Twenty-two-year-old Helie Lee is the child of the American dreamÑscooting around Southern California in her red Japanese car with the stereo blasting. Her Korean mother and grandmother can't understand her, nor she them, and the conflicts of their values and nationality trouble Helie. "To me, my parents and grandmother were from MarsÑout of sight and out of touchÑtoo Korean for my good."
Helie embarks on a spiritual quest to integrate the two cultures, traveling to Korea and China to re-experience her family's recent history. Frustrated when she can't connect, feeling not foreign but a failure as a Korean, she realizes the answers lie in the memories of her living family. She returns home to "ask all those long-ignored questions I never bothered with since I was too busy exploiting my privileges as an American teenager."
The memories she taps are those of her grandmother, Hongyong Lee, who is so completely Korean and yet is responsible for Helie being an American. Helie relates......
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Approximate Word Count: 307
Approximate Pages: 2 (260 words per double-spaced page) |