ABQ Korean-American strikes a chord with story
The question “Where are you from?” has always bothered Gary Lee, especially when it’s followed by “Where are you really from?”
Lee, a 33-year-old KoreanAmerican who grew up in Albuquerque, recently became a social media sensation when his first original Twitter post — prompted by immigration-related remarks by President Donald Trump — went viral.
The tweets @whoisgarylee started posting at 7:08 a.m. Jan. 13 and have drawn media attention around the United States, in the U.K. and in South Korea.
Articles about Lee have appeared in The Washington
Post and Newsweek, among other publications. He also was interviewed by CNN anchor Don Lemon.
Lee began his Twitter series saying, “I’ve never tweeted before but today seemed a good day to start.” His next tweet referred to a Vox website story that reported Trump popping the “where are you really from” question to a Korean-American intelligence officer during a briefing last fall, after she said she was from New York.
Asking a person where they are from appears harmless, but it can be a form of “microaggression,” Lee said in an interview at an Albuquerque Starbucks last week.
“What they’re saying is that in their mind they have this template of what they envision the default American should look like,” he said. “It’s something a lot of people constantly dread and constantly face and that’s been the norm for decades, at least in my experience.”
His answer to the dreaded question is always “Albuquerque.”
“I’m so proud to be from here, and I like getting to say ‘Albuquerque, New Mexico,’ and the bewildered looks it gets,” he said.
Lee has had a Twitter account for several years but until Jan. 13 he only shared posts by others. He was inspired to write his own post by Trump’s controversial remarks on immigration and because Jan. 13 was Korean-American Day, commemorating the arrival of the first Korean-American immigrants to the U.S. in 1903.
“I just felt like everything had built up in me,” he said.
The first tweet and the next 13 he wrote that day discussed Trump’s remarks and his own reaction to them as a Korean-American. He told the story of his parents immigrating to the U.S. and his landing a job at the White House under then-President Barack Obama. Then he related an anecdote to illustrate Obama’s very supportive attitude toward a Korean-American.
He’s received thousands of responses. He said many are from Mexican-Americans, Pakistani-Americans and others who say they’ve faced the same questions about their origins.
Lee’s parents emigrated from Seoul to the United States, married in Los Angeles, where he was born, and settled in Albuquerque in 1989. Though they knew little English when they arrived, his father became a computer technician at the University of New Mexico. His mother worked at Big Five and Wild Oats before training to become a radiographer.
Lee attended John Baker Elementary and Hoover Middle School. He graduated from Eldorado High School. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Southern California, worked on digital media for Obama’s 2008 election campaign and eventually was hired as an assistant staff secretary in Obama’s White House.
On his last day, before leaving for a Fulbright scholarship in South Korea in 2011, he went to the Oval Office, where Obama greeted him, saying, “Ahn-Yong Hasehyo,” which is “hello” in Korean.
White House photographer Pete Souza snapped a photo of the moment and Lee included the picture in one of his recent tweets.
Souza saw Lee’s tweets and retweeted — shared — them, and from there it was “off to the races,” Lee said.
As of Sunday, Lee’s initial tweets had 60,000 retweets and 169,000 likes. Among those who “liked” the tweets was J.K. Rowling, author of the hugely successful “Harry Potter” series.
Lee recalled discovering the first “Harry Potter” book when he was at Hoover Middle School.
“That suddenly 25 years later she read something I wrote is pretty incredible,” Lee said.
He believes there is a need for more empathy instead of the cynicism and skepticism that is prevalent at the moment. He ventures that his personal story of being a Korean-American from Albuquerque who achieved the dream of working in the White House for the first African-American president has struck a chord.
“I think that’s America at its best. People are allowed to dream and have opportunities to achieve that dream,” he said.
Lee graduated from UNM Law School in December and is now studying for the bar exam.