By the time high school rolled around, the raw terror of not speaking English had faded, replaced by a much more complex, internal challenge: the identity split.

In America, I was the quiet Asian girl, the immigrant student carrying the invisible weight of a fallen dynasty across the Pacific. At home, behind the closed doors of the Windsor House, I was the daughter of the Choi lineage, expected to uphold rigorous Korean traditions, show absolute deference to my elders, and speak perfect Korean. I was caught in the middle, too Americanized for the traditionalists, yet too culturally anchored to ever fully blend into the casual rhythm of Southern California teenagers.

That in-between world is at the very heart of Who Stole My Pork Belly? My memoir of belonging to two places, and neither.

Walking the Tightrope

High school is a notorious minefield of wanting to belong, but my boundaries were drawn tightly by my grandfather’s discipline. While my peers spent their weekends going to beach parties, hanging out at the local mall, or driving down to the coast, my life was anchored to family duty, rigorous study, and the relentless expectation to succeed. There were no casual sleepovers or unexcused afternoons. Every hour of my day was accounted for under the watchful eyes of my elders.

I remember walking down the crowded school hallways, navigating the chaotic social cliques and the typical teenage drama, feeling like a ghost shifting between two parallel universes. I wore the clothes and learned the slang of 1980s Los Angeles, but inside, I was constantly translating, not just the language, but the deep cultural expectations of who I was supposed to be. To my classmates, I was an enigma, someone who lived in a historic Hancock Park home but couldn’t participate in the carefree social life that defined American youth. To my family, any sign of pulling away from our heritage was seen as a betrayal of the sacrifices they had made to bring us here.

The Refiner’s Fire

It was during these intense high school years that the lessons of the laundromat and the kitchen fire truly synthesized. Survival wasn’t just about having food on the table or clean clothes anymore; it was about defining my own worth outside of external labels. The pressure from both sides of my world was immense. The American school system demanded individualistic ambition, self-promotion, and finding your unique lane. On the other hand, my family structure demanded collective honor, humility, and absolute self-sacrifice for the greater good of the household.

Trying to please everyone was an exhausting, impossible task. I spent years feeling like an imposter in both worlds, never quite fully “Korean” enough for the aunts and uncles, and never quite “American” enough for my school peers. It was an emotional refiner’s fire that forced me to look inward. I realized early on that if I couldn’t fully belong to either world, I would have to build a world of my own. I had to stop looking for validation from the people around me and start defining what survival meant on my own terms.

The True Sanctuary

Once again, the only place where these two warring identities could peacefully blueprint a truce was on the page. In my personal writing, I didn’t have to choose between being Korean or American. I could be both simultaneously, without apology or explanation. I could write with the discipline, depth, and generational weight of my heritage while fully embracing the fierce, independent spirit of my American reality.

My notebooks became the one space where I didn’t have to walk a tightrope or fear letting down the people I loved. On the page, my hyphenated life wasn’t a fractured existence; it was a rich, complex tapestry of stories waiting to be told. High school taught me a vital lesson that shaped the rest of my life: identity isn’t something you inherit from a fallen past, nor is it something given to you by a school peer group. It’s something you author, word by word, for yourself.

I authored mine word by word, and it became a book. Read the full story in my memoir, Who Stole My Pork Belly? Get your copy on Amazon today.