As a writer, I read widely and include translations as part of a balanced literary diet. As a diasporic Korean, I’m a particular fan of work by Korean writers, but that news always comes with an arched eyebrow from non-Koreans: Why can’t you just read it? After the Korean War, my parents immigrated from Korea to Jim Crow Alabama and then to all-white rural Minnesota. Not unlike many Korean immigrants who were able to overcome the US ban on Asians and made it to the US prior to 1965, when the Hart-Celler Act passed, assimilation was a survival tactic.