Mothers & Mixed Emotions

 “Your real mother - the one who looks like you, the one who has to love you because she grew you from her own body, the one who hates you so much that she dumped you in garbage for white people to pick up and dust off.” (Kim 63; 443)

This sentence from Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying highlights the complex feelings that Mini, Ronnie, and Caroline hold towards their families and identities. Although it's a line said by the narrator, this sentence communicates how the girls feel about their birth mothers, their adoptive families, and the confused relationships they have with their identities as Korean girls with white families. The ideas conveyed in this sentence also help explain the relationship that the girls end up having with Mom and what ultimately drives Ronnie to allow Mom to possess her at the end of the story. 

There are two distinct emotions expressed in the first and second halves of this sentence, which are displayed in the way the narrator describes a real mother. A real mother is described as someone who “has to love you” but also someone who “hates you”. The first half of the sentence expresses a sense of longing that all the girls have for their birth mothers, a feeling partially driven by how alienated they feel from their adoptive families. The second half of the sentence conveys the resentment that the girls have for their birth mothers and for their adoptive families. They resent their birth mothers for abandoning them in childhood which allowed them to end up in the situations they are now in. They also resent their white parents for adopting them and depriving them of a connection to their culture and heritage. The sentence also hints at a potential white savior complex that may have influenced the girls’ parents in their decisions to adopt Korean kids. 

The emotions of longing and resentment also connect to how Mini, Ronnie, and Caroline view their identities. They all long for a mother who looks like them because such a mother would be able to understand them in a way that their own white mothers cannot. They want a mother who would be able to connect them to their Korean heritage. They were instead given white mothers and families who they resent because they cannot feel fully connected to them due to the differences in their appearances and in turn the differences in their lived experiences. The identities of the girls thus become muddled. While they are Korean, they have no Korean family and a limited understanding of their culture, causing a disconnect between the girls and their Korean identity. On the other hand, while their families are white, they aren’t and will never be perceived as such, so culturally it becomes difficult for the girls to know where their identities stand.

All of the girls experience this internal turmoil, but when Mom comes into their lives they gain an opportunity to connect with their culture and identity. They finally have a mother who supposedly looks like them and can understand them. By bringing Mom into their lives they aim to remedy the sense of longing that they feel for a “real mother”. Ronnie ends up being the only one who allows Mom to stay in her life because she relates to the emotions expressed in this quote the most. Because of the relationship she has with her brother, she feels extremely alienated from her adoptive family. Her family situation makes her vulnerable, and the most in need of a parental figure who she can trust and confide in, because she no longer feels safe with the white family who picked her up and dusted her off. 

This one sentence conveys the internal conflicts Ronnie, Caroline, and Mini are experiencing with their identities and relationships with their families. Plot-wise, the sentence also provides a setup for the character of Mom and highlights the significance she has to the girls in helping them navigate their way through their internal conflicts.