Banana Shake
By Elizabeth Sweet
They call me a banana:
yellow on the outside but white on the inside.
I take offense.
I am the great North American Twinkie™ thank you very much.
Despite giving 100% in my genes, somehow I’m still failing.
As adoptees do,
to be Korean enough.
A culture that is normally transmitted and taught is elusive, and I only know it secondhand.
Through a thick layer of glass and a language barrier.
I sometimes wonder, if I shovel enough kimchi in my mouth, will something click?
Or will I always be a stranger to the tang?
Maybe I am a banana, an exotic import, a commodity.
A product of globalization and colonization.
Existing for the novelty of tickling the White American imagination of colorblind love.
(The only real colorblind love I know of exists in a canine companion…)
I don’t want to be a banana. But at least people buy and believe in bananas. They are natural, familiar, and on everyone’s radar for breakfast.
What people don’t want is a national security threat, the infiltrating enemy.
Funny how they embrace foreign fruits but not people.
They recoil, then lash out at us like a spring-loaded trap, calling us
viral infections.
I’m told to go back to my country
despite never knowing my country,
despite never growing my country.
Instead letting its vestiges wither within.
My ancestors may be watching critically
or maybe, since I do not know them,
their piercing stares do not carry across the ocean.
They may be looking for Cheon Hye-ok.
They don’t give “Elizabeth Sweet” a second glance.
I curiously mourn a mother who may have never died.
Who probably lives on this planet,
but never lived in me.
I have been shipped and shaken.
Blended.
Torn between worlds.
Fruit is sweet, but can also be bitter.
When cut with milk that sharp acidity
will fade. But that’s dilution.
And I’m already disillusioned.
