When presented this assignment about my identity, I decided to pick an aspect of myself that I always had trouble understanding from my childhood. I often wondered whether I am Korean or an American, but it never struck to me that I could be both. My parents are Korean immigrants, and I am a first generation American. I learned Korean as a required skill to communicate with my parents, but I learned English to connect with the world that was separate from my house. However, as I came to college, I realized that the gap between my crossed cultures was growing bigger because I began to use more English than Korean. I decided to use a rice cooker that my mom had sent me to illustrate the story of my mother and I’s relationship. And despite the fact that I am an American and my mom is Korean by legal definition, the rice cooker my mom sent served as a bridge to connect our barriers when language failed both of us. However, I wanted to keep this zine as simple as I could without breaching any unnecessary emotional thresholds. Therefore, I ended the zine by simply stating the story in its most non fiction form, which is that my mom had sent me a rice cooker and I made rice with it.
I grew very attached to this project very quickly, so I had a very natural process to create it. I wanted something abstract yet sentimental, so I spent a lot of time trying to weave in a metaphor without cheesy text. The process was very based off of my own stream of consciousness, and I followed my organic attachment towards it in order to make it meaningful to both the author and the spectator. Overall, I enjoyed exploring an identity that I had ignored for so long and communicating my thoughts when finally confronted with it. I used inDesign as my medium and also analog polaroid pictures to personify my zine and anthropomorphize my opinions towards my cultural identity.
