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>> 1 Introduction Caring across a Lifetime When we immigrated to the United States, the relationship was more of a 180-degree type of thing. I became pretty much the parent to my parents and my younger brother. It meant that when we had documents to review and take care of [it was my responsibility]. My parents were not able to do that because their English was non-existent. I had to explain what it was that they were signing, whether it be school documents , documents from work, things like that. So the relationship was more business-like, more parenting the parent than the child that I was. —Joel In 1979, Joel’s parents decided to emigrate from South Korea to the United States. They were seeking better opportunities for their sons, Joel, thirteen at the time, and his younger brother, who was eleven, and they settled in Los Angeles near other Korean immigrants. Both parents were college-educated. Joel’s father had worked in Korea as a mid-level manager, and his mother had been a homemaker. After immigration, however, the family’s life changed dramatically. His father faced downward mobility and his mother needed to find work to help support the family. While she found a job as a seamstress at a local Korean immigrant -owned garment factory, he worked as a laborer at a manufacturing plant. Reproducing a pattern common for immigrants, Joel’s parents began to rely on their older son, the most fluent English speaker in the household, to interact with the dominant English-speaking American 2 > 3 promoted at work when her father was diagnosed with cancer. Mee Jin tried to juggle her new job and care-giving, driving about one hundred and twenty miles each day, but finally she quit her job and moved in with her parents in order to take care of her father full-time. She provided support to her dying father on many different levels, such as taking him to chemotherapy, interacting with doctors, and being present when her father passed on. She remembers: You don’t ever think you’re ever going to have to go through that—to think about seeing your parents die in front of you. . . . You just think that everybody is going to be okay and then he’s going to die in [his] sleep or whatever. It’s a life changing event, that role reversal and having to help [your parents] go to the bathroom. . . . Seeing your parents take their last breath, it’s hard. Mee Jin’s father’s illness and passing dramatically shifted the family dynamics from one in which independent parents and their grown children lived separate lives to one in which children advocated for an ill father and then cared for a grieving mother. Although one of her sisters moved in with their mother, Mee Jin notes, “My mom felt like I was the stronger one of the three daughters so she turns to me if she has a problem or doesn’t know how to do something. . . . Whatever it is, she’ll call me first.” Even though her father’s passing was emotionally devastating for her as well, Mee Jin had to be strong for her mother who relied on her more than ever. The care work Joel and Mee Jin provide has been deeply informed by their parents’ lives as immigrants. Unlike their peers in non-immigrant households, the children of Korean immigrants play a major supportive role in their parents’ lives from childhood to adulthood by bridging communication gaps and negotiating the structural and institutional disparities that immigrants typically encounter. This book chronicles the reflections of adult children of Korean immigrants who, as children, have supported immigrant parents working long hours, struggling with language issues, racism and discrimination, and who, as adults, not only provide their aging parents tangible and emotional support but also work to ensure that cultural traditions are not forgotten and are revisited and passed on to the next generation. 4 > 5 argues that women do emotion work in their lives to elicit feelings in others and also to adhere to gendered “feeling” norms and expectations. Research has shown that mothers and daughters do this work, thus serving as the glue that holds families together over a lifetime.7 In immigrant families, emotional labor performed by children can take on forms similar to that performed by mothers in non-immigrant families. Both male and female children of immigrants serve as bridges for their parents...

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