I was adopted from Korea and so my birthmother gave me my first and middle name, “Annah Kim” or “Kim, Annah.” I was adopted into the U.S. when I was 6 months old. The adoption agency said, “You should keep a portion of her Korean heritage in her life for the rest of her life” so they kept that name. My last name is Nelson-Feeney. Nelson is from my mom and Feeney is from my dad. They both adopted me. When I was 3, they divorced. It was a long history of abuse that my mom had suffered with my father but she had, due to her own reasons, wanted to stay in the marriage. He had been having an affair with one of his clients and so he left us on Christmas Eve to go with his new family. He also had pretty severe bipolar disorder so I’ve never really had much of a relationship with him.

I grew up in Cape Cod, Massachusetts which was a very White place. My mom always told me that I was adopted. We lived with my aunt and uncle and my cousin Jonas, who’s adopted from Peru. I didn’t really see myself as being Korean for a while. In high school I had the “Fasian” or “fake Asian” nickname, and I owned that, and then I went to college and didn’t have any Korean friends. Then over time, I started to make more Korean friends and they were what I’d call the “weird Koreans,” the ones that don’t fit the mold. So they’re already not judging you based on these preconceived notions of what it means to be Korean and what it means to be Korean American, which I feel like there’s a hierarchy for Asian Americans in terms of how “Asian” you are being an American. So I really didn’t ever feel that close to being Korean just because I was rejected by almost all of them. I didn’t even know that POC meant “Person of Color” until I moved to Seattle. I didn’t really have the language to talk about it so when I heard that term, I’m like, I’m going to own this. I’m just a Person of Color. That’s vague enough for me. That’s a home that I can reside in that has big enough walls―I’ll never hit the outside. And then very recently, I decided that now I’m Korean. It’s for me. It’s not for anyone else. I don’t need to prove it to anyone. And I think that was really cemented when I went to Korea and it just felt easy.

Each part of my name has a pretty significant gravity to it. “Annah Kim,” my Korean birth name implicates a lot of trauma, being abandoned, adopted, and so forth―all the race pieces kind of tied into that. My mom obviously means a lot to me and so the “Nelson” piece would never go away. I actually would never drop the “Feeney” part either. All the things that’s he’s done to my mother or to myself over the years just made me who I am today. It’s made me a stronger person, it’s given me a deeper appreciation for mental health and awareness…that’s just a big portion or my life and who I am. All these pieces create a kind of a hodgepodge of things and I absolutely love my name.