Reading Don Lee's Yellow as a Short Story Cycle

"단편소설집의 사이클"로서 단 리의 『옐로우』 연구

In this paper, I'll try to read Don Lee's Yellow intertextually with a more canonical text, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, in order to see what kind of traditions and techniques Yellow references and/or rewrites as a way of tracking this production. Yellow's formal properties as a short story cycle are established through its use of particular conventions. For instance, Yellow follows the short story cycle model that includes the assemblage of recurring characters into one locale. Yellow's characters are all connected to and at some point located in the fictional small town of Rosarita Bay, California. The text form aligns it with established literary conventions and traditions and suggests the author's reliance upon or trust in those modes. Yellow's setting in a small town alludes to and has often been compared to Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, which is perhaps one of the most well-known and extensively discussed short story cycles in American literature. Also following convention is Lee's construction of Rosarita Bay and the text's third person narrator as a member of that town. Both Rosarita Bay and the narrator become important figures through the related-tale nature of the text. The method of story-telling is similar to how the town Winesburg and its "seemingly sympathetic and non-overtly judgmental" narrator are operational in Anderson's text. In sum, Yellow is opportune for intertextual reading largely because it is a collection of stories that create a linked series.