Necessary Roughness

In this section, Chan hits his stride in football, and his success on the field gives him a way to feel grounded in his new community and begin to overcome The Difficulties of Coming of Age. Through football, Chan has found a place he belongs in Minnesota, but despite Chan’s contributions, Rom continues to torment him. As Rom forces the team to watch martial arts movies starring Jean-Pierre Vandervanter (a thinly-veiled allusion to real-life action star Jean-Claude Van Damme) as he berates Chan about his training in Taekwondo, Chan loses his usual poise. Despite technically “winning” the argument by proving that he can break a board with his fist, afterward he thinks to himself, “I somehow felt dirty, like I’d flashed everyone on a dare or something” (138). By proving Rom wrong, Chan has acknowledged and validated Rom’s efforts to belittle and stereotype him, all while sacrificing his character to become an angry version of himself. By comparing this situation to flashing someone on a dare, Chan acknowledges that Rom has taken his agency away by forcing Chan to respond. In his efforts to prove Rom wrong, Chan gave away a part of himself that he otherwise wouldn’t have.

Chan remembers a rare moment of vulnerability from his father when their store in LA was robbed: “He almost looked like a little kid who’d lost his favorite stuffed animal” (117). When his son is in danger, Abogee loses his sense of formality or authority and gives in to his emotions. In comparing his father to a little kid, Chan both humanizes his father and reveals a belief—one he learned from his father—that showing emotion is childish. Chan goes on to say that after making sure he was physically okay, “[my father] grabbed me and held me close, like he hadn’t done since I was really, really small...I wished he’d never stop hugging me” (118). This display of affection demonstrates Abogee’s love for Chan and implies that he needs serious prompting to feel comfortable showing it. Chan’s desire for a never-ending hug reveals just how strong and deep-rooted his desire for his father’s love is. This growing emotional rift between Chan and Abogee is one manifestation of The Difficulties of Coming of Age.

Chan is proud of his success on the football field, but he wishes his parents would share that pride. Their difference in values is one example of the tensions that come with Navigating Cultural Difference. More than a sport, football has become the most important thing in Chan’s life—he thinks about it from the time he wakes up in the morning until he goes to bed at night. Abogee’s refusal to support this passion makes Chan feel unimportant to his father. When Abogee attends the father-son dinner, Chan is touched that his father seems proud of him, even if he expresses it differently from the other dads there: “Korean parents always counter a compliment to their child with an insult, to appear properly modest” (147). When Abogee smiles as he calls Chan lazy and bad at school in response to a compliment from Thorson, Chan smooths out the interaction for all of them: For Chan, Navigating Cultural Difference means acting as a cultural interpreter for his father even while absorbing insults from both sides of the cultural divide. At the end of this dinner, Chan and Abogee overhear Rom’s father saying a slur in the context of the Vietnam War. Abogee looks over at Rom and his father, and Chan “[steps] behind them and [opens] the door for [his] father, which is what all good Korean boys do” (150). Chan and his father choose to ignore this display of racism to continue having a peaceful night. Chan also groups himself in with “good Korean boys,” a label he has resented in the past. In this small way, he embraces and takes pride in his Korean heritage.

Chan and Young explore their identities as they play cards together one night. Young notes that “back in LA we always had so much pressure to do better than the other kids, don’t you think?” (182). Chan clarifies that she means the other Korean kids—they had a strong immigrant community in LA, but it also created a competitive environment from which Young and Chan are grateful for the break. For the first time, Chan considers that the differences that make him stand out could be a good thing.

In this section, Young confronts a familiar conflict with her parents. When she asks her parents for permission to date Mikko, and Abogee positively forbids it, as Young is a “good Korean girl” (161)—a phrase that recalls Chan’s resentment of the label “good Korean boy” (150). Young replies that she is American, demonstrating that she understands her identity very differently than her father does. She asks why her father left Korea if he looks down on American culture. He responds, “We came here so that you selfish children could have a better life” (161). For Young and Chan, The Difficulties of Coming of Age are made more complex by the challenges of Navigating Cultural Difference between themselves and their parents. Both siblings face the same impossible choice: isolate themselves to please their parents or let their environment shape them and inevitably become more American, disappointing their parents. Young points out to Chan that no one she knows works in a store or studies so hard—traits that Abogee instilled in them but doesn’t vocally appreciate. By American standards, Chan and Young go above and beyond. By Abogee’s standards, they do the bare minimum. This tension creates emotional turmoil for the teenagers as they try to establish their own identities while experiencing the most difficult parts of both worlds: Their parents see them as too American, but they still struggle to fit in with their American peers.

Leland Farrell, the senior quarterback, suggests the team pray together before the game, and Jimmi quickly tries to shoot the idea down, soliciting Chan’s help as the only other player of color. Chan responds, “I have this feeling they’re all the same guy—or whatever—somewhere down the line. Prayer’s fine with me” (170-71). While Chan does not actively explore his own relationship with religion, this statement shows his ability to reconcile the seemingly disparate religions that his family partakes in. Holding two contradictory truths is nothing new for Chan—his multifaceted identity allows him to see past the surface-level perception of different cultures and look into the heart of things. This scene begins to return to The Personal Impact of Faith as Chan considers his own relationship to religion and how it impacts his sense of identity.