Seeds of the Willow

As one of the few early Korean foreign students in America, the author has attempted to describe his experience in America as a foreign student, and eventually as a naturalized Asian-American in the ‘Melting Pot’that is called the American society. This book is also his Personal Testimonial, which attests the fact that the author has not ever personally experienced any blatant Racial Discrimination against him in all of his fifty-years of living in these United States, as a student and as a professional person, from Kalamazoo, Michigan to Houston, Texas, and from Walla Walla, Washington to Gaithersburg, Maryland. Through the author’s own personal story, he felt compelled to tell the world that there are many happy minority immigrants’ stories, in contrast to many of the complaints and polarizing arguments about how the minority groups are discriminated and are deprived of the opportunity to improve their lot by the majority group in the American society. It is true also that there exists one form or another of prejudices and discriminations in the American society. However, it is this author’s conviction and experience that there are no insurmountable obstacles for minority immigrants to achieve their dreams and goals in this promised-land of ours, if one strives hard enough. It is also the belief of this author’s that in order to fully appreciate the opportunities and to make the most of those opportunities, one must be assimilated into the American society completely and whole heartedly without reservation. This does not mean to lose one’s heritage completely, but rather to contribute the unique qualities of each heritage to making of the ‘Whole’ in the true spirit of our nation, ‘E PLURIBUS UNUM’.