4
Draw People In
CRYSTAL HANA KIM was in second grade art class. The assignment? Draw a portrait of your partner.1
“Now let’s do the eyes,” said her art teacher. “See the line over your partner’s eye? That’s called a crease. It’s important to have the crease or your person won’t look real.”
But Kim, who is Korean American, didn’t have a crease over her eyes—she had the ssangapeul, or “monolid,” eyes common in Korea and many other East Asian countries.
Her partner yelled out, “But Crystal doesn’t have any lines!” The teacher’s face turned red. Kim writes, “I understood that this was an awkward situation . . . She had made a mistake, and yet I felt as if I were the one to blame.”
“If I didn’t have a crease,” she wondered, “did I still look real?” ...
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