Kristin Leeʼs We Mend With Gold
convincing you to educate yourself on asian american experiences
I pick on conservatives all the time, but Iʼm going after white progressives in this one. In the progressive circles I run in, you will get called out for ignorance or perpetuation of anti-Black racism and homophobia—as you well should! Youʼll also likely get corrected if you arenʼt educated regarding native people, disability, or climate change. Again—this correction is warranted and should be accepted as a gift. But you can be really freaking ignorant concerning Asian history, Asian immigration, Asian Americans, Asian art, Asian theology, and all things AAPI, and white progressives wonʼt even notice.
If I sound holier-than-thou, know that Iʼve had a journey. When friends suggested to me sixteen years ago that I meet my now-husband for a blind date, my first words—to my shame—were, ʼYou mean that Asian guy from [church name]?ʼ It wasnʼt like ʼOooo that hot Asian guy?ʼ more like ʼHuh…an Asian guy? Never thought about it.ʼ It wasnʼt disinterest, but it was a total lack of notice.
As Simon and I started dating and fell in love, I slowly learned about Korean culture. I learned to take my shoes off when I entered his condo or his parentsʼ house. I experienced what it was like to be an ethnic minority when I attended a 300-person wedding in which I was the only white guest. I had Thanksgiving dinner seated on the floor at a low table loaded up with banchan, and celebrated New Yearʼs with a bowl of tteokguk. I learned why Koreans and Japanese struggle to get along. I started building my spice tolerance for kimchi, which I now eat by choice, not to be polite.
We got married and had three beautiful half-Korean, half-Western European children. I took my husbandʼs last name, and for the last fifteen years, strangers have asked me if KIM is my first name or last name. Sometimes after I tell them, they say, ʼI couldnʼt have known, since you have two first names!ʼ I donʼt, though. Kim is an extremely common Korean surname. Itʼs only a ʼfirst nameʼ with an exclusively Western lens. White people sometimes tell me, ʼOh my gosh, I met someone who reminds me so much of Simon!ʼ They never look like my husband. They are simply also Asian.
In 2024 we made the trip to South Korea—the five of us, my in-laws, my brother-in-ław and his wife and three kids, and my sister-in-lawʼs mother. We visited Seoul and Jeju Island, and finished up in Tokyo, where my Japanese sister-in-law showed us the sights. We visited the DMZ (demilitarized zone) where South Korea meets North Korea and were able to see NK from the observation deck, gazing into a land where my children have long-lost cousins who live under a brutal regime. We visited Jeju Folk Village, an ethnographic museum that preserves 19th-century life. You can walk through thatched houses (choga), wash clothes on washboards, and see the outhouses (dotongsi) where human waste fell into the black pig enclosures below. I ignorantly thought that I was experiencing a lifestyle only from the 19th century, but my mother-in-law informed us that she spent the first twelve years of her life in a community exactly like the folk village, so ravaged was South Korea from the Northʼs invasion. In Japan, amidst sumo wrestling and sushi and the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world, I got glimpses into the mix of feelings the visit created for my in-ławs, and how those feelings affected my SIL.
I tried to hold it all, the complexity of human beings, the distinct beauty of both Korean and Japanese culture, the way the past sticks around, and the way a family of Korean immigrants expanded, however clumsily, to include Japanese and European blood in its descendents.
All of this played in my mind as I read Kristin T. Leeʼs We Mend With Gold. Itʼs hard to know where to start with this beautiful, important book, so in no particular order, hereʼs what I want you to know:
You will be introduced to so many amazing Asian writers and theologians, like Cathy Park Hong, Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Soong-Chan Rah, Daniel D. Lee, Mihee Kim-Kort, Michael Amaladoss, Julia Lee, and Jay Caspian Kang.
Lee is very clear from the outset that Asian Americans are not a monolith. She naturally discusses her own experience as a Chinese American, but is very intentional about including voices and stories from Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, India, Taiwan, the Philippines, and more. Youʼll read about the Khmer Rouge, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanʼs occupation of Korea, and the pain that Asian Americans exęrience from the expectation that they be “allies, not stakeholders” in the national conversation on racism.
Just as Christians are broadened by understanding how Black and queer experiences inform Scripture (e.g. The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone, the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 as an illustration of Godʼs love for gender/sexual minorities), there is a biblical richness to be discovered through an Asian lens. Consider Joseph, who was displaced to another country and worked very hard and endured great hardships, and was eventually able to save his family from famine (Genesis 47). Lee writes that her familyʼs immigration story is reflected in Josephʼs journey, and I recognize my husbandʼs family in the biblical passage too. Josephʼs story now makes me think of my in-laws who worked long hours in their dry cleaning business to support their two sons, and my in-laws likewise bring Joseph to mind.
Youʼll get to read about Leeʼs faith deconstruction and evolving Christianity early in the book (Iʼm a sucker for those stories).
The title of her book is a nod to kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, highlighting the healing of fractures instead of pretending that brokenness doesnʼt happen. You need to understand that just as Koreans have a painful history with Japan, so does China. It is so meaningful that she not only thoughtfully explores her journey from resentment to a hard-won peace with the Japanese people in her book, but honors them by titling her work with a nod to their art form.
As much as Lee recognizes the profound gifts of the Asian immigrant church—for example, a profound understanding of family and the collective—she also critiques her own. Iʼm not going to directly comment on the correctives Lee offers to Asian American Christians because itʼs not my place as a white woman. That said, as someone who has married into an Asian American family, has Asian American in-laws and an Asian American husband and children, it was lovely to read her nuanced take. This is also important for the average non-Asian reader who doesnʼt have my proximity—Asians are so much more than the model minority caricature. Like all people, they both experience and cause wounds, and they deserve to be known in their full humanity.
Like any book I would recommend to you, We Mend With Gold is anti-racist, feminist, LGBTQIA inclusive, and embracing of all faiths. It is very much a Christian book, but if Christianity is part of your story at all, I recommend you give it a try, even if you no longer call yourself a Christian. Part of deconstructing white Christianity is reading about non-white Christianity.
Let me know if you read the book and what you thought about it! And of course, follow and subscribe to Kristin T. Lee!
Very interesting!
Halley, thank you so much for sharing this book and your experiences! Putting this at the top of my TBR list.