“A 2nd aboveground mirror, besides known arsenic a modular oregon regular mirror, creates a ghosting effect (double image).”
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“Displaced radical besides lived successful 2 clip zones, the present and the there, the contiguous and the past, being arsenic we were reluctant clip travelers.”
–Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer, arsenic quoted successful his effort “Horrific Surrealism: Writing connected Migration,” Paris Review blog, March 6, 2025
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I person 1 photograph of myself successful South Korea. It was taken by idiosyncratic astatine the Holt International adoption agency. A notecard is leaning against the beforehand of my sweater. On it is written successful English: my sanction Shin, Sun Yung, my orphan lawsuit fig K-6596, and my birthdate. The backmost of the photo, similar the backmost of a mirror, is blank.
My name, the lawsuit number, and my birthdate are each assigned by the agency.
You could accidental that my lawsuit fig was a information and my birthdate and my sanction were, and are, fictions.
With this benignant of origin, however could I not go a writer? Out of the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet, oregon immoderate penning system, an individuality tin beryllium assigned, fixed—and made, if not real, past socially legible and governmentally legal.
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Looking astatine ourselves.
Humans person been utilizing materials specified arsenic polished obsidian arsenic mirrors for 8,000 years. Mirrors manufactured successful China, exertion that could day arsenic acold backmost arsenic the Han Dynasty (206 BC-24 AD), yet made their mode to Korea and Japan. One of my favourite stories from The Story Bag, 1 of the fewer books I had arsenic a kid that were from oregon astir Korea, is “The Bridegroom’s Shopping.”
I fishy each adopted idiosyncratic oregon anyone raised successful a household oregon concern successful which she is not genetically related to anyone other has a peculiar narration to mirrors.
This folktale opens by describing a venerable aged farming household whose lone girl has conscionable married. As was the customized successful past Korea earlier the Joseon Dynasty and its adoption of Confucianism, husbands lived with their wives’ families. The inciting incidental of the communicative is the bridegroom’s trip, which begins astatine the matrilocal dwelling:
A fewer days aft the matrimony it truthful happened that the bridegroom had to spell to municipality connected immoderate business. As helium prepared to leave, his bride asked him: “Will you delight bargain maine a comb successful town?”
“Why, of course,” helium answered, each anxious to delight his beauteous bride.
However, his woman knew that her hubby was a precise forgetful man. Hadn’t her in-laws told her so? As she wondered however helium could beryllium made to remember, she chanced to look astatine the sky. There was a caller moon, a bladed crescent of airy light, shining softly successful the sky. It was lone 3 days old, and it looked conscionable similar the moon-shaped comb she wanted.
The young woman tells her hubby to look astatine the comb-shaped satellite and if helium forgets his buying task, helium should retrieve to look astatine the sky.
In town, the bridegroom carries connected with his concern which takes respective days, and arsenic his woman feared helium forgets astir the comb. As helium prepares to permission by looking astir the country successful which he’s been staying to spot if helium has everything, helium happens to look retired the window, “and determination helium saw a big, circular satellite shining successful the sky. Ten days had passed since helium had near home. The satellite was nary longer a tiny sliver of airy but a round, laughing globe of silver.”
It reminds him that his woman asked him to bargain her something. He asks a shopkeeper to merchantability him thing that looks similar the satellite for his wife. The shopkeeper is delighted to amusement him a mirror: “A young bride would privation it erstwhile she pretties herself. I americium definite it could beryllium thing else.”
The bridegroom had ne'er seen a reflector for they were precise rare, and definite the shopkeeper is correct, helium purchases it. When helium returns to his location and his woman asks him if helium did her shopping, helium hands her the “strange circular object.” She peers into “the creaseless glass.”
She is met by a imaginativeness of a “pretty young woman” and angrily complains to her parent that she asked him for a comb and helium brought location a “strange young woman.” Of people erstwhile her parent looks into it, she sees “a wrinkled aged woman” and says the alien indispensable beryllium an “old comparative of ours from a neighboring village.” The 2 reason angrily. A tiny lad enters portion eating a atom cake; helium looks into the mirror, and sees a alien who has taken his atom cake. He throws up his limb to onslaught the boy, and the different lad does the same, and they some statesman to outcry successful fear.
The gramps comes successful and spies “a fierce-looking aged man” successful the reflector and is astir to onslaught the aggressor for interfering with quarreling boys. He drops the reflector and it falls, crashes loudly, and past “the grandfather, and the boy, and the 2 women, and the bridegroom each fell soundless and stood staring dumbly astatine the hundreds of pieces of breached solid beneath their feet,” which is the extremity of the story.
What I enjoyed astir the communicative was seeing adults being taken successful by thing that I arsenic a kid already knew about—mirrors. In presumption of the story’s situation, looking backmost I cognize that I internalized this and galore different narratives of men leaving the location to enactment successful the extracurricular world. The secondary acquisition of the communicative was that women are babelike connected forgetful men for purchasing what they desired.
Almost each folktales are lessons astir family, astir roles and belonging. Who is known, and who is simply a stranger.
This besides mirrored the location successful which I was raised; my begetter went to an bureau each time and my ma stayed location (and drove each implicit town) taking attraction of my older member and I, the location and garden, our favored dog, and our father. I grew up observing my parent marque 3 meals a day, lavation and adust the dishes by hand, lavation and robust my father’s shirts and handkerchiefs, clip coupons and store for groceries, vacuum, mop, dust, lavation windows, equilibrium the checkbook, and marque definite we got to and from school, our lessons and activities, doctors and dentist appointments, friends’ houses, and connected and on, time aft day, for years and years.
“The Bridegroom’s Shopping” is besides a representation of being vs. doing (the pistillate exists, the antheral acts) and Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas presented successful The Second Sex on man-constructed-as-subject and woman-constructed-as-object. The household turns to chaos due to the fact that the hubby prioritizes his concern and forgets his wife’s azygous request. In addition, it’s a communicative astir modernity; the bride is from a prosperous household yet they are inactive “country” people, not “city” people. They are not cosmopolitan, exposed to the latest technologies, and don’t cognize what a reflector is oregon what it’s for.
The woman’s vanity and the husband’s forgetfulness collide to sow chaos and discord successful the house. You tin spot this signifier successful galore American sitcoms, successful which the woman wants thing beauteous oregon utile for herself oregon the home, successful bid to elevate the household successful immoderate way, and the hubby is simply a well-meaning bumbler who introduces drama into the situation.
“The Bridegroom’s Shopping” whitethorn person besides been a acquisition to my young caput that if a pistillate wants thing done right, she should bash it herself, but either she wasn’t inclined oregon allowed astatine that clip successful Korea. Almost each folktales are lessons astir family, astir roles and belonging. Who is known, and who is simply a stranger.
The Story Bag: A Collection of Korean Folktales by Kim So-un and translated by Setsu Higashi was published by Tuttle successful Tokyo, Japan successful 1955. This was 10 years aft Japan mislaid World War II and had to surrender its imperial territories, including Korea, which it had annexed successful 1910, and 2 years aft 1953, the unofficial extremity of the devastating Korean Civil War.
Kim So-un, fluent successful some Japanese and Korean, grew up successful assemblage Korea. In his foreword, helium writes, “…stories bash not similar to beryllium hoarded, but privation to beryllium told and told again, passing ever from articulator to lip. These stories were archetypal heard successful my puerility successful Korean, past written down by maine successful Japanese, and yet translated into English by Mrs. [Setsu] Higashi.”
There weren’t mirrors successful our location but supra the bath sinks and attached to my parents’ and brother’s chamber dressers. I didn’t person a reflector successful my country until I was a teen. My parent is ever dressed neatly, comfortably, but is not a vain pistillate oregon idiosyncratic overly acrophobic with appearances; for example, she did not deterioration constitution but connected holidays and peculiar occasions, and past it was lone a humble swipe of acheronian pinkish drugstore lipstick.
In immoderate ways my beingness arsenic an immigrant, since the property of astir one-and-a-half years old, feels similar a second surface.
I fishy each adopted idiosyncratic oregon anyone raised successful a household oregon concern successful which she is not genetically related to anyone other has a peculiar narration to mirrors. The radical successful your household are not your mirrors—you can’t look astatine your parent and spot the genetics of your eyes oregon your smile; you can’t look astatine your begetter and spot your tegument colour oregon hairsbreadth texture if you’re a antithetic contention from your adoptive family. You don’t person the aforesaid hands arsenic a sibling. You don’t cognize wherever your property comes from. For galore intercountry adoptees, you don’t cognize wherever the parts of you oregon the full “you” travel from, beyond the state and possibly the metropolis oregon region.
If you’re an adopted kid, immoderate reflector successful your dwelling confirms, each clip you look successful it, conscionable similar successful a household photo, that your belonging was a jiggered thing, and that you’re retired of spot successful 1 way, and successful spot successful another. It’s both. You’re not between anything. You are successful 1 place, but there’s a imperishable echo of that different place, the you then earlier you became this you.
The reflector is an uncanny place, fixing you, reminding you that you are here and not there. “America” and not “Korea.” This family, known, and the different household oregon families, unknown. Forever conjoined, appearing, arsenic successful “The Bridegroom’s Shopping,” similar an uncanny alien successful the reflection.
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There are respective kinds of mirrors—concave, convex, flexible, plane, front-silvered, back-silvered, and more.
Most mundane mirrors are back-silvered and are frankincense considered “second surface” mirrors, which means they are made of a solid substrate with a reflecting coating down it.
For maine arsenic an immigrant, arsenic an adopted person, determination are immoderate aspects of this multilayered, multi-material instrumentality that enactment arsenic a metaphor.
The poetics of the mirror.
The poetics of self-perception, memory, time, surface, depth, flatness, dimension, boundaries.
In immoderate ways my beingness arsenic an immigrant, since the property of astir one-and-a-half years old, feels similar a second surface. There’s a liminal spot betwixt the extracurricular of the solid and the reflecting material. Light enters, and an representation is reflected, but one’s consciousness is scaleable, elastic, shrinkable to the abstraction wrong the glass. One’s consciousness tin effort to get adjacent to the archetypal furniture down the bladed metallic furniture without ever merging with it.
As idiosyncratic raised separately from my archetypal household and my archetypal culture, and who contempt efforts by disposable means, has not been capable to identify, locate, oregon marque interaction with immoderate archetypal relatives, I person nary stories about, oregon grounds of, my Korean household oregon Korean ancestors. For now, I americium the communicative and I americium the evidence.
To beryllium separated from your household of root means intimacy without proximity. Form without knowledge.
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I deliberation astir DNA and our individual, interrelated forms. I deliberation astir however my ain children tin look astatine their (biological, genetic, gestational) parents (who are 1 and the aforesaid with their societal and ineligible parents—the radical who raised them) and cognize precisely wherefore 1 of them instinctively loves creation and the different instinctively loves things with wheels.
Being the merchandise of reproduction but not knowing from whom is, to me, similar the backmost of a 2nd aboveground mirror, the portion that provides the aboveground for the silvered layer, which is past covered with a portion of glass. There is ever a refraction.
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Looking into the reflector of my past is portion humanities exploration, backstage investigation, assemblage recovery, and idiosyncratic guesswork. When determination are informational dormant ends, which is mostly what I have, it is not dissimilar looking astatine the backmost of a mirror. It’s not nothing; it’s a aboveground with thing written connected it, and nary reflection. It’s a doorway with nary door, a model made of coagulated wood. But this is what I have, this is what galore adopted radical have. Before I had my 2 children, my “reverse engineering” process was adjacent much information-poor. I’ve passed down that operation of lack to my children, and they volition transportation it for the remainder of their lives. How overmuch does nothing weigh, erstwhile the nothing is filled with longing, curiosity, confusion, discomfort, and grief?
Being an adoptee is simply a lifelong acquisition successful impermanence.
There’s a prime of paranoia to not knowing—like erstwhile you fishy thing is down you, possibly you consciousness a breeze connected your skin, but you can’t spot it oregon consciousness its signifier oregon size oregon velocity oregon distance, and erstwhile you crook around, it’s gone. In galore cultures, tone doubles, oregon doppelgängers, are considered atrocious luck.
What is the physics—the velocity, frequency, mass, volume—the unit of absence? Not conscionable 1 absence, but a 1000 absences. Questions that volition not beryllium answered but support forming, similar aerial bubbles rising to the surface, lone to break.
What the burning tendency to cognize wherever 1 comes from proves that we are not genuinely individuals, but parts of a continuity. As a trial lawsuit for individuality, the rewritten adopted idiosyncratic similar myself shows individuality to be, successful immoderate ways, a hoax.
The consciousness of being extracurricular the patterns of quality familial weaving is precise sharp. A consciousness of newness and self-invention which tin look similar state but internally much often feels similar meaninglessness. An existential condition. I exist, but why? From where?
Being portion of a second, adoptive, household means you cognize that families tin beryllium deconstructed, constructed, and further deconstructed. Having a 2nd oregon 3rd sanction means you tin beryllium decoupled from connection astatine immoderate time, and that it mightiness beryllium omniscient to clasp onto names lightly. Being an adoptee is simply a lifelong acquisition successful impermanence. But if you fto spell excessively soon, oregon excessively much, you mightiness fto spell of everything. Psychiatry calls it depersonalization. Taken to its astir utmost logic of detachment from humanity, exerting the the volition into a detachment from one’s carnal life—the Romans called it suicide.
Without knowing who my household is, and was, I americium constricted successful however overmuch I tin cognize astir myself. My assemblage is the effect of their reproduction, but nary decoder to cognize wherever I get my nonstop tegument color, the signifier of my fingers, my temperament and personality. It tin consciousness similar looking into a mirror, but seeing thing but the glass.
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To beryllium severed from your radical and your history—your inheritance—but to privation to know, to person a caput that, arsenic an adult, is ever wondering astir what operation of people, places, and circumstances came unneurotic to make your existence, is simply a benignant of changeless hunger. The bulk of the clip successful my life, different much pressing and applicable beingness matters contiguous themselves to beryllium sorted, managed, resolved, etc. But erstwhile I pause, arsenic I americium now, to effort to picture what surviving with this information feels like, my caput searches for metaphors, for multipart objects similar a 2nd aboveground mirror. Unlike a polished portion of metallic which is reflective and the aforesaid worldly from each direction, a 2nd aboveground reflector is an assemblage, has a transparent layer, a reflective layer, and an opaque layer.
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As an migrant I question to recognize what it means to beryllium mobile, to person been moved, removed, to transverse an ocean, to beryllium placed, to beryllium held, to beryllium kept, to alteration from nonmigratory to citizen. It feels similar a benignant of clip travel, folding of clip backmost and forth. Prisms. Refractions.
I don’t truly cognize however immoderate migrant could wholly debar ever imagining a parallel beingness successful which they ne'er migrated. In subject fabrication stories astir clip travel, there’s often a benignant of shimmer, a ripple, oregon a portal, not dissimilar a mirror. One tin dream, 1 tin speculate, 1 tin contemplate Borgesian forking paths. I accidental the instrumentality is to not get lost, not halt excessively agelong successful the gaze, forever, similar Narcissus, drawn permanently into the imagination of the reflection.
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A institution called “FSM,” lasting for First Surface Mirror, has a elemental diagram connected its website with this caption, “A 2nd aboveground mirror, besides known arsenic a modular oregon regular mirror, creates a ghosting effect (double image).”
A institution called Abrisa Technologies explains erstwhile you would sometimes privation to usage a archetypal aboveground reflector arsenic opposed to a 2nd aboveground mirror:
Most radical are acquainted with accepted mirrors that we spot and usage each day, from the bath mirror, a manus held mirror, oregon a car’s rearview mirror. These mirrors usage solid arsenic a protective aboveground and person the reflector coating, commonly referred to arsenic “silvering,” connected the backmost side, oregon “second surface.” The exposed solid helps support the reflector coating underneath from scratching oregon degradation owed to biology factors specified arsenic weather, fingerprints, and dust.
In high-precision applications, 2nd aboveground mirrors person immoderate precise chiseled disadvantages. Light traveling done the solid to onslaught the reflective worldly connected the backside oregon 2nd aboveground creates a refracted oregon bent representation arsenic good arsenic immoderate nonaccomplishment of energy, fundamentally dimming and distorting the reflection. A faint secondary reflection is besides created from airy striking the beforehand of the glass. This secondary representation is referred to arsenic a “ghost image” oregon “ghosting effect.”
This, too, is simply a bully metaphor, the ghosting effect. I deliberation adjacent erstwhile I’m not penning autobiographically, I’m penning to recognize the ghosts and distortions that effect from the 2nd surface, oregon adjacent the abstraction betwixt my archetypal beingness and my 2nd life. It’s hard, oregon impossible, to ever archer what is reality, what is fantasy, and what is immoderate combination. Does my affect, my grief, my sorrow, and my shame travel from pre-verbal, pre-remembered wounds, trauma? Or from an inborn and immutable temperament? From stories? Which ones? DNA? Hormones? Bacteria? Microplastics? It’s exhausting and cyclical and the finer-grained the questions, the much diminishing the returns. The airy tin lone bounce astir truthful overmuch earlier it disappears and leaves you, again, successful the dark, alone.
Ghosts are an past quality technology, and I don’t judge we arsenic a taxon are done with them, oregon possibly they are not done with us. That works for me. Betty Jean Lifton, a psychologist, achromatic home adoptee, and author, wrote the publication Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness which was published successful 1995. In the section “Ghost Kingdom” she writes:
Carl Jung said that among each imaginable ghosts that haunt us, the spirits of the parents person the top significance. Having been banished from the adopted child’s mundane satellite by the closed adoption system, the commencement parents go small much than the ghosts I described successful section 1. (“Hereditary ghosts,” the Finnish psychiatrist Max Frisk labeled them.) I telephone the spectral spot successful which these ghosts reside arsenic the Ghost Kingdom. It is an awesome sphere, located lone successful the adoptee’s psychic reality. The Forbidden Self, and occasionally adjacent the Artificial Self, slips into the Ghost Kingdom to rendezvous with the mislaid parent and the mislaid baby, who ne'er had a accidental to turn into the kid it should person been. One antheral described it arsenic “a forbidden world, similar a hole—wonderful, terrifying, ghostly—that you could autumn into completely.” Once there, it is not needfully a peaceable kingdom, for the adoptee is escaped to explicit not lone emotion but choler astatine being, arsenic 1 pistillate enactment it, “cast retired into the satellite with strangers.”
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Sun Yung Shin’s Heart Eater is disposable present from Black Lawrence Press. Sun Yung Shin volition beryllium launching the memoir astatine Minneapolis’s Moon Palace Books, September 15 astatine 7pm.
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