Book Review: Love Both, Keep Both

This is a book review about Love Both, Keep Both by Ken Reiman.

Ken’s book resonates deeply with me because I bought home a foreign spouse and while Asian spouses are common for men, dating back to the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts, a woman bringing an Asian husband to the US is a relatively new social phenomenon. My Beijing-born beau and I are raising an Amerasian daughter, a German-Chinese-American daughter. We have worried about racism and bullying since before she was born. My husband worries incessantly about whether she will be face higher than standard barriers for entry into the nation’s best universities based on recent articles about Ivy League universities putting higher standards on Asian students.

Like all parents, we worry about just about everything.

Ken’s story gives me hope. I’m amazed and inspired by the way his mom was able to give him access to his Japanese heritage. And I assume his parents did the same thing we did with our daughter. We gave our daughter a name that would fit easily with the Anglican world, Ann, and a name that would fit easily in China, Japan and Korea: The Chinese word an – 安 – ān. (peace in Chinese). For readers who are not aware, the famous Japanese Hollywood Actor made famous for movies like Memoirs of a Geisha and Flags of our Fathers and to me, most intensely Memories of Tomorrow (明日の記憶, Ashita no Kioku, Ken Watanabe, did not select an anglophile name, Ken. He was born WatanabeKen – in a corner of the world where family names come first. Ken is a syllable in the Sino ideograms that characterize the written elements of most of far east Asia. So, I assume that Ken’s parents also selected a Chinese character for Ken Reiman’s personal name that wouldn’t make him stand out in either the western world or the Asian world.

Like Ken’s parents, I hope to gift my daughter as many skills and as much access as I possibly can. I have been sitting with her in Chinese language classes for 2 hours every Saturday since she was 2 years old. And it has paid off. Now, at 5, she’s quite conversational, although, like Ken, she had the advantage of her grandmother, who lives with us and speaks only Mandarin.

I’ve taken parenting inspiration from Ken’s writing and from the extraordinary success of my Pentagon pal, a Black man from the rural south of the US, who, like me, joined the middle class by joining the military. He also brought home the ultimate souvenir in a foreign spouse from South Korea and his wife ensured their son spoke fluent Korean language. Additionally, thanks to a military tour in Germany while the young man was in his middle school years, he is currently on a study abroad program in Germany. He is studying abroad from the Air Force Academy because he was accepted into all three service academies. Yes, you read that correctly. He was accepted into West Point, the Naval Academy, and the Air Force Academy.

Of course, once I learned about my colleague’s son’s amazing acceptance letters, I wanted to know how they did it. One, their son was raised multilingual, like Ken. Two, their son was raised internationally, like Ken. They also ensured he participated in some of the most valued experiences for the military academies such as the Civil Air Patrol. Obviously, I added an Eagle Scout in Scouting and civil air patrol to my daughter’s to-do list in addition to language and foreign experiences.

What is most painful about Ken’s book is that it seems logical that the culmination of his career would have naturally been a tour as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan. And as he points out, this isn’t something that would only benefit his mom’s braggadocio but would be most beneficial to the United States.  Leveraging kids/people with these kinds of inclusive and comprehensive minds would logically improve our ability to clearly understand the pain points and priorities of our partners and gives the optimal advantage to achieve the maximum potential from our international relationships.

While I feel disappointed at the irrational regulations barring Ken’s best contributions to our country, I’m excited about what I see in our country today. Another one of my colleagues at the Pentagon, a Latino, was so excited that his children, already fluent in Spanish, were accepted into a Japanese immersion program at a public school in Great Falls, Virginia. And my daughter started kindergarten in Paint Branch Elementary School in College Park, MD, where a partnership with the University of Maryland provides a partial immersion program for Mandarin Chinese. What’s more, we met children from Berwyn Heights Elementary School while participating in a Prince George’s County Parks archery program and we were stunned to hear them speaking Mandarin Chinese. Berwyn Heights Elementary School apparently also has a Mandarin program.

We considered whether to apply for the lottery for a Blue Ribbon elementary and middle school in Beltsville that provides a French immersion. And our daughter attended a Spanish immersion summer camp in Springfield, VA where she came home with all manner of stories telling us about the history and details of Ecuador, the Galapagos islands, Chile, and other South American countries. It wasn’t just language, she was learning, she was learning culture and history.

Lastly, it isn’t necessary to be genetically unique like Ken or my daughter, anyone can and should participate in the global world. I was raised on welfare, but still managed to encounter the world by joining the Marines. My first and final assignments in the Marine Corps were in Okinawa and Tokyo and I studied Japanese at both locations. After the Corps, I returned to Japan and worked for the University of Maryland, Asian Division where I completed my bachelor’s degree. Since it took me 13 years and I was the first in my family to get a degree, I was happy. But Dr. Ted Franck suggested I consider India for a master’s degree. I didn’t speak Hindu, I argued. It’s Hindi, he corrected, and you don’t have to. There are hundreds of English-speaking universities all around the world. I searched and considered the American Universities in Paris, Bulgaria, and Beirut before settling on the American University in Cairo. After 3 years in Egypt, I studied Spanish in Santiago, Chile before I was hired by the State Department and served in Panama, South Korea, and again in Japan before serving my final overseas tour in Guyana. Along the way, I tested 3/3 in Spanish, 2/2 in Japanese, and 1+ in Arabic and Korean.

The world is out there for all of us to participate in, and I hope we all take a call to action from Ken’s work.