(gentle piano music)
- My name is Jessica Park.
I'm 23 years old.
I currently live in New York
and I am the project and communications manager
for KoreanAmericanStory.org.
I actually started off as a graphic design intern.
I did some graphics here and there
and then I slowly started helping with social media.
Then we started doing story slams.
I like how there's a lot of different things
going on all the time.
Sometimes there'll be a video recording going on,
which I like seeing the behind the scenes,
and then sometimes it's in person, live events,
like the story slam.
It's always different and I think that suits my personality
because if I do one thing for too long, then I get bored.
Keep you on your toes, yeah (laughs).
I was born in Arlington, Virginia.
I grew up in Stafford, Virginia,
which is a small half rural, half suburban area.
It was a majority white neighborhood,
and I was probably the only Korean person that I knew.
Even though I lived in a really rural area,
it was still technically part of northern Virginia.
It's stereotypically known for really good education,
really quiet and safe, suburban, and a lot of Asian people.
I grew up going to mega churches with tons of Korean people.
Me and my whole family would drive an hour every Sunday.
Every weekend we would drive up and then we would
go to church, we would get our groceries from H Mart,
and then just get everything and then go back down
where there's nothing.
College was weird because the first two years
I felt a crazy amount of pressure.
I went in because I wanted to do pre-med.
I wanted to be a doctor.
No pressure from my parents.
I told them when I was young, growing up,
I was like, "I will be a doctor."
Then they're like, "Great."
Then when I went in I realized I'm really bad
at biology and math, I was failing.
Then I was like, "Okay, I'll try being a lawyer maybe."
Then I went in, I tried to major in English,
I switched to anthropology, and then
I switched to philosophy.
Then my second year I realized,
after I kept changing my major so many times,
the only consistent thing was art.
It was time to declare my major.
I was like, I think I have to do art because that's
the one thing that I'm actually good at right now.
Then I prepared this whole speech for my parents.
I wrote out everything I was going to say in English
and I had my friend help me translate it all into Korean.
Then when I went home, I had my laptop open.
I was like, "Can I talk to you guys?"
I just started reading my two page letter to them
saying I tried really hard to do X, Y and Z
but I feel like my only option is art
and I'm really sorry for probably disappointing you
but I feel like I have to do this.
They heard me out because I explained everything,
and they saw how much I was trying,
so they were like, okay.
They were kind of confused, what's going on,
but you can do what makes you happy.
Ever since then I just ran with it.
I think ever since I was little,
I've just been a deep thinker, probably to my detriment.
My mom went through a really hard struggle
during those years.
Throughout that time I was the main person
that she talked to.
We would talk about religion, we would talk about death
and work and just a lot of dark things.
She was coming to me for a lot of mentoring advice almost
and I would have to put myself in their shoes all the time.
I would see a lot of mental breakdowns,
really intense things.
It definitely contributed to a lot
of anxiety and depression.
It just made me really nervous a lot.
For them, that's the reality.
They never know what's going to happen.
To them, every day is just an intense hardship,
so it just translated to me where I'm like,
"Yeah, I don't know what's going to happen."
Christianity has been a big part of my life,
so ultimately the answer to every problem
has been praying to God and giving all your worries to him
and trusting that he'll take care of it.
That's the thing that kept me and my mom
sane throughout that whole time.
Yeah, that's how we cope with it still.
The Korean American Story isn't about success
and driving in Lexuses all the time,
even though that's what they wanted.
The reality was them going to work every single day
without any vacation.
They would only take days off to go to church.
Me and my sister would spend summers working at the deli.
My sister started when she was 13 years old,
and she was taking care of that, and then taking care of me
and then taking care of my parents
and still doing her school work.
I would be in the back kitchen drawing,
as my free time.
Even throughout college, I still helped out at the deli,
but I hated the deli.
That's the source of everything
that was wrong with our family.
It took away our house, it almost took away everything else.
We were tied to it, we were enslaved to the deli.
When I graduated I worked there for a couple of months.
Then when the opportunity finally came
for me to try and do Korean American Story full time,
my parents were against it at first
because they were like, "You're just going to leave?"
Even though we've always been together,
ever since me in high school,
I've been the one that's kind of keeping them going,
motivating them and helping out at the deli
and giving ideas like what can we do better?
Now they're like, now you're leaving too.
That was pretty hard.
I somehow convinced them I'll come back
or I'll help you guys in the future.
This is just something I have to do
for my own sanity and my own career.
If I don't succeed, all of us aren't going to succeed.
That's when they were like, okay, you've got to go.
My motivation for living my life
wasn't really about oh, there's this future Jessica
that's so awesome and she's going to do great things.
It was more like I just want to see my parents,
I always had this vision in my mind,
I see my parents sitting on some lawn chairs
at our old house,
the house that they bought,
and they're just kind of chilling, no stress or anger.
There was no room to think about what I like.
Things like art were more sources of guilt
because I can't just draw a painting
and that will relieve their hardships.
But here I am.
I am doing creative work.
It just blows my mind because I'm also proving to them
that I can do this and you can still survive
and I can support myself too.
My name is Jessica Park and this is
my Korean American Story.
(gentle piano music)