DEAR READER, When I started writing When We Fell Apart seven years ago, I was thinking a lot about identity. What goes in to making us who we are? How is our identity formed, challenged, and affirmed? Growing up as one of the few Asian American kids in a small town just north of New York City, I always felt like an outsider. At times it was difficult, but I was lucky to have a loving family and good friends. Still, there were those moments—a hurtful joke or questions about my appearance—when I was forced to see myself as others did: different, peculiar, exotic. I often fantasized about having an easy, definitive answer to that proverbial question: What are you? Chinese, Japanese, Korean (these were the ones people usually guessed before I could answer). How concrete and tangible these labels seemed. I envied their simplicity and exactness. But with a white father and Korean mother, I always felt strange explaining my biracial identity, my two halves that made a whole. And where exactly did my Korean-ness start and my whiteness stop? Even as I grew older and cared less about the opinions of others, I always felt slightly out of place, between two worlds. After graduating college, I jumped at an opportunity to teach English in Seoul. I wasn’t aware of it then, but I think I was hoping to find a sense of belonging in Korea. I was giddy at the prospect of being surrounded by people who looked more like me. I was especially excited to be able to say my name, Soon, without having to repeat it or spell it out. But on my first day at the school where I’d teach for the next year, my boss said I was to go by my legal name, Nathaniel, which I’d never used. He said it was important for students to see me as an American. So in a bit of cruel irony, I don’t think anyone ever called me Soon while I lived in Seoul. And to my surprise, people kept telling me that I didn’t look remotely Korean either, at least not according to my new coworkers and friends, waitresses and bartenders. As far as they were concerned, I wasn’t Korean at all. It was a strange and demoralizing feeling, to know I was even more of an outsider in Seoul than I was back home. By the time I started writing When We Fell Apart, I was still thinking about what it meant to be an outsider. I was fixated on characters who strive to belong and yearn to understand themselves. I thought about the students I’d taught in Seoul, the ones who’d struggled under titanic familial expectations and social pressure to succeed academically. Many of them were interested in painting, dancing, and filmmaking, but instead hid away this part of their identities and spent countless, grueling hours studying more practical subjects like math and English. I felt a kinship with them, and I couldn’t stop imagining how difficult being an outsider, of any kind, would be in such a small country, where uniformity and filial piety is prized above all else.
When We Fell Apart is my attempt to find meaning in our search for belonging. It’s also my love letter to Korea. I hope you enjoy the journey with my characters as much as I did.
THANKS FOR READING,
SOON WILEY