Mask Dance and What it Made Me Realize

The play Mask Dance reminded me of a family that I know from back home. All of their children are adopted and the two oldest are from Korea; a son who is a year older than I and a daughter one year younger. The play shows how adopted children like this can have issues with discovering their Korean identities and how to deal with their heritage. While growing up with these friends, issues such as those described in the play never even occurred to me. Of course I just thought their lives were just like everyone else's. However, this play has given me knew insight into the challenges they faced growing up and has helped me to understand some of the behaviors they exhibited. It also brought to mind CRT tenet five which says that everyone has a compound and complex identity. I guess this play just served as a catalyst to make me realize how I may have ignored this whole side of their identity in order to seem like I wasn't treating them differently.