In an interview with the Gothamist, Ben Ryder Howe talked about his book My Korean Deli, and had this to say about Korean Americans:
“Korean-Americans who came here in the Eighties tended to gravitate toward service-intensive professions like delis and dry cleaners, and I think when you’re in one of those day-in, day-out, round-the-clock professions, you develop a phobia of weakness, of giving in for one second, because if you do then you might be tempted to do it again, and then all bets are off. That attitude was foreign to me.”
That kind of sentiment definitely resonates with me. As someone who had parents that came in the 80s, it’s something that I saw nearly every day. Sometimes I forget how foreign that may be for a non-Korean though.
Check out the rest of the interview and chime in on his book if you’ve happened to have read it already.
