“Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl’s Habits”
KHADIJAT NAFIU
Strayer University

“Facing poverty with a rich girl’s habits”

Suki Kim appeared in the New York Times on November 21,2004 where she wrote an article on “Facing Poverty with a rich girl’s habits”. Kim was raised by wealthy parents in South Korea who lost everything overnight and became bankrupt. In South Korea bankruptcy is punishable by jail time so they fled to America. Kim and her parents moved in an meteocre house where the people who owned the house had two sons who became her friends. She wondered why she was called F.O.B. (fresh of the boat) when she flew from Korea to the U.S.. Kim never did anything for herself or on her own such as homework, dishes, cleaning, washing clothes etc... All these things were new to her so she didn’t like doing any them. Kim realized that do to the color of her yellow skin tone she was now labeled Asian. Kim noticed that in Korea Schools were different from American Schools. She asserted that slippers were worn in Korea to keep the floors clean why graffiti were on the walls of American Schools. In Kim ESL (English as second language) class, she hoped to find others like her but the rest of her race had nothing in common because they were poor when they came to the states. Kim learned that her and her fellow F.O.B.’s were separated by generations. According to Kim, coming to America as a teen she felt she was in the middle of the two generations because the first generation was Asian ghetto and the second generation was uptight American. Kim, feeling in the middle can choose to swing either way. Kim felt as if she didn’t understand the differences each culture had. For example Kim wasn’t able to get her ears pierced liked the other American kids. Kim, growing up rich soon realized she had to adjust to a regular and more simple