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The last thing I expected while watching a Korean cooking TV show was to confront my childhood feelings about my Greek heritage, but that's exactly what happened.

That I settled on "Culinary Class Wars" on Netflix was no surprise. I'm a sucker for reality cooking competitions, particularly ones that lean heavily on the contestants' cooking and lightly on the drama. The first episode, which introduced the theme of 80 relatively unknown "black spoon" chefs competing against 20 celebrity "white spoon" chefs, hooked me. And I also recognized among the "white spoons" chef Edward Lee, who I'd loved watching on "Top Chef" years ago.

I knew that Lee had warmth, charisma and skill, but I didn't know that we had something in common. We both grew up amid two cultures. As Lee advanced in the competition, he talked about being a child in the U.S., alienated from Korean culture but never feeling fully American, either. He talked about shame and confusion, about being torn between two worlds.

Maybe it's partially because Lee and I are of similar ages, but I can relate.

I doubt anyone who came of age in the last 20 years can understand what it was like to be a kid when being different was a state to be avoided at all costs. I doubt they can imagine what it was like to see movies and TV shows full of blue-eyed California blondes, when Jessicas and Jennifers ruled, and "ethnic" was shorthand for dirty, evil or dorky.

To most Americans, my long last name, with its Vs and Xs, was just an unpronounceable scramble of vowels. On the first day of eighth grade, my history teacher, whose favorites were the boys who wore Confederate flag rings to school, made extended sport of my last name, loudly, in front of the entire class. My family ate weird food and went to a weird church. My father spoke imperfect English in a thick accent. I slept with a flokati on my bed purchased from gypsies. I had ridden on a donkey.

But I could hardly consider myself truly Greek, either. I went to Greek school on Saturdays but had no one to practice with, so my language skills stalled. In Greece, it was embarrassing to make grammar mistakes, so I mostly stayed silent. My grandparents, aunts and uncles lectured me for not speaking more fluently. I hadn't learned Greek history, particularly of modern Greece, in school. I didn't know the music Greek teenagers listened to, and I missed their pop culture references, too. They called me "Americanitha," American girl.

When I was in Greece, I was an American, and when I was in the U.S., I was Greek. The truth, though, was that I was neither.

I ran into a classmate at my high school reunion this summer and the same thing was on both of our minds.

"Why did we never talk about being Greek?" I asked him.

We had both known the other was Greek -- there's a kind of bat signal sent out -- but, for four years, we studiously avoided each other and all discussion of Greekness.

"We were too busy trying to fit in," he said.

He was right. We didn't want to acknowledge our differences, and we'd only have drawn attention to it by combining our Greekness. Instead, better to try to pretend. Pretend you're the same as everyone else.

But when you try to blend in, what really happens is that you disappear. You hide your differences, fading into the crowd, and become a bland, anesthetized version of yourself.

As I've gotten older, I've tried to rediscover my oddness. I've tried to show my differences, instead of hiding them.

And so it was with great empathy that I watched Lee compete on "Culinary Class Wars." I won't spoil the ending, because if you like those sorts of things, it's worth a watch. But I will tell you this: Lee rediscovered his uniqueness as the audience, the judge and his competitors watched, and it was a glorious thing to see. He struggled at times with speaking Korean, but I felt for him there, too. Baring your soul in your nonnative language is tough.

Perhaps most importantly, his cooking was not only top-tier but was inspired -- by his journey, by his emotion, by his heritage and his heart. And, in the end, he did the U.S. and Korea equally proud.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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