The Park and Han Families in Michigan

By: Celine Park

Creator: Sang Mok Han
Place: Detroit, Michigan
Date Created or Date Issued: 1983
Institution: Han Family
Language: English
Collection: N/A
Content Description: Color photograph depicting three members of the Han family with three members of the Park family. From left to right the individuals pictured are my grandmother, my uncle, Park’s son, Arthur Park, Park’s daughter, and my mother, standing in front of what looks to be a home on a residential street. The photograph has the words “1983 Detroit” in digital text in the lower right corner.
Type: Digital reproduction of color photograph

Analytical Description

My family’s immigration story begins in 1983 in Detroit, Michigan. Although my immediate family has only recently immigrated to the United States in 2006, my mother and her family moved to Michigan for a short stay of about a year due to my grandfather’s participation in an exchange program at Wayne State University as an engineering professor. The family artifact is a photograph taken at the time, depicting my grandmother, uncle, mother, Arthur Park, and his two children. My mother, uncle, and Park’s children were all around the ages of nine to thirteen. Park was my grandfather’s colleague at the university, and is half-Korean, half-white, with a white American wife. Seeking to connect with his Korean roots, Park grew close to my grandfather, especially due to the lack of a Korean American community in Detroit, and eventually the families became close as well. Park and his family provided my mother’s family with various forms of support and the strength of the two families’ relationship had a positive impact on my mother’s immigration experience, leading to the eventual immigration of my family. The photograph is a symbol of how significant this inter-family relationship was to my mother’s family.

In the greater context of Asian American history, the photograph relates to interracial relationships and Asian American identity in the American Midwest, and Asian American immigration after 1965. Park provided support and friendship, as well as interracial interactions in an area without many Asian Americans, thus shaping my mother’s cultural identity at the time. My mother’s family’s immigration would not have been possible without the Immigration Act of 1965, which made immigration possible for professionals such as my grandfather, and for him to immigrate with his whole family. My artifact illuminates the uniqueness of Asian American experience in the lack of a large co-ethnic community in regions outside of the typical ethnic enclaves, such as the Midwest.

Keywords: Korean American, Immigration, Interracial, Midwest