Episode 027: Specially Processed

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Transcript

PRE-ROLL PROMO: Listener Survey Request

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Cold Open

Karim Muasher: Let's think about the fingers, the fingers, right?

KM: The fingers, the fingers, the fingers, the fingers. Yeah?

KM: However you want to do, do that and let the whole body follow.

SOUND: Karim continues coaching the actors

CATHY VO: That's Karim Muasher, who's a theater director.

CATHY VO: He's leading a warm-up exercise for a bunch of actors in the back of the BRIC House, a non-profit arts space in downtown Brooklyn.

KM: Say a different line from the show every time or the same line...

CATHY VO: The group of actors, almost entirely Asian women, is rehearsing here for two weeks.

KM: It's up to you. Juella whenever you want to start.

Actors: Bombs Fell.

Actors: Spam products are magical!

Actors: Spam is you! You are Spam!

Actors: 좀 더 생각해봐!

CATHY VO: And for this very physical warm-up, they're darting back and forth across a circle, tagging each other in and out, while each of them repeats one of their lines from the show, over and over again.

MUSIC: A light, dance-floor tune begins

Actors: Bombs Fell!

Actors: Sleep, pretty angel!

Actors: Spam is you! You are Spam! 

Actors: 좀 더 생각해봐!

Actors: - American me!

Actors: Awesome machine! 

Actors: Bombs fell!

Actors: Spam products are magical!

Actors: Spam is you! You are Spam! 

Actors: Specially Processed American! 

CATHY VO: Bombs, lullabies, magical Spam products...

CATHY VO: ...they're all lines from a new play by Jaime Sunwoo, called "Specially Processed American Me."

Jaime Sunwoo: It's a surreal autobiographical play about Spam, the canned meat, and how I personally relate to it.

MUSIC: Dance tune ends

JS: I called it "Specially Processed American Me" because like

JS: SPAM doesn't actually stand for anything official, but one of the common "backronyms" is "Specially Processed American Meat."

Cathy: Ah!

Cathy: You know what? I always thought it was like "spiced ham" or something like that.

JS: Yeah! That's one of them as well, like –

Cathy: Portmanteau, yeah.

JS: Yeah. They don't have an official, like, reason, but "spiced ham" is one, "special army meat" is another, uh, "Specially Processed American Meat"...

THEME MUSIC begins

JS: …so there's a lot of guesses, but I, I wanted to use Spam as a way to talk about my life and how I process my identity (laughs).

Cathy: How you specially processed it.

JS: How I specially process it!

Open

CATHY VO: This is Self Evident, where we tell Asian America's stories to go beyond being seen.

CATHY VO: And today I'm talking to Jaime about the making of "Specially Processed," which is about to have its first run at Dixon Place, an experimental theater in New York City.

CATHY VO: The play is based on Jaime's real-life experience with digging up the past.

CATHY VO: It starts with a young, dramatized version of Jaime struggling with the end of her parents' marriage, while eating Spam, of course — and then follows her through a dream-like journey as she begins to ask her family about their lives during the Korean War. 

CATHY VO: Jaime realizes that Spam, just a regular food from her childhood, contains a history as well. A history intertwined with war, American troops, and the contradictions of poverty and abundance.

THEME MUSIC ends

CATHY VO: It’s beautiful and strange at the same time. 

CATHY VO: There's a mix of Korean culture and surreal Spam images...

JS: These big rolling carts that look like pojagi, a Korean fabric quilt that is reminiscent of giant slices of the Spam...

CATHY VO: Supernatural characters...

JS: Puppets that resembled pigs…

JS: A shaman, a Korean mudang shaman…

CATHY VO: And a massive can of pink slime.

Segment 1: The Origins of Specially Processed American Me

MUSIC: A breezy, lo-fi hip-hop tune begins

CATHY VO: In Fall of 2021, I tagged along with Jaime and her team in Brooklyn, during a two-week residency where they put together sets and experimented with visuals. The crew put on two preview shows – just a few scenes of the play for friends and family. 

CATHY VO: The audio you’ll hear is from these previews. 

CATHY VO: Then I caught up with Jaime as she was getting ready to launch the show, to find out what she's learned from spending the past four years putting together the play — and what she’s learned about Spam. 

CATHY VO: If you haven't thought about Spam in a while... well, it's an American canned pork product, similar to ham.

CATHY VO: In the States, Spam's gone through a lot of ups and downs over the years. It still carries the stigma of being poor people's food, or fake meat — even though the price tag for Spam isn't exactly cheap.

CATHY VO: But like a lot of East Asian, Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander folks, Jaime's always loved Spam.

JS: Yeah, it was really good.

JS: Most often I'd probably eat it in Spam fried rice. My mom would like top an egg on it and squirt some ketchup on it. And I also would see it in musubi. I have some cousins out in Hawaii and I'd visit them during the summer, and I also had a lot when my mom would go on business trips and my dad would like make dinner. And if he felt like he just wanted a quick meal.

JS: Yeah. "Dad dinner."

JS: He would like fry up some spam and we would just like, eat it, watching TV with some rice and eggs and kimchi.

MUSIC: Lo-fi hip-hop tune ends on a sweet note

CATHY VO: When it was first invented by the Hormel Corporation in 1937 , Spam was marketed as a modern miracle meat. But it really became a big business when Hormel started supplying the U.S. military with millions of pounds of Spam during World War II.

CATHY VO: That's also how Spam became popular in Asia, Hawaii, and the Pacific Islands — as American soldiers, who were there to wage war or occupy territories, would give Spam rations to locals or sell them to the local black market.

CATHY VO: And all that history went into how Jaime wrote "Specially Processed."

JS: The show opens up and it's Jay Hormel, who was the head of Hormel foods when Spam was on the market.

JS: And Jay Hormel is opening the show with his troop of Hormel girls.

SOUND: An actor in Jaime’s troupe plays the organ on stage as the audience is seated

JS: In real life, the Hormel girls wear this all female World War Two, uh, veterans, women, veterans that had like an orchestra radio show.

JS: they had a competitive drum and bugle Corps...

JS: So it was a big operation and, uh, it was a big marketing push basically to encourage like post-war nostalgia...

Cathy: like, post-war like influencers.

JS: Exactly. Just like, remember the time we were winning?

JS: Eat Spam!

Cathy: Yeah!

JS: So they're playing this like reed organ and they're just talking to the audience like, "Hey, welcome to the Spam show!" pretty much; like to them, this is one giant advertisement for the product...

SOUND: Actors playing Jay Hormel and the Hormel Girls chat with the audience, fully in character

Cathy: I know that you've been working on this play for a few years now and it sounds like it's evolved a lot over that time.

Cathy: How exactly did the whole idea get started though? Was there like a specific moment where you would say this project was born or, you know, a light bulb or something like that?

JS: Yeah. Well… 

JS: I think I've just been intrigued by Spam for a long time. 

JS: And I think many Asian Americans have, just because it's this, like, secret food you have at home, you don't share with anyone else, but you love it. And you love it because…

JS: I don't know, people are just very passionate about it and so it was just super intriguing to me because I didn't start with this script. Like I started with a giant hand-painted Spam can that I filled with slime... and a pig puppet.

Cathy: Okay. So that was your, that was your art project.

JS: Yeah, like, I started with those objects first.

Cathy: Nice.

JS: And I sort of built a story around those objects.

JS: And actually the full script didn't come into fruition until much later —

Cathy: What made you decide to weave in your own personal story, into the story of Spam?

JS: Well, I guess there's a couple of reasons.

JS: One is... I think it's strange that Spam was a product that's sort of born and bred in the U.S., and is still very marginalized by White America.

JS: And I feel like that's how Asian Americans feel. (laughs)

JS: Just like, "We're from here, though!"

Cathy: You identified with Spam.

JS: Yeah. I directly identified with Spam. It's like, I am also born here, and I'm also marginalized. (laughs)

JS: But beyond that, like... I'm a treat! (laughs)

JS: No, I don't, I don't know.

JS: Like I, I also just think it's this hilarious kitschy food that has been the butt of jokes for so long.

JS: And it's, I think it's just fun to unpack that as well.

Cathy: On that note, you have this thing that is a pig god? That pops up?

JS: Yeah. Like a pig spirit of sorts, yes.

Cathy: It's like a giant pig head puppet that pokes out from behind the curtain and it's haunting young Jaime…

Pig God: 제이미 안녕?

Sarah Shin, playing Young Jaime: Who are you?!

Pig God: I am who I am.

Pig God: The real question is… 너는 누구냐?

SS/YJ: Who am I?

Pig God: You are what you eat. (cackles)

Cathy: But I think it's also kind of like helping her go beyond just thinking of Spam as a comfort food, right?

Cathy: And, and like helping her start asking questions about the history behind why she eats Spam in the first place. 

Jaime: Yeah!

Cathy: It's playing that sort of integral role.

Pig God: 더 자세히 봐.

Pig God: Get to the meat of the matter.

Pig God: (Laughs while chasing Jaime across the stage)

SS/YJ: Spam?

Pig God: 그래. 자 Ask how the sausage gets made.

Cathy: Where did — where did this idea come from?

JS: So the Mudang is the Korean shaman who appears playing the kitchen percussion, before this pig spirit is summoned.

SOUND: Percussive, ritualistic music is played on steel kitchen bowls

JS: And I just thought, you know, having a pig that's summoned by this Mudang would be a perfect sort of like "fairy godmother" in this Korean American tale,

JS: Especially because of course, like Spam is made out of pork. So, um, yeah, it just, it just fit nicely in there.

JS: And you know, the pig head, before it becomes animated, in other parts of the show, it is purely like a pig head on a platter, part of like Spam's advertising, so...

JS: If this, you know, Jamie character is getting haunted by the spirits of Spam’s past, and that includes people like Jay Hormel and the Hormel girls, then it should also include the Mudang and this pig. (laughs)

SOUND: Percussive, ritualistic music fades out

Cathy: Yeah. Totally. 

JS: Yeah. The Korean ghosts. Where are the Korean ghosts? (laughs)

Segment 2: How Jaime used Spam to trace her personal history

Cathy: So after your character, the young Jamie is visited by this pig god, she goes and calls up her grandmother and asks her how she started cooking with Spam.

Cathy: And then instead of learning about the history of the meat right away, she gets into this story about living through the Korean war, watching her house burn down...

Cathy: So we see this story on stage, playing out through shadow puppets, and we also hear the story through your grandmother's real voice.

SOUND: A ringing sound accompanied by percussive music from the steel kitchen bowls begins 

Jaime's Grandmother, voiced in English by actor Eunji Lim: Bombs fell. And my house burned to the ground.

JG/EL: That's why I was scared. That's why I remember.

JG/EL: Of course I remember.

JG/EL: And your grandfather...

JG/EL: Soldiers were grabbing men and taking them away.

JG/EL: So he hid beneath the floorboard.

JG/EL: Because he couldn't get a haircut. His hair grew this big.

JG/EL: Long ago, I went through all that turmoil.

JG/EL: Even now I think about it.

JG/EL: Oh, a long time ago... I thought Spam was so delicious.

JG/EL: But when I eat it now, it doesn't taste good.

JG/EL: There's plenty to eat. That's why it doesn't taste good.

JG/EL: Mmm. Because there's plenty to eat.

SOUND: The music ends with a gong-like clang on the bowls, ringing out with finality

Cathy:  I think we hear from our listeners a lot that, you know, they wish they could learn more about their family's history like you've done, but they can't because people don't want to hear about it.

Cathy: So I'm curious, how did you interview your grandmother, your maternal grandmother, for this scene? 

JS: Yeah. I mean, every family's different, I would say in my personal experience, it's that, you know, you don't want to just go up some and be like, “So, share your trauma!” (laughs)

JS: That's one thing.

JS: My parents and my grandparents are trying to shelter the younger generations from hardship and kind of, like, focus on the bright side — and when they've come to this country to, in essence, for all sorts of reasons, like move forward...

JS: and this is why I am thankful for Spam, in that, like...

JS: you know, it's just a food.

Cathy: Right. 

JS: Spam for me was an easy way in.

Cathy: I see.

JS: 'Cause I can just say like, "What was it like to eat Spam for the first time?"

JS: and being able to ask something like, "Okay, like you got it from a soldier, like... what was that like?" was an easier way to start than...

JS: I don't know, "What was it like to get ripped away from your siblings?"

JS: And like, and then like, go straight to that. (laughs)

JS: So it was a direct transition into uncovering more about their experience at that time.

JS: You know, and the questions kind of flowed from there.

JS: When I was asking my grandma about her experiences during the war, so much of what I learned was brand new to my mom.

Cathy: Oh, wow.

JS: My mom, my two uncles, you know, and my, uh, aunt in the room, like there were so many voices in that room and… they were all learning at the same time as I was.

JS: For instance, this is not about the Korean war, but it is about, like, my grandma's time during Japanese occupation...

JS: You know, when I was growing. I, I never met my grandpa. Like my, my grandpa died when my mom was pretty young, and like, when I would ask my mom, like, "What do you remember about Grandpa?"

JS: My mom would say, oh, like “Grandma met him because, uh, he was looking for a wife” and he went to Kaesong, which is in North Korea.

JS: Because he knew that like, women in Kaesong are pretty and can cook well, so when he went there, like, he saw my grandma and wanted to marry her and she thought he was handsome, so they got married and he, he, he moved her to Seoul, and that's how she came south.

JS: Like, it's such a nice little story!

JS: And then, so when I asked my grandma like, "oh, how'd you meet Grandpa?" You know? And she was like, “Oh, well, at the time, like the Japanese were taking away unmarried women and forcing them into sex slavery.”

JS: So… they weren't taking married women. And then, so my grandmother's father, my great-grandfather, told her she had to get married, and like emergency set her up with this person.

Cathy: Wow.

JS: And when I asked her, well, did you think he was handsome or, and her response was like, “he was okay.” (laughs)

Cathy: (Laughs)

JS: You know, and my mom had no idea that was the real reason.

Cathy: Oh my gosh.

Cathy: The romantic version, and the gritty and real version.

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MUSIC: Promo music begins

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MUSIC: Promo music ends

Segment 3: Tears of Mokpo

CATHY VO: This is Self Evident. I'm Cathy Erway.

CATHY VO: When I went to the preview show of Specially Processed American Me back in October, Jaime's team performed just a few scenes — about fifteen minutes — from the whole play.

CATHY VO: The story of how Jaime's grandmother first tasted Spam during the Korean War is one of those scenes. 

CATHY VO: Another scene shows young Jaime dealing with the separation of her parents — a conflict that echoes the divisions of the war itself. 

CATHY VO: The character of young Jaime, played by actor Sarah Shin, just told the audience about a huge fight between her mom and dad.

CATHY VO: She’s lying on the floor with her eyes shut, and her mom's helping her fall asleep by singing a song written in the 1930s, during the Japanese Occupation of Korea. It’s called "Tears of Mokpo."

Clara Sunwoo: 깊은 밤 조각달은 흘러가는데

(The crescent moon drifts by in the deep night)

JS: "Tears of Mokpo," by Lee Nan Young, is, at least from my grandmother's generation, a song that resembles Korean national pride, pretty much…

CS: 어찌타 옛상처가 새로워진다

(And old wounds become new again)

JS: And the subliminal messaging behind it is very much mourning the separation and loss…of occupation.

CS: 못오는 님이면 이마음도 보낼 것을

(If I knew you couldn’t come back, I’d give up these feelings)

JS: And it is a soft song that could work for something like a lullaby. 

JS: And my mom actually did sing for me to fall asleep when I was little, and…

JS: …just the themes of, like, separation and loss resonate very much to what was happening in like the microcosm of my own home, but also like, you know, the Korean War, and the family that's left behind.

CS: (Voice rises in volume) 항구의 맺는 절개 목포의 사랑 

(The promises at the dock, the love of Mokpo.)

CATHY VO: The voice of Jaime's mother fades away.

CATHY VO: Then the Hormel Girls — four women dressed in military outfits and wearing these terrifying pig masks that cover every part of their face except for their mouths — sing Jaime a different kind of lullaby.

Hormel Girls: My SPAM's Protection, Assimilation Molds

HG: Someone's Pure American Mind

HG: So Separation’s Pains Are Made-up

HG: Shed the Past And Move-on

HG: Survive to Prosper And Make 

HG: Specially Processed American Meeeee

HG: AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

SOUND: A car horn blares

CATHY VO: From Jaime, I learned that these Hormel Girls are based on a group of real-life performers who worked for Jay Hormel to promote Spam and other products .

CATHY VO: And Jay Hormel, the character, is kind of a competing narrator. While the Korean shaman and the pig god — and even the Hormel Girls — are pushing Jaime to dig deeper into the true history of Spam... Jay Hormel shows up with a different message.

Jay Hormel: Yes, this patriotic pork is the epitome of United States’ tastes!

JH: More scrumptious than apple pie.

JH: Hardier than a burger, and certainly more American than French fries.

JH: You are what you eat.!

JH: Spam is you. You are Spam. And you are Spam.

JH: Yes, sir, you sir! And you miss, you’re Spam too!

Jay Hormel (joined by Hormel Girls): Spam! Spam! Spam, Spam, Spam SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM…

Sarah Shin, playing Young Jaime: (shouts) Why am I eating this?! 

Cathy: You bring in Jay Hormel... tell me more about that. How did you do research into this? What did you find out? Why did you decide to include this?

JS: I was first actually intrigued by the Hormel Girls and I didn't know they existed. I mean, I highly recommend anyone go check them out. You can even find some YouTube videos of them singing in the orchestra and...

JS: Yeah.

JS: And when I was reading more about them, I had learned that Jay Hormel actually was an aspiring musician and George Hormel, his father, who founded Hormel Foods, actually was totally against his music career .

JS: And…

Cathy: Oh!

JS: and, like, the Hormel girls was his passion project? You know?

JS: But then he was like, "But I'm still working for the family company."

JS: He was this marketing genius who married his passions with this family business, that he had a duty, a responsibility to.

JS: And I was just so intrigued by that, that...

JS: George Hormel passed the torch to Jay Hormel, and it's very much about, like, passing down this family legacy.

JS: And I was thinking like, as I'm thinking about Spam for myself, and how these Spam recipes has been passed down from my grandma to my mom, to me, I was like, "Oh, there's this parallel there."

Cathy: Hm.

JS: You know, of Spam being this, like, intergenerational food.

JS: So... like, that's also wrapped up in war.

JS: And, you know, in, in many ways, like I think about my ancestors and think like, they survived off of food like Spam.

JS: And so, so I already saw that immediate parallel and was just really intrigued and seeing, like, the similarities and very stark differences between that relationship.

Cathy: I feel like your play really opened my eyes to another whole side of Spam that I wasn't really aware of before, because I feel like we're probably used to hearing references to Spam as this, like, fun shared thing that a lot of us like to eat.

Cathy: But with your play, it seems like you're also pointing out that it's not just the food that connects us. It's war. It's colonization, and it's all the history that gets passed down from early generations whose lives were totally changed by America.

JS: Yeah. I think...

JS: When you're growing up Asian American and you're a child of immigrants in general, I would say... You come to America, and at least when I was growing up, there's this idea of like:

JS: America is, you know, a place where everyone may look different, but at the end of the day, you're American, and being American means you have XYZ values, and you eat this way and you talk this way, and you go to school this way.

JS: And then all those like weird differences in your family, well, that's just what they brought to this country, but once you come to our schools and speak our language, then you're just, like, going to be absorbed into the American fabric until we live in this, like, post-racial America.

JS: I don't know. That's how I felt growing up, like, that was what it meant to be American, just, like, you happen to look different, but we're all the same. (laughs)

JS: Well, you know, we're not the same, so then it's like, oh, well we see similarities with other Asian American people, and we're all made fun of the same way. 

JS: — the concept of just, like, what it meant to be Asian American, whether that is the fact that you go to taekwondo after school. Is that, is that what it means? That we eat similar things? Or like… 

JS: You know, do we all drink boba tea?

JS: I don't know, but having that specificity, being able to track why your parents came here, why your grandparents had your parents and then how, like all of that happened, and how you ended up in this country, like that specificity — and that specificity, it's different for everyone, but — 

Cathy: It is, yeah.

JS: — me personally, knowing that, helped me understand:

JS: That is the Asian-American experience.

JS: When I'm talking to my fellow Asian American friends, and they're like, "I don't know why my parents are this way, like, I don't understand why they like, you know, cope with things this way or that way."

JS: For me, I recognize like, oh wait, it's because there is this war trauma that we're all facing.

JS: And even if it's not war, just this craving to preserve a culture and identity in the past, but also, like, reinvent and discover and forge forward.

JS: I think, like, there's so many contradictions that immigrants in general and specifically Asian Americans deal with that are, are so... honestly it's just really painful.

JS: And I just want to acknowledge that, you know, like in the show, my cast, it's a seven person cast and, uh, six of the cast members are Asian American women.

JS: There's our lovely Nathaniel, who's playing our white male characters — Jay Hormel and the soldiers um — but yeah, my cast members – Sarah, Juella, Monica, Vanessa, Adrianna, Eunji, you know, Grace, they're all playing Asian American or Asian characters who grew up eating Spam throughout what I call like the Spam diaspora.

JS: So that's Okinawa, Guam, Hawaii, Korea, the Philippines...

JS: And these are all places where Spam is super duper popular because they have strong American military bases. You know, there's super strong U.S. Military presence there.

JS: It's all tied.

Cathy: Yeah.

JS: But at the end of the day, it's also interesting because like, Spam is a comfort food for Asian Americans. So while like it originates from this war trauma, it also is an incredibly comforting food for when we're feeling isolated here, ‘cause it's like, "I only eat Spam when my mom cooks it for me."

JS: You know, you don't have it at a restaurant or your friend's house, so it's like...

JS: When you're alone and there's that craving it's um, yeah, I just find it so interesting that it's –

Cathy: It's fascinating.

JS: — It's comforting here.

Cathy: Yeah.

Segment 4: The Challenges of Honoring the Past

CATHY VO: On the last two nights of Jaime's residency in Brooklyn, she invited her parents to come watch the work in progress.

CATHY VO: And since the scenes that were being performed focused on young Jaime and her maternal grandmother, none of the history that Jaime had gathered from her dad's side of the family was on stage that night.

CATHY VO: So her dad, Sonny, had a strong reaction when he realized the preview was over and Jaime's co-director came out to ask for feedback about these scenes. To him, it just wasn’t enough. 

Sunny Sunwoo: Here miss something, story here.

SS: I born in North Korea. I was two years old, right? I heard a lot of things.

SS: My father crossed over the Hangang River.

SS: America army airplane, they shoot them.

SS: Five people run away. Three people died there, because America army people, they don't know which one is the North Korean, which one is the South Korean.

SS: Uh, they moved from train. A lot of people fall down, they died there, a lot of people together, like Hell.

SS: They hit each other. They wanna... They don't care about the human life. They want to go up first. They don't care the other people. That's war time, anyway, you know.

SS: That's why I think here, missing something.

SS: So…

Jaime: [laughs] This is–

SS: No, no, I have to say something, nice. I want to make a…no, I want to help you, because I want to make a fun, like, real show.

Jaime: This is part of the show, what your story is at the end of our show.

Jaime: [Explains in Korean]

SS: Oh, I'm sorry.

Jaime: He's spoiling the end of the play. [laughs] 

Jaime: [Speaks in Korean to Sonny]

Cathy: What were you thinking when he was going on about, you know, wanting to share so much at that moment?

JS: My dad was honestly just responding to that feeling of like,

JS: "You told me this was supposed to be the show where, like, you get to share my story. Like I shared my story with you. Where's my story?"

JS: And I understand that, because you know, my dad has felt so unseen in America.

JS: And so for him, like, he's really proud that I'm doing this and sharing these stories, that to him, like, wouldn't be told otherwise.

Cathy: Right.

JS: And, and so for him, I think it was honestly, like, disappointing, where he saw this excerpt and, and I hadn't, like, included all these things, I was going to say, just because of this, like misunderstanding.

Cathy: Got it.

JS: I wanted to honor his part of the story. It just wasn't what we covered during our residency. Cause our residency was only, you know, 15 minutes of the show and it happens smack dab in the middle, and we had focused on my grandmother's oral history.

CATHY VO: What Sonny hadn’t seen yet was the ending of the play. When the character Jaime presents a trove of family photos that real-life Jaime got from her dad.

CATHY VO: Photos of her parents' clothing store. A photo of Sonny’s parents, Jaime’s grandparents, during their one visit to New York. And, the only surviving family picture taken in Pyongyang before the war, of Jaime’s grandmother resting in a field.

CATHY VO: It’s the emotional catharsis of the show, summing up Jaime’s long journey to uncover her family history.

CATHY VO: But for Sonny, that history and wartime trauma is not so much a mystery as it is a painful truth. I sat down to talk with him after the preview show, with Alex Lee, the shows' dramaturg and Korean language interpreter.

Cathy: How would you describe the show to somebody who's never heard of it before? What would you say?

Alex Lee (Interpreter): [Asks Sonny to answer in Korean]

SS: [Answers in Korean]

AL: Simply put, this is the tragedy of Korea.

AL: It's a very sad story and we're telling it in a fun, silly way, but it's a story that you tell while you're crying.

SS: That’s true.

Cathy: What do you hope people take away from watching this play?

SS: [Answers in Korean]

AL: Most humans don't know about what it's like to be at the bottom, like to live a bottom life, like whether you're Trump, or whoever, people don't usually know that, because the story of Spam is a very unhappy kind of tragedy. It's a tragedy of Korea...

SS: [Answers in Korean] ...

AL: ...and so everybody needs to know, after watching this play, what it is like to be poor, what it's like to be at the bottom.

SS: Yeah… My father, he crying so much at that time, he want to go back to North Korea.

SS: He don't want to live in South Korea!

SS: Why he live in South Korea?

SS: Like me. I don't like America either.

SS: Still, I want to go back Korea.

MUSIC: Melancholy, distant-feeling piano music begins

CATHY VO: Jaime reminded me that sometimes the Korean War is called the Forgotten War.

CATHY VO: Maybe because it wasn’t decisively won or lost… but it lingers on, through the American troops still in South Korea. The way news is written about North Korea. The families separated.

CATHY VO: Jaime’s dad, Sonny, wants people to hear his story, to feel recognized and known. And through all the research, interviewing and making pig head props, Jaime’s been excavating family history to show how unforgettable the war, and its effects, were.

MUSIC: Piano music fades out

CATHY VO: But still, the process shows just how much history is lost to her family.

JS: The person I've been dating for instance...

JS: He's a White American, and his mother's side, like they can trace their ancestry back to when they arrived to America, like as colonists. Right. And, and they have this huge family tree that they can trace.

JS: You can go to ancestry.com and look at all these documents, you know, he knows all about some, you know, random judge from a long time ago, you know, like — he knows so much about his past.

JS: And I don't.

JS: Even for this project, I did try to go to all those databases, I tried going to the library, and, you know, I'm sure this sounds silly to people who do this on the regular, but, like, I honestly thought I would find more...

JS: ...and then I thought I would maybe even find more in Korea, like, maybe I just needed to hire a translator and go to Korea… and… and then I just learned like...

JS: No. Of course it wouldn't be there because so much was destroyed during the war, and not only that, like, my grandmother was from North Korea, and then my father, his parents were both from North Korea.

JS: And my dad actually was born there and came down, and now his birth certificate, even in Korea, says he was born in Seoul when he wasn't.

JS: So I'm not even talking about art right now. I'm talking about just knowing who I am…

JS: Knowing about my ancestry. It's just, if I don't ask, I'm literally not gonna know.

Cathy: Mmhmm.

JS: The oral histories are all I have.

JS: So I, I just think like, it goes beyond art.

JS: It is deeply personal.

JS: Yes, I think it's nice if my dad sees this and says, "Oh, I feel seen now." Like, "Oh, you shared my story when I couldn't have," but honestly it's not even about that.

JS: It is about me. You know, it's about me living in this country trying to figure out like, when people are like, you know, "What does it mean to be Asian American?"

JS: I'm like, "I don't know!"

JS: You know, this is me figuring it out.

JS: This whole show is just me like...

JS: Yeah, processing! Right?

Cathy: Right.

JS: So I honestly don't know exactly what their reaction is going to be. I mean...

JS: We all have our own ways of, like, memorializing things or, like, coping with things.

JS: I think my goal for this show is to just dive in and be honest as possible, even though it's very surreal — there's like a lot of magic and music and puppets and it's, you know, it is a carnival of sorts — but like the facts, the facts of the show, are real.

JS: And honestly, like, I am terrified about what they'll think.

JS: Because I, I don't sugar coat things.

JS: It was truly a war at home when I was growing up. And I love both my parents, I have a good relationship with both of them now...

JS: But they'll have very different experiences of this show and they'll likely see it on separate nights, you know?

Cathy: Yeah.

MUSIC: Dreamy synth music softly crescendos

Cathy: I love how you summarized your show as being honest and, and processing.

Cathy: And I can't wait to see the whole thing. I really can't. I'm so excited.

Cathy: So thank you so much for sharing.

JS: Yeah.

MUSIC: Synth music blooms into a moody hip hop beat

CREDITS

CATHY VO: This episode was produced by James Boo.

CATHY VO: We were edited by Julia Shu, with help from Harsha Nahata.

CATHY VO: And we were fact checked by Tiffany Bui and Harsha Nahata.

CATHY VO: All of the on-stage sound that you heard in this episode were taken directly from the rehearsals and work-in-progress performances at BRIC in downtown Brooklyn. Big thanks to Jaime Sunwoo, Matt Chilton, Jane Jung, and Zoe-Eve Rhinehart for helping us record behind the scenes.

CATHY VO: If you're in New York, then you can actually see the live debut of Specially Processed American Me! From January 27 to February 19 at Dixon Place in Manhattan. For details and tickets, check out speciallyprocessed.com and follow the play @speciallyprocessed on social media.

CATHY VO: Self Evident is a Studiotobe production. Our Executive Producer is Ken Ikeda.

CATHY VO: This episode was made with support from PRX and the Google Podcast Creator Program — and, of course, our listener community.

CATHY VO: Speaking of which! The associate producer of this episode is one of our longtime listener members, Wanda Ikeda. Thanks so much for supporting our work.

CATHY VO: And if you want to support our work, please write a positive review for Self Evident on Apple Podcasts. It really helps other folks find the show.

CATHY VO: I'm Cathy Erway. Let's talk soon. Until then, keep sending me your favorite Spam recipes.

MUSIC: Hip-hop beat ends with a long, ringing cymbal