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(gshot) lawren: wow! at one rlly flped, man! . ♪ caitlin: i know it'll take time for m to fullynderstand. and i'm willing to be patient about it. even if it takes him hours or days or months or years, i'll sll respe him i'm alys gonnaome backome. lawrence: when you destroy the land, the rain stops.

(thunder rolls) the rain will return when this coal mining stops. my job might go away, but my prayers to the mountain will always be there. i'm gonna be saying, "thank you, thank you, thank you." i will keep going to the mountain till the day i can't make it up there. because these prayers, you know, they carry you, they carry on. ♪ all hapned here. don't ev lose ho.

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del toro: stay up to date on america reframed at worldchannel.org. subscribe to world channel's youtube to go beyond the lens with our filmmakers.

tell us what you think using #americareframed. ♪ ♪ ♪ kim: it's the '80s. i'm 12 years old. and i'm sitting in korean church parking lot th my friend andy. and he is ranting about his parents because he doesn't get along with them. and suddenly, he blurts out, "you know...

"korean parents don't love their children "as much as american parents do. our parents just use us as workers." i'm completely offended, so i push back and i say, "that's not true." and he points his finger at me and he says, "you'll see." and it comes at me like a curse. a few weeks later, i'm at the family hardware store with my father and two custers walkn. and in just a matter of seconds, they whip out these guns: one pointed at my father, one pointed at me. now my father haendured armed robberies before, but this is my first time. so, they drag us to the cash register, where they order my father to fill a brown paper bag with all the cash in the register. but the problem is there isn't enough. and the robbers are angry. and so, they keep repeating, "that's it? where's the rest? where's the rest?" and my father keeps repeating, "there is no more.

you have all. there's no more. no more." and, every time they go back and forth, i feel the gun dig deeper into the back of my skull so that i have to tip forward. and finally, the gun moves from the back of my head to the side, as if to givemy father. and the voice behind me says, "i mean it, man. get the rest now." and what follows is a steely silence so tense that i have to close my eyes. and, in that time, i imagine what it's going to feel like to have a bullet course through my brain. because i'm certain that's what's about to happen. and i'm also certain that my father is bluffing. because there is a stash of cash in the back. and i'm about to lose my life for it.

and i don't know how muchime passes, but eventually, the robbers give up, they push us in the back room, and they leave. but for the days and weeks after, i comptely freeze out my father. i can't forgive him for taking that kind of chance with my life. and i begin to wonder if maybe andy was right. maybe korean parents have a lesser capacity for love. maybe my classmates were right and that my parents we alien and abnmal. and my father's not helping here, because he too is distant and silent this whole time, and all he does is jot down these numbers on a notepad, and i keep thinking it's because he's worried about the money we've lost because that's what he really cares about. and we carry on like this until thanksgiving. that's when my father wakes up early, and he gathers us up and takes us to the hardware store on a day where it's usually supposed to be closed. and he ushers us insid locks the door behind us,

and flips on the lights. and there, leaning against one of the side walls, are six long countertop slabs wrapped in brown craft paper. and he goes up to the first one and he rips a corner off, revealing a one-inch-thick piece of glass. and he taps on it, and he says, "bullet not go through. "each piece, $1,000." now the math is not hard here. and i'm amazed at where my father was able to find $6,000. and i'm even more amazed about where he was able to find bulletproof glass. but there's no time to ask him, because he immediately gets to work. he whips o that notepad with all the figures on it, takes out a circular saw, pulls out a measuring tape, and he measures and cuts and measures and cuts for 36 hours straight.

and, at the end of it, he stretches his stiff back, sweat pouring down his neck, drenching s t-shirt, and we all look at what he's made. and it is a wonder. it is a wall, floor to ceiling, and countertop and cabinetry made entirely of bulletproof, clear glass. and it's so pristine and new that it looks like spring water, compressed. and he turns to me and he says, "go inside." so, i push open this door that he's made and framed, and i step inside and i feel like i'm entering this sci-fi world. and i close and lock the door behind me and i step back. and i see my father and the rest of my family, and really the rest of the world behind and beyond the storefront, through this clear, bulletprf glass.

and, honestly, my 12-year-old self kept thinking, "my father has made a piece of wonder woman's invisible jet." (laughter) it is the most cool thing that i have ever imagined that he would ever be able to do. and as i'm kind of wrapped in the awe of all of this, finds this little opening that he's made so that we can interact with the customers, and he sneaks his hand through and he tickles me, and i jump back and it's the first time we laugin weeks. and he goes in for another, but this time, i'm too far back, and he can't reach, so he's just grasping air. and he leans into the little opening, so his lips are there, and he says, "see? nobody can touch." and that line is like a spell that makes everything clear. and i realize it didn't matter what andy said, didn't matter what my classmates said.

and it didn't matter why my father took that chance with my life. but what matters is what i know no and at this very time, i know what love looks like. i know what love feels like. and it's unmistakable. and so, i step forward, unlatch the locks, and open the door wide and i bring my father and the rest of my family inside with me. thank you. (cheers d applause) ♪ this is the lowest i've ever been, so low that the music from someone entering the 7-eleven around the corner causes me to almost break down.

i turn to my friend, o's sitting next to me, and i want to say something, anything, but i can't. there's only silence. i should probably start from the beginning. i don't have a place that i can really call home. because i was born in guatemala to two taiwanese immigrants, i have the word "outsider" written all over me. at school, i was the only asian kid in a classroom full of latino kids who weren't welcome. at home, i had no one to turn to, because my brother was too young, and no one else was around. one of my earliest memories is of me sitting in a classroom. it's probably a friday, because the teacher is asking us, (speaking spanish) she's asking us what we're doing this weekend. and all these kids, they're listing out places they're going, movies they're watching, things they're doing, and i'm sitting here confused. "why is the weekend so special? why does the teacher ask this question every week?" and i'm confused because my parents work seven days a week,

and on the odd holidays or days off, they would usually be busy catching up with chores or doing things in their own lives. to make matters worse, i didn't have any friends at school. it was hard to make any, when my parents couldn't afford babysitters or dri me around to different activities after school. instead, they would take me to the store that they owned every day after school finished. it's a lot like the dollar stores that you see here, except everything was in quetzales, the guatemalan currency. and since it was atore with a lot of customers, they would always be busy with them, and i would ve nothing to do but sit in the corner and think about the horrible things that happened at school. one particular memory comes to mind. (speaking spanish) it's augusto, shouting at me from across the yard, safely surrounded by his group of friends, something i'm reminded that i don't have. this is third-grade recess, and "gordito chinito" sounds a lot like a cute playground rhyme that kids would say to each other. well, "gordito chinito" actually means "fat chinese kid,"

and it stis. it hurts because i know i'm fat, and it stresses me out to the point that sometimes i will hide in the bathroom or pretend to vomit in the nurse's office just so i can skip gym class. but i don't let augusto don't know this. instead, i jump off the swing i'm on, and i walk over to him. now, i'm obviously a big guy, from what he said, and he's actually kind of a skinny kid, which makes this unfair. but i punch him in the stomach as hard as i can, and i watch as he falls over. his friends are too shocked to react, and if we're being honest, it feels good. i feel powerful, and it's one of the few moments in my life when i feel like i'm in control. i walk away before they can do anything, and they never bothered me again. i love guatemala for a lot of reasons-- the food, the weather, the culture. but guatemala also struggles with violence. when i was in fifth grade, my uncle was killed in a botched robbe on the way to the parking lot from the store that we owned. crime is common there,

but foreigners are especially vulnerable, because they seem like easier targets. and while i was born there and had been there for a long time, the way i look will always make me seem like a foreigner there. naturally, this event caused my parents to freak out, and they decided to send me to live in texas with my aunt. for a while, i was excited. this was america, the place everybody wanted to go, and i thought i would finally find a place to fit in. it's about a month into the second semester of fifth grade, and the teacher's telling us to partner up for a math worksheet. this girl who was sitting next to me, she turns around, and she goes, "you know, "you're a strange-looking mexican. we going to be partners on this one?" (laughter) and she's smiling with these really cute dimples, and i can't help but say, "yes, yes, let's be partners." i know she doesn't mean any harm by her statement, but it still stings a little bit. as hard as i try, i can't seem to convince anyone here

that, no, not everything south of the border is mexico. (laughter) it's frustrating, but i don't make a big fuss about it, because at least i have friends now, and that's so much better than being alone. as i grew up, i developed this crippling fear of never belonging. fitting in is easy. it's as easy as speaking the same way and pretending you like the same things as the people around you. but belonging is deeper. it's a sense of community, an intrinsic sense of trust of the people around you, and that was something i didn't believe i could ever have. in ninth grade, my parents decided to send me to live in taiwan so i could be closer to relatives and better understand the country that they were from. i'm in beginner's mandarin class now. mandarin is the predominant language in both taiwan and china. (speaking mandarin) my teacher is telling me that my mandarin sounds really bad after i've just finished reading a passage. at least she's honest about it. but she has the look on her face, and it's the same look i get

from the cashier at the grocery store and the waitress at the restaurant. it's the same look i get everywhere i go, and i know what they're thinking. "how can someone who looks taiwanese and is living in taiwan not be able to speak the language?" i don't say anything to my teacher. i don't usually respond to people. instead, i shift my accent slightly, and i reread the passage to her in the way that she believes it should be read. i pass, but deep down, i know that i've just given up another piece of myself. four years pass like this, and i find myself back in the middle of that intersection where we started this story. it's 5:00 in the morning, and i'm about to have a meltdown. i turn to my friend pierre, who's sitting next to me, and i want to cry, to scream, to shout, to say something, anything. but i can't. pierre's half frch, half taiwanese. he's an outsider like me. but he'd been there his entire life, and i thought he would never be able to understand what i was going through.

and so that made it difficult to speak. suddenly, the 7-eleven music rang again as someone walked out, and i started cryi. now, i'm not generally very good at being emotional, but there i was, just sobbing in front of him. and i turn to him and i go, "you know, as hard as i try, i can't be happy here, and i don't think i can ever be happy anywhere." surprised, he rned to me, and in a way only teenagers could, he goes, "bro, what's wrong?" (laughter) and i continue. i tell him, "i'll be graduating soon, and i'll have to say good-bye "to all the friends that i've made here. and this will just be another place that i can't call home." he thought about that for a quick moment, and then with a sudden anger that i'd never seen before, he asked me, "are you kidding me? "you've been everywhere, "but i've been stuck here my entire life. "you don't have a home because you have many homes, and that's something most people will never have."

i wanted to say something back to him, but i was too shocked to respond. over the years, i've thought a lot about what he said that night, and the way it's changed my perspective. here was someone who was my best friend, someone who i would have given anything to be, wishing he could be me. and more than that, he was right. while i can't stay in one place forever, i can always keep with me the best parts of each. and at the end of the day, home isn't a place, home is an idea. it's the people around you. thank you. (cheers and applause)

qx■x■x■x■x■x■x■x■x■x■x■x■x■x■x■a (engine humming) (engine sputtering) it's january 8, 2014 and i'm standing in front of a building that's supposed to have a leaf plate with my name on it that was written by a sage thousands of years ago. this leaf plate is supposed to have my name, my birth date, my parents' names, and the events of my past, including the events of my future.