In Korea, where hierarchy determines many relationships, any person who is junior to you in experience in school, work, or field, is your hoobae. If you are senior to the person, you are the seonbae.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is my hoobae from The Bronx High School of Science. I am his seonbae.
I did not know the 112th Mayor of New York in our alma mater. He’s class of 2010, and I’m 1986. I’ve never met him in person. I’m old enough to be his mom. But on the inauguration stage, I see his real mom, Academy Award–nominated filmmaker Mira Nair, seated right behind my hoobae and his wife, the artist Rama Duwaji. On the other side of the aisle, there’s Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Letitia James, Kathy Hochul, and Bill de Blasio.
I’m seated below the stage on the west side of City Hall. You could say I’m hosting this party since I’m listed as one of the 40 members of the Inaugural Committee. I did not do much work. Below stage are also actors Richard Kind, Kal Penn, Susan Sarandon, and John Turturro, as well as Amani al-Khatahtbeh, the founder of MuslimGirl.com.
It is 20 degrees outside. Everyone is freezing. My husband and I wore gray flannel suits and cloth coats. Rookie mistake. We split a pair of Hothands and slip them into our leather gloves. We’ve been waiting since 11 in the morning, and the program started a little after 1 p.m. Even though our fingers and toes are turning blue, we don’t want to be anywhere else.
Why did I agree to be on the Inaugural Committee? Why did I show up in person even though there are no tents, heat, snacks, merch, and the logistics email said that no blankets or umbrellas? It can’t be because Mayor Mamdani is my hoobae. Our four-year high school has almost 3,000 students. Bronx Science has been around for over 75 years. Statistically speaking, I have too many hoobae. No one should like anyone just because the person went to your old school.
Instead, I’m here for the reasons that tens of thousands have filled seven blocks south of City Hall. New York needs a smart, brave, and innovative leader who wants to make significant structural changes in public education, health care, housing, and transportation. It would be great if the new person wasn’t afraid of party politics and was willing to ask why things couldn’t be different.
I immigrated to New York City from Seoul in 1976, when I was seven years old. In two months, I will have lived in this breathtaking, heart-stopping, and indefatigable city for 50 years. As I celebrate my golden anniversary as an immigrant New Yorker, I understand why the Inauguration poet Cornelius Eady titled his poem “Proof.”
In a time when asylum–seekers and immigrants are being hunted for sport and disappeared, humans are despised and ridiculed for having descended from an impoverished country, and basic human needs have become luxury items for ordinary people, New Yorkers said, Why not? Why not change the hierarchy? Why not give younger people room to grow their future?
Here, a 34-year-old Uganda-born, Asian-American, Muslim immigrant can show up with enormous ideas and get a shot at the most important and thankless job in a city of 8.5 million people.
I’m here because we got proof that our great city is willing to try new ideas, hope for more for our children and elders, imagine better solutions, welcome strangers who will be our neighbors, and from our greater experiences learn from the beautiful dreams of our young people. So this seonbae is rooting for Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani.