Multiple Transitions
Kang, Yuki

>>SPEAKER: What is your name?

>>YUKI: My name is Yuki Kang.

>>SPEAKER: And what is your literacy narrative about?

>>YUKE: Well, it's about going from one place to another, the transnational move. I remember coming to the states when I was eight; I remember adjusting. After spending six years of elementary school here, I went back to Korea - that's where I'm from and where I was born. When I first came here it wasn't that - I didn't feel the struggles as much as when I went back adapting to - I had the language but adapting to the whole educations system and the culture shock along with it. So that took me a while and I spent my middle school, high school, college, and even graduate school, also I worked for two years at ISP in the marketing department; all that time I used Korean. I did use English for tutoring and for some of the gen. ed. classes in college but that was it. I went in of course and there was English instruction but they were very limited. Sixteen years later I decided to come back; I decided to do my M.A. in teaching English as a second language. I decided to come back to the states and study and I'll go back to Korea and teach again. When I came back, wow, it was another big transition. I did have the pronunciation and some of the language but it was very limited. It was kind of strange because as you can tell I do have the pronunciation and sometimes people think that I'm American, which I am not even close to having those innate qualities and all that. So it was hard adjusting at first because I didn't consider myself American, I was Korean in my values, everything. Somehow back then that was a source of miscommunication sometimes and that was hard. When I went into my PhD program in writing studies in the English program that was another shift too. There were all these shifts going back and forth trying to adjust to one place and not being a part of it wholly because of the language that you have. When I first went back to Korea after spending six years here, I wasn't considered a Korean because of my language or the lack of language or the English that I had. When I came back here I was neither. So I was always in this middle space where I had to negotiate what am I? What am I close to? But now I am more comfortable. I have become more used to it so I am more comfortable in this space in my middle space literacy zone that I am in. That's basically my story of going back - I've been here six years now, I got my M.A. and I'm in my PhD program and most likely I'll be here for the rest of my life. Nothing really happened because I'm married now to someone here. I'm excited to see where my literacy, where the position as I move along and as I more assimilate to this culture and how when I do go back from time to time to Korea, how things will be for me there too. [Laughing] Did that work?

>>SPEAKER: Yeah, thank you.