Shine

Umma’s words are ringing in my ears as I walk to the bus stop.

Of course I’ve always known that being a K-pop star is not a

guarantee, but I’ve wanted this dream for so long, I’m not sure

I even know what the alternative looks like.

It all started when I was six years old. There was one other Asian girl in my class, Eugenia Li. Even though she was Chinese, everyone was always asking us if we were cousins or

twin sisters. I didn’t think much of it until one day when I got

stung by a bee during recess. I was sitting in the nurse’s office,

waiting for Umma to come and take me home, when Mrs.

Li walked through the door. The nurse didn’t realize she had

done anything wrong and instead was all smiles as she told me that my mom was there to get me. For the first time, I realized the world didn’t see me the way I saw me, or the way my family saw me. All they saw was my face; the shape of my eyes and my nose; my thick, straight black hair-and it made me interchangeable with girls like Eugenia, even though we looked nothing alike. When my mom finally picked me up at school, I couldn’t stop crying. The bee sting was still burning on my skin, but when Umma asked me what was wrong, all I could think about was Mrs. Li. “I wish I wasn’t Korean,” I remember sobbing into her shirt. So she scooped me up and carried me home, and when we got there, she tucked me into bed and grabbed her laptop. That was the first time I saw a K-pop music video. We watched them for hours, and I marveled at the singers-all so unique and beautiful and talented.

I was hooked. I watched K-pop music videos constantly, memorizing the lyrics to my favorite ones and putting on little shows for Leah on the weekends. The music made me feel

proud to be Korean.

I wish I could say that time with Mrs. Li and the school nurse was the only time I ever felt rejected by the world, but it wasn’t. There were the kids who made fun of the kimchi Umma packed me for lunch; the woman who once came up to me in our corner bodega, screaming at me that I should “go home” (even though I lived around the block, I got the feeling that wasn’t what she meant); there was the time I dressed like Hermione Granger for Halloween and everyone insisted that I was Cho Chang. Through it all, there was K-pop. It made me feel understood, like there was a place in the world where I belonged, where people would see me for me.