mother myself to realize this. In the absence of that linguistic means of connection, I’m searching for something else, some meaning, in art—in translation. 

So, thanks for reading. If you want to know more about me, you can check out my portfolio or my Linked In.

Cheers,

—Erikka 에리카

Subscribe to Korean Literature in Translation

A substack devoted to exploring Korean Literature in Translation

People

Fiction writer; Korean literature enthusiast; PhD student interested in pedagogies decolonizing world literature; MSEd, MFA; half-Korean, half-Connecticuter. 바다를 꿈꾸며