People cannot help the way others perceive the way they talk or how they look. In fact, in today’s society, people often judge others only glancing at them once, especially if this person is a foreigner. Yet it is up to the individuals to let others influence one’s identity. The people that surround you in your society can influence how you perceive yourselves if you let it. In Still Life with Rice, Helie Lee is a Korean woman who was raised in America due to an ongoing war in her homeland. This has caused Lee to be conflicted on what to identify herself as.
In the beginning, Lee’s values are solely shaped by what she is being exposed to in America: being Korean is only something she hears, but never truly understands: however, in order to discover what she has been missing, Heilie visits Korea and China: by doing this Lee starts to build a bridge between the influence of family and society on her identity.
Lee is independent and has different views on her life than her mother and grandmother. Lee does not believe she has to get married in order to please her family because she does not want to sacrifice her career and goals in life. She often thinks of her mother and grandmother as backward for indirectly complaining that she is not Korean enough for them, after all, they are the ones who brought her to America. In some ways, Lee’s family members are correct, she does not fully comprehend what it means to be Korean, well at least not like her family members. Lee says,
She filled my head with dreams, telling me I could be anything I wanted. I believed her so much, I thought I could be white. My light-eyed friends were my role models, people I emulated. I copied their dress manners, and other “normal” teenage girls, I cheered in thigh-high miniskirts, ditched classes, and bleached my black hair and tanned my yellow skin to conceal the last traces of my Koreaness. (Lee 12)
Since Lee was raised in America, she believes that she has to conform to her society and be like the people she is surrounded with in order to fit in. Since she lives in America, she is influenced by the stereotypical American girls. She blames her mother and grandmother for giving her hope that she could be anything she wanted, and what she wanted was to fit in and look like the others. This inner struggle with her identity seems like it has consumed Lee and prevented her from being who she truly is. She continued to live her life with having little knowledge of her Korean culture, yet this all changes when Lee decides to take a trip to Asia.
Instead of continuing to wonder what it truly meant to be Korean, Lee takes a trip to Korea to find out for herself. Helie thinks to herself “I’m surrounded, ambushed by mirror images of my mother and grandmother. What makes them this way? It is the rice and kimchee they all eat religiously? I feel disconnected. Lee feels like the odd one out, having lived in America for so long has made Helie slowly drift away from who she truly is in the inside. For the first time ever, she is finally starting to understand why her family has the values and standards they do. Helie is starting to understand what it means to be Korean, but she is not feeling too happy about being different compared to all of the Koreans she is surrounded with. She still feels like she is not Korean enough after watching what life is like in Korea, and how she could’ve been raised.
Although Lee seems saddened by her lack of fitting in when she gets to Hong Kong her worries slowly disappear and she starts comprehending what it means to be Korean. Lee says,
It feels as though I’ve been away for such a long time. Suddenly this loving woman reminds me of my own mother and grandmother…All at once, the hardship of my extended journey weighs heavily on me, and tears streak down my cheeks…The Korean lady says, “Dry up your tears, you are among family. We are all your brothers and sisters because we share the history, the same blood.
Heile is conflicted, she has never experienced this before. In America, people rarely treat each other like they are apart of the family. People in America have never been this welcoming towards Lee. Yet strangers she met in Shanghai treated her as if she was a part of the family. Instead of being disappointed and gloomy, Lee is proud. She finally understands that she is a true Korean, despite not being raised there. If other Koreans could move to Hong Kong and still stay true to their roots, so can she. Lee is crying not because she is envious and feels out of place like she did in Korea. Lee has tears fall down from her eyes, she is proud of her heritage, her people, her true and authentic identity.
Overall, Lee has had a lot of personal growth. In the beginning of Still Life with Rice, Lee wasn’t able to express who she truly was. She confirmed to her society and tried to blend in by becoming more like what foreigners view all Americans to look and act like. However, through her interest to explore and find out what it means to be Korean, she was able to find herself. Heile no longer has to comprise choosing from her society or her family’s views on her life. Heile has learned that she can build a bridge between the two. She doesn’t have to pretend to fit in and look up to her American friends as role models. Heile can be herself, express her culture and still be a normal person in the American society. After all, if her ancestors could still bring their culture and identity with them after they moved to Hong Kong, so could Lee.
