Abstract
This article is an autoethnodrama that explores the reminiscences by two authors’ immigration experiences as an international student and the dependent spouse. The story we will tell evokes how immigrant students’ adjustment requires an endless border-crossing that exists in geographical, cultural, and everyday-life levels. Indeed, while some agonies of international students were documented, the struggle of their family members, which would undergo even more troubling experience, has been less known to both public as well as academia. Moreover, by choosing the ethnodrama, the play seeks the possibility of empathetic engagement from the audience. With the dialogues based on spoken as well as unspoken performance, this script attempts to visualize the affective presence of the unseen, particularly the unfocalized immigration story of F-2, the spouse visa of international students, who calling themselves as “ghosts.”
Prologue: About the Ghostness
In this article, we evoke an autoethnodrama from two author’s lived experience, followed by a postscriptum that contextualizes this piece with a border spectrum and the issue of voice in qualitative research. Jonny Saldaña (2008b) defines autoethnodrama, as a variant of the form, narrates the writer’s “personal experiences and memories” (p. 177). Here we wish to be able to narrate our experience of immigration that required multiple and continuous crossings of the borders in-between the geographical border between nations, the differences in everyday life between that as a middle-class employee to a graduate student, as well as the one between a high-salary professional to a housewife who could not get an independent account in the bank. Each crossing was neither staged once nor short-period time. It has been enduring, extant, open-ended, and ongoing experience in our 5 years in the United States. While the experience commonly termed as “negotiation” (Amaya, 2007, p. 195) to explain such experience, we like to underline the precarity of gender and ethnicity in the global education market which mark ourselves to a weaker side.
Playscript: Echoing Ghost
Cast of Characters
YOUNGKWAN: A South Korean national. Graduate student in the United States. The mid-30s.
JUNGWOO: Wife of YOUNGKWAN. South Korean. The mid-30s. Worked as an MD in her home country. Unemployed in the United States with F-2 Visa.
Voice: Multiple characters (voice only).
Time and Place
Champaign, Illinois, United States / The Present.
Setting, Light, and Sound
An open stage presumably empty. The play sometimes requires transitioning lights, music, and sound effects.
[A clip of a Mongolian Throat singing appears on the screen then plays.]
[YOUNGKWAN appears on the stage.]
YOUNGKWAN: (to audience) There is a dustcover inside my closet, covering a suit. The suit is gray, checker-patterned, and tailored for my body’s shape. On the left lies a pair of shoes, hand-made and from England, along with two neckties from Ermenegildo Zegna.
[JUNGWOO appears on the stage with a dim fluorescent lighting.]
JUNGWOO: (to audience) You hear me?
I have a dustcover inside my closet too. It covers a set of hanbok, the traditional Korean costume. It consists of two skirts, two coats, one shirt, one vest, and one headpiece. They were made as if someone colored them as vividly as possible—so each piece dyed as blue, yellow, red, orange, white, and so on. On the right lies a pair of shoes, which is also traditional, made of leather, very rigid—so sometimes it’s painful to put my toes inside.
YOUNGKWAN: (to audience) The first time I wore that suit was my wedding ceremony as well, which was also the last time I wore them.
JUNGWOO: (Looking at YOUNGKWAN) No. No. You wore them pretty recently. Don’t you remember the day?
YOUNGKWAN: (Ignoring Jungwoo, continue to speak to audience) 1 When we crossed the border, JUNGWOO and I attempted to pack our things as tidy and compact as possible. We abandoned all of our books, CDs, and other clutter we had collected and loved a lot. But that suits; that thing were with my six-month-old son’s diapers and a picture of our family which my mother demanded we bring. I knew, and JUNGWOO may have also known, that we would not have many opportunities to remove the dustcover. And it was true: the suit had never been out of the dust cover and would not be for a long while.
JUNGWOO: (Looking at YOUNGKWAN for a moment, then looking at audience) Well, my mother-in-law, The mother of my husband, YOUNGKWAN, brought my hanbok to the U.S. for my son’s first birthday. The hanbok was for a precise purpose: I was supposed to wear those before two cameras.
(to YOUNGKWAN) And, there, you wore that suit. I was there, standing next to you, wearing that stupid yellow, red and white costume. Here, look at this picture—you, with your fancy gray, checker-patterned suit, are standing next to me. Even though that was not the event you dreamed of when you dragged that suit, you wore it. I was there wearing the hanbok.
Do they know that I didn’t pack the hanbok before our departure?
[The sound of car-driving begins to play as background.]
YOUNGKWAN: (to audience) On September 11, 2013, taking I-57 south to Tuscola, I thought there would be no radio stations broadcasting anything other than country music. I thought, I would never listen the music like Mongolian Tuvan throat singing. Surrounded by cornfields, I was heading to the city’s DMV to get my driver’s license. I choose there because I heard they are more friendly to foreigners. I had failed four times already. In my home country, I’d driven various cars for more than fifteen years without a single dent. The last time, the examiner told me the reason why I failed.
VOICE: You are too cautious on the road.
YOUNGKWAN: (to audience) Of course, I was cautious.
JUNGWOO: (to YOUNGKWAN) At that time, I was waiting for you to come back home. I used to be waiting for you to come back, from your school, from your meeting, from your socializing, hoping I could be listening that stupid country music on radio with you.
I mean, don’t you agree that I am the one who needs the license more than you? I know you would be busy going to campus, reading things that, in my perspective, have no practical purpose. I am the one who is supposed to pick our son up from daycare or go to Meijer 2 with the shopping list.
Anyway, do you think that they know that I didn’t pack the hanbok in purpose? It was because, we were going to the U.S., out of South Korean neo-Confucius customs. Why would I need to bring those costume then? I was escaping!
YOUNGKWAN: (to audience) I was cautious; I had to. I drove our 14-year-old car slowly, like I put on the dustcover over my suit carefully. I felt that such carefulness might be not enough, always.
For the double borders I crossed, double subjections were required. The suits and being cautious on the road—these were my tightrope walker’s balancing pole to cross double borders: from South Korea to U.S., and from average company workers to academia. I didn’t want to fall. So I was cautious. But I just didn’t know being cautious could be a reason to fall.
JUNGWOO: (to audience) I was waiting. What else could I do? They categorized my existence, my being in the world, to be depended on you. My visa, coded F-2 refers to a spouse of F-1, category for the international student. F-2 legalized my nothingness. I remember the exact date: Aug 7, 2013. During the 12-hour flight from Incheon to Chicago, my sense of self was being lost. At immigration control at the airport, I was stamped as a ghost. Here, surrounded by countless corns, I cannot open a bank account. I cannot get a driver’s license. The only ID I could use in this country was my passport, which means I should bring that at all times.
We, F-2 visa holders, call each other as having the visa for ghosts. We are less than legal aliens; we are legal ghosts. So, I got nothing to do without waiting for him on September 11, 2013, wishing him, (pointing YOUNGKWAN) YOU, to get to the end of his tightrope safely. But the rope you were crossing, that had never been prepared before me. I had no chance to fall from that. I’ve been drifting like a drop of oil on the water.
YOUNGKWAN: (to audience) Once, I believed that one can erase the self and transfer to another. But the realization came shortly. In my first class at Goldsmiths, London, one of the first articles for new MA students was written by Frank Webster, the former Head of CCCS 3 of the University of Birmingham. His memoir to explain the circumstance of sudden closure of CCCS certainly points out a major problem. That was, Me.
VOICE: for years, Birmingham offered a masters in cultural studies that accepted, from around 100 applicants, 20 or so of the year-long course.
YOUNGKWAN: I and Nicole, a Taiwanese girl from same degree course, read these lines just before class began and shrugged our shoulders at the implication.
VOICE: The Birmingham teachers felt that the masters work was at a lower level than that offered to their own highly able undergraduate students. (Webster, 2004, p. 875)
JUNGWOO: (to YOUNGKWAN) You have to remember this.
YOUNGKWAN: (to audience) I once asked about Nicole, why she selected her English name as such. She answered, “because I like Nicole Kidman.” Her major was philosophy with a specialization in medieval patristic philosophy. Now I forget her Taiwanese name.
JUNGWOO: (to audience) Listen! You have to remember this. Before my ghostly metamorphosis, I was a doctor. I spent 11 years of medical training. My specialty was infectious diseases. People needed me. They listened very carefully when I spoke to them.
[Now, the sound of car-driving has moving picture.]
JUNGWOO: (Looking at YOUNGKWAN, Continued) Then after the crossing border, I became nothing. I didn’t come as your helpless dependent. I never wanted to be a ghost. I never wanted to end up something like this after all that years. But, while being here is legal, doing anything seems to be illegal.
YOUNGKWAN: (to audience) I remember on August 31, 2014, while driving down Curtis Road to my little son’s daycare center, Mongolian throat singing was aired live on the radio, saying he will be staged at this university’s concert hall. Now I know there are several “other” channels in Champaign where I can listen to Black Music, College-rock, World Music, Dream-pop, and African Music. Those varieties may come from the city’s particular population. I am part of those varieties.
But still, I wonder, what brought that guy to this cornfield. What makes him on journey? Who wants him to be here? Do they really understanding what he is singing? Do they really enjoy this?
JUNGWOO: (to audience) Then not a long after our leave, [pointing Youngkwan] his parents brought that hanbok. So I wore that anyway, because I could not find what made me to resist. I know my in-laws were dragging those big suitcases with my hanbok, with a bunch of toys for my son and with some traditional medicines for me. So it’s okay to wear it, if the only reason was those hassles.
They said my wellbeing is really important to them. How was I supposed to know that they thought my condition mattered because I had to support my husband who is their son, and my son who is their grandson? Perhaps now, even people in South Korea began to see me as a dependent.
Maybe, I truly become an unfortunate ghost, here and there anyway.
YOUNGKWAN: (to audience) And why, the institution was eager to have such diversity? This is a society, anyway, which elects one of them always. Let me ask you. Do you remember the Indian guy, seating just right next to you? Do you remember the moment we were nodding together when the professor is saying something like “post-” things—post structuralism, post modernism, post colonialism, and etc., as if we all understood and agreed. But, wait, how much do you know that guy’s “post-Champaign”?
You have to remember: there is the driver’s hand, always, tuning their radio channels. The choice is theirs, not me. Scholars say who I am is in endless negotiation. Some call these movements as performativity. Yes, I experience this notion while speaking in English. I feel I move my tongue differently, trying hard to create a different tone of voice. The choice is theirs, not me, always. I am losing this game, against the driver’s hand.
JUNGWOO: (to YOUNGKWAN) Can a ghost be in negotiations? Can a ghost make a difference? Can a ghost like me save a person again? If there were a child fall from a ride in playground, would those blond hair moms listen to me? Can people hear what a ghost says? Do they know that I didn’t pack the hanbok before our departure?
(Looking at the audience) Or am I even on stage? Do I really have a voice? Can you hear me now? Do you think they know that I didn’t pack the hanbok before our departure? Does my son remember that his mom was a doctor, who finished 12 long years of difficult training?
YOUNGKWAN: (Looking at the audience) Frank Webster’s concern, or blame if you like, may be a truth. But that is not important. From the moment I read this article, I was haunted by his perception. I feared my teachers, my colleagues, even my students see me as “Ill-equipped foreigners” and “a remarkable income generator”—I was fearful as if they are my new names.
So, I practiced calling South Korea “that country” instead of “my country.” I wrote about [in French accent] Descartes; I discussed [in German accent] Walter Benjamin. I joined a group of students even though I could barely understand what they were talking with their strong Cockney accents.
JUNGWOO: (to Audience, calmly) You hear me, right?
[Now in the clip, the music on the radio changed into songs of Mongolian Throat singing again.]
YOUNGKWAN: (Looking at the audience) Then in 2008, I graduated. We hugged each other on the last day of the school. Then, the tune was changed so quickly by the driver’s hand. I wonder what my colleagues are listening to right now, and I have no way to fulfill my wonder. I suspected. After the graduation, we are no longer a “remarkable income generator.” Would they remember me otherwise?
Marx wrote that history . . .
JUNGWOO: (Interrupting YOUNGKWAN, to Audience) I wish I could have a valid license, so instead of listening your complains over nights, you know, I could’ve save people,
YOUNGKWAN: (Looking at the audience) Marx wrote that history “repeats itself.”
I can imagine my repeated ending here in Champaign. When it comes, that suits, my very precious Western apparatus, should be removed from its dustcover. After the final presentation, people may come to me, saying something like “interesting” or “impressive.”
That night, we will drink a beer to celebrate that I finally fulfill my duty: to add “Mongolian” voice to this campus although temporarily.
JUNGWOO: (to audience) But that day would never be given to me. I only have nights with fireflies with their luminous, but faint lights. On March 6, 2014, after nearly a year of frustration of being a ghost, being a denied body, I received an email from one of the many universities that I applied to.
YOUNGKWAN: (to audience) Then a day after, the small wheel would be moved so easily by the driver’s hand, channeling another sound to be heard. It is time to go back to my Ger, my sweet Mongolian tent surrounded by camels, sheep, and lambs I own.
VOICE: DEAR JUNGWOO LEE,
You are receiving this message from the office of international services, because you have been identified as an admitted international student to a degree program in the Johns Hopkins university, Bloomberg School of Public Health . . .
YOUNGKWAN: (to audience) Do they even remember that I am from South Korea? Do they remember the moment when we nod our head together? Would I remember the days in Champaign as “surely the campus was full of fine glasses and lots of squirrels?” So history repeats itself, but is it tragedy or farce in this time?
Can you hear me? Can you hear my weird throat singing?
By the way, someone called me “nee-hao” 4 today: Do you think I should learn Chinese, another negotiation, in order to be heard?
VOICE: As an international student, you will need to secure an F-1 student visa in order to study in the United States . . .
YOUNGKWAN: (to audience) Now I can see a dustcover inside my wife’s closet, which locate very next to mine. It covers a set of hanbok. When she left this house to Baltimore before this summer, she made a list which she is really good at. And hanbok was never included in consideration. Instead, we went to Banana Republic. Her new suits was a fairly good, solid black jacket and a white shirt she picked. And I recommended her to be cautious on the road.
So it goes.
JUNGWOO: (to audience) So it goes. So it goes for me. But I don’t know about all the others—the us, the ghosts. Luckily I was reincarnated. But I really don’t know for the others. [Out of the stage]
YOUNGKWAN: (to audience) Negotiation may refer to the call of retreat. For me, it somehow delivers the nuance that we are losing, just as I brought those suits, as the Mongolian throat singer traveled to this small city, as my dear friend Nicole’s Taiwanese name was forgotten. Those were, perhaps, our art of deal. But we know who is always winning. I am no Mongolian. I don’t have a Ger, nor camels, sheep, and lambs. But I know these would not be cared.
Marx wrote that history “repeats itself, first as tragedy then as farce.” I hope this time it comes as farce, at least.
[DARK]
[End of play]
Postscriptum
On Writing About the Ghosts
Every year more than 100,000 new graduate students arrive in the United States (126,516 in 2015/2016, and 124,888 in 2016/2017) to find their way of studying (Institute of International Education, 2016). The majority of international students enter the United States on an F-1 visa, a nonimmigrant visa assigned for the specific purpose of higher education (Institute of International Education, 2016). While the United States remained the most favorable destination of higher education (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 2017) for the marketability of the degree (Lancee & Bol, 2017; McMahon, 1992) and the resourceful opportunities of funding (Lochtie, 2016; McMahon, 1992), there has been ongoing anxiety as they immigrate from different culture of academia as well as daily life. Multiple studies have reported the status of international students’ vulnerability to their host’s culture, facing in adjusting their lives to the United States (Alsahafi & Shin, 2017; Hagedorn & Ren, 2012; Kagan & Cohen, 1990).
To share the point of view from the one who is experiencing such a burden of a new international student, at first this work was developed as an autoethnography of Youngkwan. In Fall 2014, Youngkwan took a class by Norman K. Denzin in the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, who asked all the student to develop an autoethnographic work from an epiphanic moment of their life which has a social implication. Youngkwan wrote his piece on the current struggle of immigration. He felt the new environment was challenging to reshape his identity, and this caused him to lost where he belonged. Such challenges were often unexpectedly microlevel, such as the driving test narrated above, that is often misapprehended as one of universal skill, but in fact, should be refined by newly given cultural context. The earlier draft of this work was mono-autoethnodrama reflected his feeling of venerability, from the realization of migrating Self that being Othered.
Then, Youngkwan came to realize that this being othered should not be solely his experience. Jungwoo was experiencing the case could be worse as her endeavor was from more socially isolated boundary and her issue can hardly be vocalized. Jungwoo’s feeling of insecurity and dislocation from the foreign land, whose legally categorized as a “dependent” spouse of an international student. Although an increasing number of spouses accompany international students to the United States, the presence of them was not visibly noticeable. Spouses of F-1 students can join as F-2 visa holders if they can document a legal marriage between members of the opposite sex. One of the most important characteristics of the F-2 visa status is that individuals are unable to seek work or enroll as degree-seeking students and are only allowed to engage in recreational or voluntary activities outside of the home (De Verthelyi, 1995; Lim, 2012). They cannot obtain a social security number, which is required of any nonimmigrant to engage in lawful employment within the USA. Spouses often were observed not having a network of support (Martens & Grant, 2008; Shaffer & Harrison, 2001). They may also struggle with issues of self-esteem and identity, as their careers are often put on hold so that they can accompany their partner (De Verthelyi, 1995; Martens & Grant, 2008). While male international students benefit professionally from the U.S. educational system, the current discourse on immigration has seldom sought to examine how the organization of immigration processes impacts the career and professional trajectory of their wives.
These restrictions ensure that for the spouses of international students, their stay in the United States is entirely contingent on their partner’s academic plans and career aspirations. For instance, in the state of Illinois, an immigrant with an F-2 visa has limited access to get the driving license, a bank account, a lease contract, and an academic opportunity. Limited physical and social mobility drawn by such legal impediments discouraged Jungwoo’s social engagement in the United States. Also as the living expense from the university which Youngkwan was hired provided only 50% of the anticipated expenditure of living while no one in F-1 and F-2 was allowed to get a job otherwise, economic hardship contributed Jungwoo’s sense of isolation. For instance, using a local childcare service would cost US$185 per week, that could take more than 50% of the total income of Youngkwan, which would make impossible to do such. The sense of the end of career and the feeling of apprehension for an insecure future would aggravate depression.
Furthermore, except few exemplary studies (Bordoloi, 2015; Kim, 2010; Lim, 2012; Martens & Grant, 2008; Teshome & Osei-Kofi, 2012), the academic research literature has rarely focused on the experiences of the spouses of international students. While the experience of Youngkwan could found a secure space in the classroom, or a relatively friendly academic conference, representatively ICQI (International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry), Jungwoo had nowhere to speak her struggle in any stage to raise an issue about her situation. Realizing this, Youngkwan asked Jungwoo to write her testimony.
Thoughts on Methodology
This article aims to portray the experience of adjusting foreign country experience from the voice of a temporal immigrant student and his spouse. Based on this, this ethnodrama has the following structure. Two main characters, Youngkwan and Jungwoo, on the stage speak their experience to the audience. While Youngkwan narrates his experience of looking at the audience directly, Jungwoo’s dialogues gathered from various range, personal journals, her letter, and occasional conversation with her husband attempted to represent her double anxiety: She asked her experience of physical and social isolation to be confirmed, firstly by Youngkwan, then by the audience at the verge of fear of losing the voice. Youngkwan’s unresponsive to Jungwoo was intended to draw inability of empathetic response from F-1, who has their own struggle but also provided at least a small social stage, to F-2, self-calling “Ghosts,” invisible, unspoken, not-represented and marginally existed beings.
In her famously circulated essay, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1994) asked the very possibility of Can the Subaltern Speak? Here, she rejects the potential of the political voice of women within certain conditions and attempts to trace the causes of the economic impoverishment of rural-based women of color within this setting. As such, her analysis becomes relevant to the predicament of women, especially the difficulty of economically marginalized. Spivak’s consistent attempt has been highlighted to find a critical vocabulary that is appropriate to describe the experiences, voices, and histories of individuals historically dispossessed and exploited by European colonialism. While the situation of her depiction was more on postcolonial context, concerning the social-economic status of such group, the point delineates similar lesson that their voices are not easy to hear as it is not easy to be spoken at the first place.
Given this, this writing attempts to deliver the not-patronized, unfiltered voice of emotive memories of immigration and at the same time to define present behaviors out of those previous experiences in different cultural settings. As Spivak rightfully questioned, the precise issue here remains as the voice. While previous studies on immigrant students’ spouses identified their problems above, the voice and view of research were mostly represented not by themselves. Most authors of those articles tend to be subjective in their illustration of difficulties by the researchers who already in academia, who presumptively not an F-2 visa holder by themselves (Interview: Lim, 2012; Martens & Grant, 2008; Teshome & Osei-Kofi, 2012; Discourse Analysis: Kim, 2010; Institutional Ethnography: Bordoloi, 2015).
To provide a more direct voice on this issue, this play was written to present the genre of ethnodrama as academic writing. In his pioneering book on this methodology, Johnny Saldaña (2005) defines an ethnodrama as follows: Ethnotheatre employs the traditional craft and artistic techniques of theatre production to mount for an audience a live performance event of research participants’ experiences and/or the researcher’s interpretations of data . . . The goal is to investigate a particular facet of the human condition for purposes of adapting those observations and insights into a performance medium. Simply put, this is preparatory fieldwork for theatrical production work. (pp. 1-2)
Saldaña wants to response one of the central issues in methodology, primarily rooted in the discipline of social science. The methodology should be considered as helpful in responding to two of the central struggles facing any scholars of human dealing with the language. Even in qualitative research, we tend to follow the manner of using language that is descriptive, seemingly neutral, however from the reproductive apparatus of predominant power/knowledge. As the language would unavoidably draw the power relations between the researchers and participants, it is necessary to find a proper tool of navigation with decolonizing this uneven possibility of being staged. Ethnodrama, as providing a natural transcription with a dialogic relationship between different characters, can contribute to lessening the issue of unevenness that often depicted in social researches in academia (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011; Weiner-Levy & Popper-Giveon, 2012). While ethnodrama adapts ethnographic research data, the language scripted in a play form to be performed more lively articulated so the word can challenge privilege, silencing, misrepresentation, inequity, and help incite people to engage difficult questions that research. This also can contribute the literature’s accessibility to reach expanded audiences, including those who participate and who live outside of academia (Ares, 2016; Saldaña, 2005, 2008a, 2010, 2017).
Also, while revoking the social event with the environment in dialogues, the words are possibly more empathetic to the site of research. By disseminating research findings with the lively presented voice of the participants, the roles afforded participants and audience can create a venue in which emotional connections and closeness of data and experience are highlighted. With this, ethnodrama writings recognize the influence that people have on others as co-performers and places control of meaning making with the individual participant (Denzin, 2003). The power of this form of theatre is to “express the detail and depth of human experience including the sub-texts of thought and emotion” that allows an audience to experience the complex nature of everyday life (Llewellyn, Gilbourne, & Triggs, 2011, p. 522). Crucial to this process is the move from the cognitive to the emotional realm, where the attitudes and feelings of the audience can be tapped into to stimulate engagement (Cossa, 1996). As researching emotion and memory have become new paradigms of understanding our society, this methodology would be an appropriate way in qualitative research to explore how one thought, felt, and reacted in reality. Ethnodrama is also able to deliver the characters’ inner and interpersonal emotion, such as anxiety, trauma, and feeling of loss.While traditional methodology draws the voice between the lines of the research article, ethnodrama can be more direct, engaging, and participatory at best.
We hope this autoethnodrama draws primarily from the writers’ personal experiences and memories, which are then documented as a monologue intended for performance (Knowles & Cole, 2008; Saldaña, 2008b). While some ethnodramas were more focused on inscribing collected data into the form of dialogues, which often resulted in “‘fatiguing’ and even ‘boring’” (Saldaña, 2010, para. 6), this play intended to add more theatricality from creating the tension. Pioneering texts in ethnodrama have been more concentrated in the verbal exchanges between appearing characters. While it efficiently reaches to the audience, such ways resulted in a simple composition developed around two role-characters—an interviewer and an interviewee. In dramatic theory, speech is only one among the other multiple tools (Elam, 2001; Paraskeva & Taxidou, 2013). Characters’ tension often derived from emotive and anxious mental status can also be represented in nonverbal cues. In this play, Jungwoo present in the stage physically. However, to draw her fainted recognizability in given sociocultural environment, the only other character in the stage, her husband, Youngkwan, reacted as if her presence were concealed. Jungwoo also requests the audiences’ confirmation whether they can see appearance and listen to her voice as she spoke to them. By staging this incommunicability, we can expect this would create a more open space where the audience can identify themselves as they are equal participants in drama.
End(less)
There should be no conclusion in this article. Jungwoo opted out her status to F-1 from the summer of 2015, now going back to South Korea for her career, lived there until now. Meanwhile, Youngkwan is still encountering wives of other international students, who were usually speaking but quiet, smiling but not laughing, talking about their children in the United States, but not about themselves. Over the last 5 years of staying, some he met went back to South Korea, including few divorced. The chapter for two authors ended, but there should be an ongoing struggle on a daily basis, especially in the era of Trump administration. Finding a political or administrative recommendation would be too luxurious to this article’s authors. After all, we are aliens, remarkable income-generators, who have no right to vote, the least possibility of having a representative in social reality. We will be remained invisible, easily forgotten, and unvocalized. We can just ask politely, to them, to ourselves, as well as to you, if you wish to listen what they could possibly saying about not having a tightrope prepared.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.