Short essays written between chapters, on the table we grew up around, the names we answer to, and everything served in between.
Childhood is supposed to be buffered by time. Mistakes are absorbed gently, responsibility is introduced gradually, and safety is assumed rather than earned. In Who Stole My Pork Belly? adulthood arrives through necessity instead, and some children grow up not because they are ready, but because no one else can carry the weight.
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Money is usually discussed as a tool, a metric, or a marker of success. For children who grow up without it, money becomes something far more intimate. In Who Stole My Pork Belly? financial independence is never ambition or material desire. It is protection.
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Resilience is usually packaged as inspiration, something polished and aspirational. In reality it is far less elegant. In Who Stole My Pork Belly? it emerges not as a virtue chosen freely, but as a condition imposed by circumstance.
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Law is usually explained as prestige, logic, or influence. Beneath those reasons sits a quieter one. For those who grew up without reliable protection, the law is not merely a profession. It is a search for structure in a world that once felt ungoverned.
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Some pressure never announces itself. It lives in unspoken standards and the sense that your life was mapped out before you understood yourself. Finding your own path is not about rejecting your roots. It is about honoring them while still choosing who you become.
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Healing is often mistaken for forgetting, as though peace requires an empty slate. It is quieter than that. Letting go without forgetting means learning to carry what you have lived through without letting it define or control you.
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Pain reshapes us. It interrupts the flow of a life and forces us to meet parts of ourselves we had never noticed. Turning it into purpose is not about pretending everything happens for a reason. It is about deciding what you will do with what happened.
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Family legacy is often spoken about with pride. It can represent history, culture, values, and a sense of belonging that stretches across generations. But alongside that pride, there can also be an invisible burden. It is not always openly discussed, yet many people feel it deeply. It shows up in expectations, responsibilities, and the quiet pressure to live up to something that existed long before you did.
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Every family has a currency. In some houses, it’s affection; in others, it’s silence. In the house I grew up in, located in the affluent Itaewon district of Seoul, the currency was power, wealth, and the heavy, unyielding pedestal of the name Choi.
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If my first few weeks in America felt like a grand adventure in my grandparents’ Windsor House, the reality of our new life quickly caught up with us. We had escaped the weight of a name in Seoul, but we hadn’t escaped the necessity of survival. My mother, a woman who had once lived surrounded by maid
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An American playground is daunting for any child. It is a different order of terrifying when you do not speak the language. While the other kids chattered, I stood on the periphery, trapped behind a wall of silence. Books were how I broke through.
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By the time high school rolled around, I was faced with an internal challenge: the identity split. In America, I was the immigrant student carrying the invisible weight of a fallen dynasty across the Pacific. At home, I was the daughter 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.
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