BY CARLOTTA MOHAMED
Writer Yongsoo Park is recounting
what life was like for him and
his immigrant family in the early
1980s in Elmhurst in his new memoir,
“Rated R Boy: Growing Up Korean
in 1980s Queens.”
When asked what prompted him
to write the book, Park said, “I
wrote the book in part to share what
my childhood was like with my two
children, whose lives are good but so
very different from mine.”
Park and his family moved from
South Korea to the United States in
the summer of 1980. He grew up in
a tenement on 80th Street kitty-corner
from what was then the Leben
Home, a facility to house the many
patients who’d been dumped there
by the city’s psychiatric wards.
Park, who now lives in Harlem,
attended P.S. 12 in Woodside and
J.H.S. 125 in Sunnyside. Although
he no longer lives in his childhood
neighborhood, the love he has for
Queens and the 1980s comes through
in the book, which chronicle’s his
family’s first four years in America
and the struggles they endured to
assimilate to life in their new home.
The book details Park’s travails
at school, where he often felt like
the class dunce before he learned to
speak English, and his struggles to
fit in in the social hierarchy of the
mini children’s society on his block.
He describes having to learn to play
sports, specifically touch football, to
fit in.
“For a long time, I didn’t know
what a field goal was or that a touchdown
was worth six points and
not seven, which was how we kept
score,” Park said in his book. “It
would be a long while before I’d figure
out that the football we played
was a watered-down version of the
game on TV, and not the other way
around.”
Another chapter describes how
Park, a former Van Lier Fellow at the
Asian American Writers’ Workshop,
and whose previous books include
“Boy Genius” and “Las Cucarachas,”
(which were also set in Queens) frequented
the Jackson, a now-defunct
theater in Jackson Heights, and the
education he received from the movies
there at a young age.
The adventures that are described
in the memoir may seem startling to
children today, but the memoir is set
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in a different era before the advent
of digital technology when children
were free to roam about freely, according
to Park. Indeed, Park describes
children’s life in the early
1980s as one devoid of adults:
“When not riding bikes or rollerskating
up and down the block, we
played kick-the-can, manhunt, stoop
ball, red-light green-light one two
three, and Johnny-the-pony,” Park
said. “Those last two games were
identical to games I’d played in Korea
and were a great comfort to me.
But kick-the-can soon became my favorite.
It felt wonderful to kick the
can and send it flying, freeing everyone
who’d been caught and making
whoever was it chase it down.”
According to Park, “Rated R Boy”
is a fast read and vividly brings to
life a bygone era peopled with latchkey
kids who played unsupervised
and even got into a scuffle or two.
“The memoir will be enjoyed by
everyone, but especially by those
who remember the analog world
when a slice of pizza could be bought
with a subway token and the fat Sunday
Times cost just a dollar,” Park
said.
Park’s memoir, “Rated R Boy:
Writer Yongsoo Park is recounting what
life was like for him and his immigrant
family in the early 1980s in Elmhurst in
his new memoir, “Rated R Boy: Growing
Up Korean in 1980s in Queens.”
Growing up Korean in 1980s
Queens,” is available on Kindle for
$1.99 and the paperback edition can
be purchased on Amazon for $6.
Reach reporter Carlotta Mohamed
by e-mail at cmohamed@schnepsmedia.
com or by phone at (718) 260–
4526.
Photo courtesy of Yongsoo Park
Korean author publishes his memoir on
growing up in Queens before the digital age
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