To Have a Home WORDS & IMAGES JIMIN KANG
“EU SOU DA COREIA MAS MORO EM HONG KONG.” “I AM FROM KOREA BUT I LIVE IN HONG KONG.”
T
hus went the self-introduction I offered to the many people whom I grew to know, and love, throughout my nine months in
Instead, the crawling peaks, crowded streets and double-decker buses of Hong Kong laid the backdrop to the formative years of
Brazil. Whenever someone asked me who I was, I always offered a
my life. Hong Kong was where I learned to recognize the incredible
dual identity: I belonged to two places at once.
vastness of the world: it was in this cross-section of East and West
Yet the preposition ‘but,’ which I used instinctively, suggested
where I observed the existence of multiple cultural identities that
a different idea. ‘And’ would’ve been a natural acceptance of two
made me itch to experience more. And so, in August of 2016, I
separate, yet complementary, homes. ‘But’ suggested a gap—a need
boarded a flight to Princeton en route to my Bridge Year in Brazil.
to justify why I was not entirely Korean. The simple fact that I am
Korean, however, rendered Hong Kong an adopted city, which meant that my own self-explanation claimed I was associated with two places—but belonged to neither. Suffice it to say, I was probably the only one who ruminated over the semantics; my homestay mother only wanted to know if I liked what she made for breakfast.
mine, even if there were aspects of both that remained relatively unknown. Upon landing in Brazil, however, I realized that I’d been misguided
Despite my move to Hong Kong at the age of four, I was raised to believe I hadn’t fully left the country of my birth. Kimchi was a
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When I left Hong Kong, I wasn’t in doubt about who I was or where I came from. I believed I had two homes that were equally
all along. As I observed a host of communities that constitute the exhilarating state of Bahia, I understood that I’d never known what it truly means to ‘belong.’ How could I, with my cultural duality, relate to the Bahians
daily staple on our dinner table, and Korean was the language of
whose speech is peppered with colorful phrases and colloquialisms
the lullabies and reprimands that punctuated a childhood far from a
that belong to Bahia alone? Or to the soteropolitanos (residents of
birthplace I’d never really known.
Salvador) who sing about their beloved beaches and quaint praças
THE MAP’S EDGE Winter 2018