{"id":57953,"date":"2019-04-20T00:34:23","date_gmt":"2019-04-20T00:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57953"},"modified":"2019-04-20T00:34:23","modified_gmt":"2019-04-20T00:34:23","slug":"portrait-of-my-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=57953","title":{"rendered":"Portrait of My Father"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/granta.com\/portrait-of-my-father-chee\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>Portrait of My Father<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/granta.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Granta<\/a><br \/>\nMarch 2009<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.alexanderchee.net\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Alexander Chee<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing<br \/>\n<em>Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/granta.com\/portrait-of-my-father-chee\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-38102\" src=\"https:\/\/granta.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/cheeportrait.jpeg\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/granta.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/cheeportrait.jpeg 480w, https:\/\/granta.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/cheeportrait-90x62.jpeg 90w, https:\/\/granta.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/cheeportrait-200x137.jpeg 200w\" alt=\"Portrait of My Father - Alexander Chee\" width=\"550\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>His drink was <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Crown_Royal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Crown Royal<\/a>, his candy bar, a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Baby_Ruth\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Baby Ruth<\/a>, though he didn\u2019t like chocolate much. He was good at poker, loved reading <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Leo_Tolstoy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tolstoy<\/a>. His suits were <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bespoke\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">bespoke<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Korea\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Korea<\/a>, starting at the age of five, he ran barefoot in the snow when he was training for <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Taekwondo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tae kwon do<\/a>, so he was ready, during the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Korean_War\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Korean War<\/a>, for when he and his oldest brother had to steal food from overturned army supply trucks, running the bags of rice home on their backs. After the war, he became the international tae kwon do champion in his age group at the age of eighteen, and captain of his college rugby team \u2014 the rice had helped two ways.<\/p>\n<p>He left for the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">US<\/a> while his father was away on business so he couldn\u2019t stop him. His mother gave him a gold belt buckle to sell when he arrived, as she couldn\u2019t give him money, and asked him, whatever he did, not to marry a blue-eyed, blonde-haired American girl&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"https:\/\/granta.com\/portrait-of-my-father-chee\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He left for the US while his father was away on business so he couldn\u2019t stop him. His mother gave him a gold belt buckle to sell when he arrived, as she couldn\u2019t give him money, and asked him, whatever he did, not to marry a blue-eyed, blonde-haired American girl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,1245,414,8,20],"tags":[17749,29721],"class_list":["post-57953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-biography","category-family","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-alexander-chee","tag-granta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57954,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57953\/revisions\/57954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}