Do I belong? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself since I was a kid growing up as a second-generation Korean American in a part of the country without a lot of people who looked like me. It’s a question that’s been forced upon the Asian American community across the United States over the past year. It’s a question whose answer, in part, lies in the story of a green vegetable and the movie that shares its name.
The first time I saw Minari, I saw a story that was reflective of my own. In the movie, which is nominated for best picture at this year’s Academy Awards, the seeds of the minari (water celery) plant grow and thrive at a spot chosen by an elder, guided by tradition. I see the seeds of my own story growing in parallel to those of Lee Isaac Chung, the film’s director and screenwriter, who is not much older than I am. I see the struggles and hopes of the film’s child protagonist, David, as the little brother to a big sister and part of a new generation with big expectations. And I see my own parents in the characters Jacob and Monica: immigrants who came here seeking a better life; strangers in a strange land. The roots they put down were their own, and five decades after first arriving here, the fruit they’ve borne—in their work and their children—is something truly American, even if the original seeds were not.
