Tearful Joanna Gaines apologizes to her mother for denying her Asian heritage

In school, Joanna Gaines recalls being bullied as a Korean American.

Joanna Gaines appears to have everything: a loving husband, one of the most popular shows on television, her own TV network and a fan base that appears to love her. But for years, like many Asian Americans, she avoided embracing her racial heritage as a Korean American while growing up in Texas.

Gaines has been a mainstay on television for a decade, but the Fixer Upper star has recently opened up to share her personal journey towards embracing her Korean heritage. Her message is a powerful one.

As a reality TV star, Gaines has given fans a glimpse into her relationship with her husband, Chip, her family life with their five children, and her home renovation secrets. It's part of the appeal of Joanna and Chip as the couple next door. 

The on-air persona Gaines projects, which is not far from her true self, is so personable and likeable that many viewers accept her as a home decorating expert and a Texas mom and overlook her being Korean American. But with her new memoir, The Stories We Tell, Joanna is showing a side of her that she has not discussed on-air -- a more personal and vulnerable side.

In her book, The Stories We Tell, she candidly writes about quickly learning how to conform to the cultural norms in her small Kansas town where she was born and going to school in Texas. Gaines writes about being teased for what she ate for lunch, her eyes, and her mother’s accent. “Eventually, the lunchroom teasing stopped," she writes. "But by then I’d spent nearly 12 years quieting half of who I was in a world I thought wouldn’t accept it, that somewhat subconsciously I’d forgotten it was ever a part of me to begin with.”

Joanna explained that she struggled growing up and was often teased because she was half-Korean, but she never told her mother about it because she was trying to protect her. In a podcast promoting her book, Joanna told her mother, "I never sensed you were not strong enough to carry it, but I just felt like we could have two people hurt here or one, which is why I opted to silence my pain."

She writes in her just released memoir, “I told the other kids my middle name was Anne because it sounded more American than Lee.”

“It was like I couldn’t find my place,” she explained during an appearance in the Today Show. “I remember going to Korean church and feeling like, ‘I don’t look like them,’ because I felt like, you know, I was a ‘halfie.’ And then going to school and being the only girl who looked pretty Asian.”

Gaines added that her family were “literally the only Asians in our entire school. My early memories, a lot of the things that come up are the moments where I switched off and I thought to myself, ‘Oh, I can’t be this,’ or ‘I shouldn’t be this’ or this won’t be approved. Like I won’t get the approval, you know, that you want as a kid.”

Johanna Gaines, right, with her sisters and mother.

It was not until she spent a summer interning in New York City, that she "saw more people that looked like me than ever before," she told People.

"I was 21 the first time I walked through Koreatown. I' just move to NYC and was missing home, and everything about these streets -- the food, the smells, the language -- reminded me of my mom," she posted on Instagram.

"It was the first time I can remember truly feeling connected to a culture I grew up believing I needed to hide. It was beautiful to watch people live out the fullness of their story. Finally I was seeing the beauty of being unique and realize that what made me different was actually best part about me."

"I left really understanding the beauty and uniqueness of Korean culture, and for the first time, I felt whole, like this is fully who I am and I'm proud of it," she told People.

"I had to actually go backwards and say, 'This is the lie I believed for 21 years, and now I have to rewrite that,'" she told People. "When we really take hold of our story and write it down, there's so much healing that can come from that."

While talking about her book in the podcast, all the pent-up emotion overtook the usually unflappable Gaines.

Tears flowed as Joanna tells her mom, "I always wanted to say I was sorry, for living in halfness, and not fully embracing the most beautiful thing about myself which was you, the culture that was half of me as a Korean little girl, as a Korean teenager, as a Korean woman. That I felt that guilt and that regret."

With that guilt lifted off her shoulders, Gaines moves forward in her personal and public life embracing her Korean heritage. On Magnolia Table, one of her network's shows she often cooks Korean dishes that she learned from her mother and teaches her children how to prepare them.

In November, the reality show star turned author brought her two daughters, Emmie Kay 12, and Ella, 15 to New York City's Koreatown, with the intention of exposing them to a more diverse environment missing in Waco, Texas where they are growing up and where the Gaines headquartered their media empire, Magnolia Network.

Gaines shared with Parents that her older kids are reading the book. “I am like, ‘You don't have to read it,’ but they're reading the book. So they actually came to me on that topic of my family.” It took years and it wasn't until she was a young adult before Gaines accepted her Korean heritage. She hopes her children will learn from her experience. “I really wrote it for them to get there quicker than I did,” she says.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.

Home improvement world's first couple expands their empire

HGTV

Chip and Jo Gaines have their own TV network now.

She's not Oprah, but Joanna Gaines is approaching that status as the queen of home improvement and the casual Americana style that has been her trademark.

Last we last wrote of Jo Gaines in 2020, we were saying goodbye in the belief that she and her husband Chip were going to retire from the remarkably popularl Fixer Upper HGTV show, and her hectic life as a home improvement and lifestyle guru. We were so wrong.

Instead of retiring to their ranch in Waco, Texas, the Gaines were busy planning the expansion of their home improvement and media empire centered on their shopping mall, a Disneyland for her

The Gaines’ have slowly built a home improvement conglomerate, complete with a new digital and now linear network coming to your TV.

On January 5, of this year the DIY Network became part of the Gaines' Magnolia Network. The channel will include Magnolia Original content including the first seasons of the Gaines’ new show Fixer Upper: Welcome Home, Magnolia Table with Joanna Gaines, plus new series Growing Floret, The Lost Kitchen, Homegrown, Family Dinner and Restoration Road with Clint Harp, along with the complete Fixer Upper library that made the Texas couple household names. 

“It wasn’t long ago that watching TV meant time together as a family. It was a place where people of all ages could gather and be informed, entertained, and inspired by the kind of honest, authentic programming that brings people closer,” Chip and Joanna Gaines said in a press release. 

This linear launch comes after Magnolia Network’s digital debut last summer, with Magnolia content making its way to the Discovery+ lineup. Additionally, the Gaines launched the Magnolia app which includes original series and over 150 hours of unscripted content about home, food, gardening, design, entrepreneurship and the arts.

The amiable couple have built up a huge following attracted to their obvious chemistry onscreen: he with the corny jokes and she with the deadpan delivery and "are-you- kidding-me?" looks. Hey, it works.  

Although both attended Baylor University, they didn't meet each other until after college where Jo  majored in communications and Chip graduated from Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business with a marketing degree.

The couple wed in 2003 and later began their career in remodeling and flipping homes. 

"I knew when I married Chip in 2003 that our life would be an adventure, but through all of the ups and downs I would never have imagined we’d land here," Joanna said in her book "The Magnolia Story."

The Gaines have meticulously expanded their presence in the home improvement and lifestyle world with nary a ripple of controversy. There have been accusations of an  conservatism and an apparent lack of people of color on their shows and questions raised about their membership in a church whose pastor believes in conversion therapy. Those rumors gets Jo riled up to the point she responds, "That really eats my lunch because that's so far from what we are," she said in a TV interview.

They fended off that slice of negativity with donations to Black Lives Matter and one of their shows is hosted by a gay man. The rumors and accusations apparently have not hurt their homespun image.

Although the never really avoided the topic of race, (they just didn't bring it up) only after they established their huge following numbering in the millions, making their shows one of most watched shows on HGTV did Jo give us peek into her Korean American lineage.

Instagram

A past photo shows Joanna Grimes with her mother, left, and  the new media mogul today.

Jo previously spoke out about growing up in a half-Korean household last November, when her book, "The World Needs Who You Were Made to Be"
 — which is all about celebrating who you are and embracing your gifts — hit the bookstores.

"My mom is full Korean and my dad is Caucasian. Kids in kindergarten would make fun of me for being Asian, and when you're that age you don't know really how to process that; the way you take that is, 'Who I am isn't good enough,'" she said 

Jo, whose mother is of Korean descent, wrote on Instagram a memory of the behavior her mom encountered when Gaines was a child and her own hopes for the future.

"I remember as a little girl being out with my mom and seeing how in a moment, a person's harsh look or an underhanded comment would attempt to belittle her rich story and her beautiful culture," she wrote. She included two photos: a throwback pictures of her and her mom, and a photo of her second children's book, "The World Needs Who You Were Made to Be," which was translated into Korean.

"We can't take lightly the power that our words and actions carry. The world needs who we were ALL made to be and all the amazing and beautiful differences we each bring with us," she continued in the social media post. "Maybe if we say it enough, it will ring true and become the message that softens even the hardest of hearts."

"Fast forward to today and my Korean heritage is one of the things I'm most proud of. I'm trying to make up for that lost time – the culture is just so beautiful. I think discovering who you are and what you were made to do is a lifelong journey," she continued.

The Gaines have expanded their single Waco store into a Disneyland for do-it-yourselfers and the Gaines army of fans. Magnolia employs hundreds of workers and is one of Waco's chief tourist attractions.

“That’s what we’ve set out to build with Magnolia Network, and we’ve been amazed by the stories and storytellers we’ve found, people whose lives are living proof that our world is full of beauty, hope, courage, and curiosity. We can’t wait to see these stories brought to life on cable this January, and we’re hopeful about the impact it might have—to help reclaim the best of what television can be.”

In the Magnolia Manifesto, the couple writes:  “We believe in human kindness, knowing we are made better when we work together.” Now, how can you argue against that?

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, new, views and tips from an AAPI perspective, follow me on Twitter @DioknoEd.