Hae Hun Matos was born in Seoul, South Korea. She was born to deaf parents, who divorced when she was three or four. She moved frequently as a child. She first lived with her grandparents and aunt with her younger sister in Korea. At the age of seven, her mother took her and her youngest sister to live with her and her stepfather briefly, before moving to the States, where they lived in Victorville, California. Her third grade year, the family moved to Korea for one year, moved back to Victorville for middle school, and she finished out high school in Japan.
Following high school graduation, she took up different jobs in Florida and Las Vegas, taught English in Korea, before joining the U.S Army in 1998. She was stationed in Colorado and Germany before leaving the Army in 2002. In 2003, she moved with her husband to Houston and got her bachelor’s degree, taking classes at HCC and the University of Houston-Downtown. She currently works as the Coordinator at the Department of Transnational Asian Studies and Chao Center for Asian Studies at Rice University. In this interview, Hae Hun Matos discusses deaf and Korean culture, her childhood, her experiences living in various places, her service in the U.S Army, and insights on being in an interracial relationship and raising a biracial daughter
View interview transcript PDF — Full interview materials on Rice Digital Collections