Issue 05: "Welcome to Shangri-La" by Jennifer Ku

Immigrant Hustle: A Monthly Mini Memoir

This month’s IH Mini Memoir is written by Jennifer Ku, who writes so vividly about one of her happiest times in childhood. Despite some bumps and bruises, and precarious circumstances by today’s standards; Jennifer remembers a place and people that allowed her to just be herself in a time before she “woke up” to the projections and definitions of others. Jennifer’s detailed descriptions and poignant storytelling stayed with us for days after reading. We hope you enjoy reading this memoir as much as we did!

Happy Tuesday!

Welcome to Shangri-la: A Mini Memoir

by Jennifer Ku

Jennifer Ku is the Chief Product Officer of a generative AI company that enables learning for four million students. Through her twenty-year career, she held positions at various technology and media companies, including Grubhub/Seamless, Refinery29, and MTV. Jennifer attended Swarthmore College and the University of Chicago, and lived in New York City before settling back in her hometown of Atlanta with her husband and two children. When not working or chasing children; she enjoys painting, writing, and spending time in nature. You can see some of her art at jenniferku.com

Let me tell you about Shangri-la. 

It was an apartment complex in Chamblee, Georgia, catering to mostly working class families of all backgrounds. It was a development with about fifteen buildings boasting two small pools. In 1988, when I was six, my parents and I moved from Queens, New York, to a two-bedroom ground floor apartment with linoleum floors. We moved into Shangri-La so my aunt, a generous woman and the only sibling my dad didn’t actively hate, could serve and obey my dad without question.  

My cousins, John and James, were around my age and had been living in Shangri-La for a year before we arrived. They were goofy boys, the younger one James was athletic and particularly friendly. They introduced me to the other children inhabiting Shangri-La. There was Maria and her countless siblings and cousins of various ages, Shanice, and the many Farkasons. I believe there were eight in all who shared three bedrooms between them. We were all the children of adults who worked long hours at multiple jobs and had no money for childcare. It was the 1980s, when childrearing standards were relaxed. We were feral, a gang of roving, unsupervised children.  

I moved to Shangri-La the summer before first grade. Entire days would be spent at the pool where we would climb to the roof of the pool house and jump into the water. When we were hungry, we would go to the Farkason’s apartment, where the oldest brother Jason would open up a can of Campbell’s Cream of Broccoli soup that we had found randomly lying on the couch. I watched a lot of age inappropriate films, laughing when the bad parts came on the TV. To my delight, a feral cat had given birth to kittens, and we would go in search of them and try to coax them out from the crawl spaces of the buildings. I taught myself to ride a bike, falling so many times on my knees that I still have the scars. 

When we were really bored, one of Maria’s cousins would give us a ride in the back of his pickup truck. For thrills he would take us on the highway, a group of elementary school children riding in an open truck bed with no seat belts, fists in the air, yelling at the other drivers on the road.   

The summer ended, I entered Huntley Hills Elementary, and without knowing it my English was seamless. At Huntley Hills, the world of school suddenly clicked into place. I understood the rules — I “eewwed” at the kid who ate glue and the  Shangri-La children and I walked to school together, safe in our numbers. After school, we would pick up our adventures again, happy within the confines of an unsupervised world. 

The following spring, however, my aunt announced that my uncle had purchased a shoe repair shop in Dunwoody and the family would move. Maria’s cousin, the one who let us ride in his pickup truck, was arrested for something I didn’t understand. Terry Farkason, my closest friend, had suddenly become distant, drawn in by some drama in her large family. The feral cats had grown up to be mean, and a feral dog had found itself in Shangri-La, barking at the kids, menacing us with its sharp teeth.

Without my aunt to help watch me, I was often left alone in our apartment. My parents sometimes didn’t come home until midnight. In the age before cell phones, I was often left wondering if I had been orphaned. I was terrified that someone was going to kidnap me, scared by the stranger danger assembly talks at school meant to protect us. The year without Terry and my cousins was very lonely, Shangri-La was colder, and when my dad announced that he purchased a dry cleaners fifteen miles north in Roswell and that we would move, it was welcome news.  

In Roswell, everything was different. Girls went to school with coordinated outfits and matching hair bands. The kids’ parents worked in offices and not in nail salons or construction. I tried to walk to a convenience store by myself, something I did all the time at Shangri-La, and a cop pulled me over and took me home. We lived in an apartment complex which was inhabited mostly by retirees and I was the only kid. All of the other kids from school lived in large houses in subdivisions with their own social ecosystem and inside jokes which I didn’t understand.

I was the only non-white kid in third grade at Roswell North Elementary, and the kids knew it. Their interactions with me ranged from genuine curiosity to malice. I had no point of reference, having lived in places where my Koreanness was a non-issue. I was perplexed by everything, but so were my parents. Even if they weren’t too tired to help, I don’t think they would have known how.    

My cousins who were like brothers to me were suddenly strange and gangly creatures, my dad’s increasing paranoia driving our families to only see each other maybe twice a year. My cousins lived in Dunwoody, I lived in Roswell. On paper, both communities were better places to raise kids than Shangri-La. They were prosperous, they had good schools, they were much safer. They certainly didn’t have roving gangs of feral animals, nor would they have tolerated children riding in the back of pickup trucks.  

But I think back to Shangri-La as one of the happiest times of my life. It was the place, but it was also my age. It was before I became self-conscious about my looks, my origin, my relative lack of money and family support. It was during a time my English fluency grew, but before I truly understood what was being said. Roswell would prove to be a safe but difficult place for my family, and I often thought back to the simplicity of my days when I was left alone to just play and to be myself, insulated by age and circumstances from the world around me. 

My daughter is now six, the same age we moved to Shangri-La. I have to remember that the most important thing for her is to find that sense of belonging, a space to play and be herself, a sense of freedom. I don’t know how to provide that to her during this time of intensive parenting, in a prosperous community where every decision is judged. It’s hard not to get lured away from what makes us really happy.   

H Mart Happiness: What’s your favorite product and why?

“The individual wrap is heinously wasteful, but it keeps the khim crispy.  It is single-handedly the way that I keep my kids eating Korean food on a regular basis, we always have them on hand." - Jennifer K.

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