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>> 13 1 Brokering Dreams When we were growing up, we went to art classes on Saturdays . That was because of my mom, she wanted us to make art. And we played the violin because she wanted me to play the violin. And, of course, you’re supposed to have good grades, and you’re supposed to help them out in their business . . . . So while my parents worked long hours we would come home and take care of ourselves and eat, whatever. And all weekend, we would have to work, whatever it was. And of course, they would pay you by giving you food. . . . You know, you never get any kind of praise, any compliments, no hugs. It was just—ah, criticism. —Lauren Lauren emigrated with her family from Korea when she was five years old. Her parents ran a number of small businesses until they retired in the early 2000s. Today, Lauren remembers the pressure to “do it all” in her childhood. In addition to taking art and music lessons, studying for good grades, and helping out in her parents’ business, Lauren assumed the role of the primary translator/interpreter in the family as a child. As a teenager, she took a part-time job to earn personal spending money, but her parents needed her paychecks to cover household bills. She filled out college financial aid forms for her older sibling and tended to her parents’ business, legal, and medical matters. Now in their thirties , Lauren and her sibling pay the mortgage and all the bills for their retired parents. Lauren has filled out applications for Medicare and senior housing and goes grocery shopping and translates mail for them. 14 > 15 In the larger context of contemporary U.S. immigration, studies of Korean immigrant families have focused on the experiences of the first generation and their economic and social adaptation to the United States. These studies have highlighted changing post-migration family dynamics, focusing on issues such as the impact of ethnic entrepreneurship and labor participation on spousal relations and gender roles.6 Meanwhile, studies from the perspective of children of Korean immigrants , or the second generation, have thoughtfully explored educational goals/expectations, intergenerational conflicts, and racial, ethnic, class, political, and religious identities in relation to the broader American society.7 Further studies have explored how children of Korean and other Asian immigrants contribute critically to the collective survival and well-being of the family as laborers in family businesses and as primary translators and interpreters for their households.8 In one of the first studies to focus on the practices and perspectives of children in labor-intensive ethnic/family/immigrant entrepreneurship, Miri Song compared the labor of Chinese children in their immigrant parents’ take-away restaurants in England to the caring labor that adult children , usually daughters, provide for elderly parents.9 Song writes: Described as a labor of love, looking after elderly parents is based upon intense feelings of obligation and guilt, as well as love and concern. Such caring work for elderly parents is said to be difficult, in part, because it seems to reverse the traditional parent-child relationship—rather than parents caring for their children, adult children, in turn, look after their parents in infirmity and illness. . . . While this kind of work seems almost universal for adult daughters, the performance of caring work by children or adolescents, rather than adults, is relatively unusual in most contemporary Western societies.10 Korean immigrants experience a similar dynamic: children help with their family’s economic survival, and roles reverse as these children—at young ages—navigate culture, language, and racism for their immigrant parents and care for their economic survival. As introduced by Lauren’s story above, this chapter explores the pressures and challenges of growing up with parents who invested in their children’s educational and other opportunities while also relying on their children as mediators, translators, and 16 > 17 talked about this type of work as care and of their necessary role in soothing parents. Trying to ease their parents’ stresses over and worries about immigrant survival, female respondents sought to shield their parents from the external society through brokering language and culture, doing well in school, or otherwise acting on behalf of their parents. While the work that daughters more often mentioned entailed emotion work, sons discussed physical work such as chores at home or at the family business which they provided as a form of care giving. In both cases, the facets of emotional...

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