( CNN ) -- We know the point of the 2010 Census is to count us , one by one , to tally every last resident , but the massive project of course has more prying , if limited , interests . If the aqua- and black-tinted census form were a person , he would be like a slightly nosy seat mate on a plane , fitted out with an unfortunate '80s flair , someone oddly arbitrary in his inquiries while being intimately probing . Beyond the primary accounting , we 're asked additional questions about the people we live with and our relationship to them ; whether we hold a mortgage or rent ; how old we are ; our gender ; whether we inhabit a second residence or even , alas , a prison ; and then , inevitably , how we categorize ourselves racially . The boxes I can check to mark myself have certainly multiplied over the decades , allowing not just a single Asian category but broken out most progressively , it would seem , to other boxes for Vietnamese , Laotian , even Guamanian or Chamorran -- and then the one for me , Korean . The automatic response is to check this box , for that 's what I am , at least in my bloodlines : My parents are from Korea , which was where I was born . My family immigrated when I was 3 , and our predecessors inhabited the Korean Peninsula for as long as can be recalled . But as I consider the box , I have to pause . Perhaps it 's because I 'm a novelist , someone who spends his days telling stories in part by stripping away the surface realities , unraveling presumed identities , in the hopes of characterizing what it is and means to be alive . And thus my hesitance to mark the box . For despite a thorough pride in my Korean heritage and my wish to be no other , the complexities of what might seem a circumscribed identity ( surely not a tenth as vast as `` white '' or `` black '' ) still feel too numerous to be so neatly contained . For my Korean-ness , especially in the context of America , is like no one else 's : It is not at all like my first cousin 's , who immigrated in his 20s and had to learn the language as an adult ; not like my friend 's , who was born in Los Angeles and grew up in a bustling enclave of Korean businesses and churches ; not like the Korean adoptee 's , who was raised in rural Oregon or Minnesota , being maybe the only Asian person in the county . Our shared heritage shows in our faces , but given the differing nature of our experiences and the character of our respective communities , each of us has profoundly varying conceptions of our sense of belonging , cultural ties , even future possibility -- in short , of who we are . If I had made up the census form , the Korean box would necessarily have dozens , maybe hundreds or even thousands of sub-boxes nested inside , boxes for whether we dream in the native language , for how often we Skype with folks in Seoul , whether we wear shoes or go barefoot in the house , if we prefer our kimchee fresher or riper or perhaps not at all . Each form would have to be an epic novel of boxes , its combinations approaching the infinite , a document so vast and particular and dense that the boxes themselves would at some point begin to blur , perhaps disappear , the marks coalescing into something so singular that they would eventually take on a life itself , which is always shifting , dynamic , at last uncountable .
Chang-rae Lee : « Lee will tick Korean box but knows his Korean-ness in America is like no one else 's . Lee : `` Our shared [ Korean ] heritage shows in our faces , '' but similarities are superficial . Lee says if he designed form , boxes would multiply , blur , become uncountable .