After the Move, a Korean Family Starts Again in America

2024-02-05

I started thinking about living in the United States after reading books about SpaceX, Elon Musk and Silicon Valley. I wanted to know what it might feel like to work alongside people doing that kind of work.

My curiosity sent me to the library for books about moving to the United States. The first I opened was Park So-na’s I Decided to Live in America.

The family in Park So-na’s memoir

Park’s account follows her family after an unexpected move. They start out in New York. Much of the book is about the daily work of making a life there.

She writes as a parent whose child was also learning English. She takes a job at a Korean-run travel agency and runs into serious trouble with the business. At her next job she finds her footing and earns a promotion, then leaves after the birth of her second child.

The family moves to Irvine in Orange County, California. The later chapters follow the children into new schools and Park into a school herself, where she finds work as an aide.

Starting over after arrival

The move is already under way when Park’s story begins. Her concern is what a Korean family has to learn to live, work and send children to school in a place new to them.

Park gets more comfortable with English as she finds places to use it. The book has the particular concerns of a parent with children in elementary school. That is where its view of daily life becomes most specific.

She also closes chapters with resources she thought readers might find useful. These are the examples from the book.

The question the book leaves open

I wanted to know how the family obtained permanent residency. That was the part of moving that I knew least about and one reason I had opened the book.

It is easy to imagine how different the question of staying can look from the perspective of someone already living or studying there.

Park says her husband handled the permanent-residency process. She largely leaves the paperwork out. I still wanted answers to those questions when I finished, though I had learned more about what the family had to do after the decision was made.

The book was most illuminating about that next stage. The moments when Park finds work or helps a child settle into a school give a broad idea like “adjusting to America” a size you can hold in your head.

Book details

I Decided to Live in America

Author
Park So-na
Published
July 10, 2023
ISBN-13
9791198268723
View on YES24

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