Essay summary: Suki Kim’s “Facing Poverty with a Rich Girls Habits”

Facing Poverty with a Rich Girls Habits is an insightful essay published in New York by the author Suki Kim. In this essay, she shares various challenges that she had to overcome in order to adapt to a new life of poverty and cultural diversity in New York after leaving behind her affluent and luxurious life in South Korea. This article discusses the author’s point of view as 13-year-old Korean immigrant who moved to United States out of desperation and financial tragedy rather than in search of a better life.
The author’s main idea in this essay is to convey the message that the foundation of divided immigrant groups, cultural differences and generation gap are so deeply rooted even in the United States that it is impossible to eradicate them from the mindset of people. The author emphasizes on the fact that her wealthy and sheltered background in Korea created confusion. Thus, making it difficult for her to identify with people’s perception of her race in America “One new fact that took more time to absorb was that I was now Asian, a term that I had heard mentioned only in social studies class”, stated author Suki Kim in her article. She continued, “In Korea, yellow was the color of the forsythia that bloomed every spring along the fence that separated our estate from the houses down the hill. I certainly never thought of my skin as being the same shade.” The author struggled to accept the fact that her race was divided based on her skin tone and that she had to transition as an immigrant from a fairy tale princess.
The authors novice understanding of cultural differences in United States started settling when she did not see students bow to their teachers or wore slippers to keep the school floor clean. Instead, she saw graffiti on the walls of classrooms and French kissing among her classmates. She also could not understand why she was not allowed to pierce her ears like other children. “Unlike students in Korean schools, who were taught to bow to teachers at every turn, no one batted an eye when a teacher entered a classroom”, stated author Suki Kim in her essay. She continued, “Once I saw a teacher struggle to pronounce foreign sounding names from the attendance list while a boy in the front row French-kissed a girl wearing skintight turquoise Jordache jeans’’. The author’s perception of cultural boundaries were shifted when she moved to New York and found herself in a society that was more open and accepting of behaviors that was viewed as a taboo in her country.
The genre of this essay is an autobiographical essay. It is an essay where the author has written about her life, her personal experiences and her reflections. The purpose of this essay is to state her readers about the layers of division that existed within an immigrant group and also stating how hard it was to face poverty with a rich girls habit. I think her tone in this essay at first was sad and a bit sorrowful but later as time progressed, she became more adjusted. She sounded a bit more happy and hopeful after her family moved to a better neighborhood.
The author also realizes the struggle she went through to adjust with other Korean immigrant students in her ESL class as most of them came from a lower socioeconomic status than hers. “The wealthier Korean immigrants had settled in Westchester or Manhattan, where their children attended private schools. In Queens, most of my ESL classmates came from poor families who had escaped Korea’s rigid class hierarchy, one dictated by education level, family background and financial status”, stated author Suki Kim in her article. This required the author to interact among various generations of Korean immigrant with whom she clashed. Since English was not her first language, she struggled to identify her position in her ESL class. The author’s background was that of a rich girl, which meant that she did not want to belong to the first generation, Koreans trapped in the immigrant ghetto that did not speak English but at the same time she also had a hard time adjusting to an all second generation Asian American.
As a conclusion, the author’s exposure to vast cultural difference and downgrading of her family’s economic status led her to be somewhat cynical but eventually she had no choice but to adjust. She realized that the hardships her and her family had to endure in terms of relocation, culture shock and financial downfall was all leading her up to become a well rounded 1.5 generation Korean immigrant with enthusiasm and knowledge of both cultures yet still retaining her Korean identity.