Three Generations
Fiction by Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka & Printmaking by Pearlyn Tan
PUBLISHED IN BUCKMAN JOURNAL: Cluster
Dedicated to Tamara Abu Dayer
Three generations in one body: you, an egg inside a fetus; the fetus, which is your mother; and your host, your mother’s mother, your halmeoni.
It is 1958. The air outside is cold, but you do not know this, only the muffled shudder of your halmeoni’s body as she curls next to your harabeoji for heat, both of them bundled in their thin blanket. It is twilight, just before dawn. Your halmeoni is up too early, awakened by the discomfort of her pregnancy with your mother. She listens to the wind whistle through the cracks in the walls and dreads the frigid walk to her sajang’s house, a US military man and his family.
You will not know cold for another two decades. In fact, you will be transported to Chicago, USA by plane in the middle of a snowstorm where your new American parents will stand in a crowd of other awaiting parents, holding a small photo of you like a numbered ticket at a deli counter, trying to be patient for their turn.
The war ended five years ago, but its ghosts linger: in the sunken cheeks of women waiting for rations, in the way men still jolt awake at night, in the rubble-lined streets and shantytowns. Hunger gnaws at your halmoni’s ribs, and deeper, beneath the hollow ache, your mother exists—a haunting little maw your halmeoni worries about feeding. Your halmoni will eat at sajang’s house after the family eats. She is grateful to work for an American military family and to be surrounded by their comfort. Sometimes, there is leftover meat from the American children who refuse to eat what they don’t like.
Soft/ Strong
Later today, your halmeoni will scrub floors and do laundry, serve coffee with sugar and real cream to the procession of strangers who will visit the American woman throughout the day, who is said to be a good wife and mother, though she shows your halmeoni little kindness. Then, late in the evening, your halmeoni will endure the cold walk home, and once again, go to bed hungry. But she is considered one of the lucky ones. They pay her in cash and in rice.
As your halmoni climbs out of bed for the day, she presses a hand to the swell of her belly—to your mother and, in a sense, to you. She does not know you, or that someday, she will lose you. You will never know these people, your family, and their stories of survival. Instead, your body will be trafficked to the US, exported like tungsten, textiles, and wigs. When you are an adult, you will learn that Koreans sacrifice for the nation, and you will wonder, was this a way to fulfill your duty to your people?
Inside the dark warmth of your halmoni’s body, a kick lands—sharp, insistent. Her body tightens around her growing baby, where you also float, untouched, unformed. But the world is coming. And when it does, you will inherit its ghosts, its wicked hunger.
Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka (she/they) is a co-founder of the reading series Constellation, VOICES, a BIPOC Adoptee Community, and Yeondae, a now-retired social justice collective of Asian adoptees. She is a 2024 Oregon Humanities storytelling fellow, and a 2025 recipient of an Asian American Journalists Association award. “Three Generations” is excerpted from their in-progress novel.
joonaehk.com - IG @joonae.hk
After several years in advertising, Pearlyn Tan (she/her) found the work unfulfilling and chose to pursue a more meaningful creative path. In 2016, she began drawing under a metonym on Instagram as a way to navigate the emotional landscape of new motherhood.
