nonfiction by Andy Park
In 1945, a historic moment in diplomacy occurred at the Potsdam Conference in Germany following the end of WWII.
In 2020, a historic moment in juvenile diplomacy took place in Dowd Finch at Woodberry, causing tides in a small community. In this smelly dorm, I lived with my friend Moritz. You would expect his social life to be fine. He was tall with broad shoulders, and he played tennis. But Moritz came as the new exchange student from Potsdam, and my peers would smirk as they barged into his room and did a Nazi salute. During free periods, I would hear sniffles. In study hall, I caught glimpses of Moritz pulling his hair as he wrestled with comma rules and
formulas. He reminded me of how I used to be. It was a week after my new boy move-in day. We were eating in the dining hall. Sweaty and squirmish, I sat with my friend Jay (the only other Asian). New boys like us stared and asked strange questions. Are you related to Kim Jong-un? Do y’all eat dogs back in Korea? Ching chong. I felt cold. Naked. Ironically, when I lived in Korea, I was called whitewashed. Even my mom would call me banana. Once, I tried to finish a sentence in Korean, and Jay burst out laughing.
He declared that my Koreanness came alive only when I sang karaoke. His words rippled, rose, and drowned me with doubt. When I started attending Woodberry, I was being mislabeled, again. So I wore a mask to show my toughness. I just ended up feeling lonely and small. And I saw Moritz shrink slowly, too. So I said hi. His only year at Woodberry had to be better than mine. We talked about what we called football and about Turkish kebabs, jokbal, and kimchi. We talked about dealing with racism. We complained, endlessly, Woodberry Forest School
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