Still Present Pasts

Kim Dalros

Photography

Photographer Kim Dalros and writer Holly H. Coughlin are working on the first portrait book of Korean adoptees living in Minnesota. Entitled HERE, the publication will feature stunning black-and-white portraits of Korean adoptees of different generations.

“I remember I was at the University of St. Thomas with a friend, we were just eating at . . . the college cafeteria. . . . There were a couple of foreign exchange students ahead of me. And they really had thick accents and I remember the lunch lady asking me if I was part of that group. And I said, “No,” you know, with disdain, like, “How can she mistake me for that group?!” Can’t you tell? You know, I’m speaking English with clear diction!” . . . maybe I had a chip on my shoulder back then. I didn’t associate myself with Asia. . . I was like a man without a country . . . I was in America but then if I go back to Korea, I wasn’t Korean. Now that I’m older, you know, I’m proud of who I am. . . . I tried to push everything in my history. . . . I don’t know if I was ashamed of who I was or what. I guess I didn’t have enough information. About where I was from.”

- excerpt from Pat Gingles Oral History
interviewed by Kim Park Nelson
transcribed by Heather Wang