Resurrection in Tragedy: The Asian American Diaspora and The Lynching Tree

By Isaiah Hobus

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n 2007, the Black Liberation theologian James Cone was interviewed by the esteemed journalist Bill Moyer. The interview was a precursor to Cone’s groundbreaking text, The Cross And The Lynching Tree. In the interview, Cone illustrated the connection between the cross and the lynching tree; that is, it is through the lens of the lynching tree that one can understand the tragic meaning of the cross and God’s solidarity with crucified people. In this case, Cone mentions the over 5000 lynching victims during the lynching era of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Thus, Cone does not see tragedy as the end of the story of the lynching tree. Rather, he explains that the Christian gospel is what takes us through tragedy to beyond tragedy, by way of the cross, to victory in the cross. After explaining this, Moyers counters, saying, “but the victims of lynching are dead.” Cone’s response struck me:

No, their mothers and fathers are not dead, their brothers and sisters are not dead. I am alive. I have to give voice to those who did that and all of us do. That is why we can not forget it!

Upon hearing this comment, my mind immediately was drawn to the stories of tragedy carried on by myself and other Asian Americans. Through an objective lens, Moyers is correct: over 5000 victims of lynching are dead and the tragic experiences of millions of diasporic Asian American people shape their existence. Currently, 23 million Asian Americans live in this country, yet 71% of the adult population was born in another country. For many of us, including myself, stories of tragedy are embodied through our family’s immigration. However, to Cone’s point, according to the paradoxically terrible beauty of the cross, death and tragedy are not the end of the story. God’s powerless solidarity in crucifixion with crucified people brings life (victory) out of death. I realized that it is the bearing of the cross by others: its solidarity, its binding to experience, and its sharing of personhood that carries on stories of tragedy. In other words: it is through the tragic love of the cross that God’s story incarnates into and reshapes the stories of people, and it is through the tragic love of the cross participated in by people that brings resurrection out of tragedy. Cone helped me realize how integral stories and narrative are to both the human experience and God’s action in the world. I ultimately saw how the cross bridges God’s story of redemption to the tragedy of the Asian American Diaspora. 

As the story of my own life has progressed, I have begun to understand how many labels I carry in the context of American society. I am an Asian American, I am mixed, I am the son of a Korean adoptee, and I am a second-generation immigrant. Through American eyes, my difference to the cultural majority is often either viewed through the lens of tokenism or reproach. I am not seen as a human equal. By and large, my difference is generalized instead of  mutually encountered as a story. For many Asian Americans, their exterior is generalized by American society as an “other,” that belongs in “its own country.”  Simultaneously, even if we were to return to what Americans by and large deem as, “our country,” we still experience alienation, for we are too American for our countries of heritage. This is the experience of being a perpetual foreigner, never wholly belonging to a space and never home. While America’s racialized society sees my Asianess and the labels of my existence through the lens of cheap tokenism that brushes over historic trauma or reproach that can’t sit with difference; to me, my Asianness is the tragic story of my mom coming into this country. 

Every time my externality stands out to others through long stares, flushed faces, and racial microaggressions; the internality of my mom’s story rises to the surface. My mom’s story begins with her birth mother. She went into labor prematurely, whether she induced herself or it was natural has been left to speculation. She began labor just outside of Seoul, South Korea. When my biological grandmother had my mom, she would not have survived unless it was for the first incubator used in Korea. My mom was abandoned here by her mother. My mom believes she was born out of wedlock, and her mom abandoned her due to cultural patriarchal shame that she might face with her family. Subsequently, she was placed in the Korean adoption system. In the adoption system she was malnourished, lacking loving support from others. Eventually, in Korea, she was taken into a foster home for about three months where she was brought back to health. After being moved around in the adoption system, when she was three years old, the adoption system brought her to America where she was adopted by a white couple with two little boys in Minnesota. 

Historically, I learned that my mom's journey to America was also a result of America’s Cold War relationship with South Korea. The effects of post-colonization of Japan and the Korean War left South Korea in economic and social turmoil and reliant on the United States. Since 1953, America has received over 110,000 adopted Korean children. Adoptees ranged from biracial children of U.S servicemen, children left hoping to be temporarily placed in the system by parents lacking economic resources, and children overtly abandoned by their parents—like my mom. The commonality stringing these children together, however, is their existence as outsiders: first in Korea and then in America. Each child is an approximation of perpetual foreignhood: misplaced in diaspora and never home. Starting in the ‘50s, the adoption of Korean children by white families was a growing commodity. This only grew in the decades that followed. In Korea, adoption became a tragic national custom while in America it was a celebrated humanitarian project. Korea was unable to care for my mom, so she was sent to America. When my difference is acknowledged implicitly or explicitly through tokenism or reproach, I feel the immediacy and pain of the continued life of my mom’s story.

To this day, my mom has not had contact with her biological parents or returned to South Korea. Subsequently, the only Asian American people in my family are myself, my sister, and my mom. I not only wear my mom’s story externally through my skin pigmentation, my slanted eyes, and dark thick hair, but my mom’s story is a deep internal reality I carry. I believe this is a result of my mom pouring her story into both me and my sister. Through bringing us to culture camps, making Korean food, and displaying cultural artifacts she poured her story into the life of me and my sister. My mom gave voice to her story of tragedy. Thus, my Asianness is inherently juxtaposed to my mom’s story of abandonment and immigration. I cannot forget, for her story will inherently and forever be a part of me and my family. This, I believe, is Cone’s point. 

I believe my mom’s story is a contemporary cross where God is present, just as God was present in the crucifixion of Christ. It is a cross I, with perspective, have already seen God’s ministry (Missio Dei) at work, and I believe it is still being brought to fullness in God’s redemptive Kingdom. It is a cross I, along with my present and future family, am called to bear daily, and participate in the presence of the redeeming cruciform love of God. The redeeming cruciform love of God is God's determination to take the human story into God’s story: bringing about the fullness of God’s reign on earth in Christ, drawing all people to God’s self, and reconciling the entirety of the world (Lk 17:21, Jn 12:32, 2 Cor 5:19). God does not leave the human story to itself, rather God breaks into that story, reshaping it toward its end: reconciled into the Triune life of God. God reveals this through the tragic story of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’s story was not one of privilege. Rather, he was a carpenter's son, born in a barn, living as an outsider, being rejected by his own people (Jn 1:11), only to be condemned as a criminal and blasphemer and hang on a cross. This story of ultimate tragedy is the means of God’s restoration and reconciliation of our tortured world. This is the way of the cross, and this is how Cone sees beauty in tragedy: 

Though the pain of Jesus’ cross was real, there was also joy and beauty in his cross. This is the great theological paradox that makes the cross impossible to embrace unless one is standing in solidarity with those who are powerless. God’s loving solidarity can transform ugliness—whether Jesus on the cross or a lynched black victim—into beauty, into God’s liberating presence. Through the powerful imagination of faith, we can discover the ‘terrible beauty of the cross and the tragic beauty of the lynching tree.’ 

Through solidarity with crucified people, the crucified God incarnates into and reshapes tragedy, bringing about resurrection through God’s liberating presence. To Cone, this paradox offers beauty to the tragedy of lynching. The tragic love of the crucified God brings about healing to the crucified people of history—including diasporic Asian Americans. When others participate in this loving solidarity (the way of the cross), giving voice to and remembering tragedy, the universal victory of the cross actualizes in particularity. In other words, through human action correspondingly participating in the risen and living Christ’s liberating presence, the cross’ victory becomes concrete and life becomes present in death. 

Take, for example, the bearing of the cross by the families of the lynching victims or the bearing of the cross by myself, my sister, and mom, or even my biological grandmother who still, despite the pressure of shame, self-sacrificially bore the cross of deciding to have my mom. In each case, life became present among death through solidarity, the binding of experience, and the sharing of personhood. I contend that in each cross, God’s liberating presence is breaking into tragedy and bringing about resurrection. 

You, along with my mom and I, may share a similar story of tragedy and longing for belonging amidst the displacement of Asian American people. Please know that your story lives on through the loving solidarity of personhood borne by God in the cross and others bearing the cross. Know the cross is beauty beyond tragedy and resurrecting cruciform love amidst death. Know you can bear the tragedy of the cross daily, as the Gospel’s witness toward (Mk 8:27-9:8; Mt 16:24-28; Lk 9:23-27; Jn 12:23-26), actualizing victory in the cross. The crucified God through cruciform love incarnates into and reshapes the trajectory of your story. When I asked my mom about Cone’s crucifixion formulation (through tragedy, to beyond tragedy by way of the cross, to victory in the cross) she told me she believes this is her story, that the cross saved her, and it was the cross that has brought about wholeness in her anger, abandonment, and experience as an outsider. This is resurrection in tragedy. Go and participate in the liberating presence of Christ, by way of the cross, actualizing its victory. 

Photo by Laura Allen on Unsplash

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Isaiah Hobus is a recent graduate of Bethel University with a degree in biblical and theological studies, and currently a Master’s of Divinity student with an emphasis in Christian community development at Northern Seminary. He is also a youth outreach associate at a nonprofit ministry for teens, Treehouse Hope in Minnetonka, Minnesota, where he mentors teenagers. In his spare time, he enjoys reliving his days as a college athlete in cross country and track through runs, sticking his nose in a book, and guzzling black coffee.