• Sijohaknonchong
• /
• v.30
• /
• pp.53-90
• /
• 2009

This study discusses the aspects of Korean-American Sjjo writers' consciousness of sijo and its significance, focusing primarily on the Sijo-Anthologies of Korean-American authors, "The Moon of the Desert" (1989), "The Dandelion of the Desert" (1994), and The Stars of the Desert" (1996) published by the Sijo Society of America. For this purpose, I thoroughly examined "Notes of Writing Sijo' attached to the authors' works and some other sijos added at the end of the paper. They started writing sijos quite early. Sijo has been recognized as a typical traditional genre of literature, and even foreigners came to write them in English. The following is the summary of the view on sijo propounded by Korean-American authors. Firstly, they follow traditional view on the theory of sijo in terms of its nature and utility, and at the same time they emphasize the utility of katharsis through self expressions. Secondly, their recognition of the value of sijo boils down to its formal patterns. Lastly, they develop the idea of national literature through their significance of writing sijos. They think that they can contribute to the development of national literature as well as the expression of patriotism through writing sijos. Therefore, they recognize themselves as spreaders of Korean culture to the local residents, and as the main stream enhancing the status of Korean culture through the competition with other nations.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.64 no.3
• /
• pp.307-327
• /
• 2018

In light of Korean inclusion of its diaspora as part of the nation, a "creolized" approach that brings together constructions of the bad subject of Asian American studies with conceptions of the Korean minjung grounds an analysis of two poets as they might be considered from a bi-national, Korean and U.S. American, perspective. The poets Ed Bok Lee and Jason Koo show different ways of being the bad subject. Lee is clearly a bad American subject, resisting American white racial hegemony, and his poetry often addresses a kind of American minjung multiculturalism, as is shown in poems from his first two books Real Karaoke People and Whorled. He challenges some aspects of contemporary Korea, and might be a kind of Korean bad subject in those challenges. Koo, on the other hand, resists the call to bad subjectivity, so that his poetry may not fit the preferred paradigm of Asian American studies, as he recognizes. As he resists that paradigm, he also gives little attention to his Korean heritage, so his not-bad American subjectivity becomes bad Korea subjectivity. He recovers some measure of badness in the final poem of Man on Extremely Small Island when he connects briefly to his Korean heritage and his Asian American present. The creolized juxtaposition of the bad subject with the minjung suggests the use of these poems in considering both American and Korean society.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.58 no.6
• /
• pp.1023-1039
• /
• 2012

The rising urban space in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century was an exemplary site of struggles between the dominant white population and those who migrated from the imperial peripheries. By setting up the space of Chinatown as a segregated sphere within the urban space, the dominant white American society attempted to recreate the sense of distance between themselves and the racial "others." Accordingly, the dominant narrative representations of San Francisco Chinatown at the turn of the century endeavored to produce and maintain the spatial dichotomies between the orderly spaces of natives and the disruptive immigrant communities within the larger boundary of modern American city space. As a Eurasian woman writer, Sui Sin Far attempted to provide distinctive portrayals of the space of Chinatown and its inhabitants that were far different from those of her contemporaries. Through her portrayals of San Francisco Chinatown in her collection of short-stories, Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Writings (1912), Far challenges against the false stereotypes and misreading of this unique immigrant space within and efforts to present the Chinatown as a heterotopic diaspora space where the "insiders" and the "outsiders" of the American urban space intermingle and influence each other.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
• /
• v.19
• /
• pp.127-147
• /
• 2010

Lee Chan's early poems were defined as the world of romance. His second-term poems were defined as proletarian poetry and poems written in prison when he made the romance as the core point through longing and desire for lost world. Maximizing the romance was proletarian poetry. His third-term poems were feelings of the northern countries called the spirit of Lee Chan's poems. He recognized the emotion of diaspora as the tragedy in these poems. It was remarkable time that the poet's tragedy observing and expressing the reality of colony. Afterward he wrote poems related inside withdrawal and war cooperation, finally he wrote poem after defecting to North Korea. Lee Chan showed the romance of desire in early poems and proletarian poems. Then he indicated acute scenery of the tragedy in the late 1930s' poems. In heavy situation, he moved from pro-Japanese literature to North Korean literature. However he didn't throw introspected self-reflection language to himself each his changing. But through several form of garden, he clearly showed consistent of maximizing his utopia sense. The time Lee Chan experienced was an icon which intensively indicated several features of deformed modern Korean poetic history. He was a unique poet who expressed various traces of modern Korean poetry in short time step by step. His path informed that he was a special poet who stepped the trace of many modern Korean poetry's extremes such as romantic poetry, proletarian poetry, prison poetry, pro-Japanese poetry and North Korean poetry. Likewise we can call his life as a grudge return. Because he left hometown, experienced the light and darkness of modern times and returned his hometown.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.57 no.1
• /
• pp.147-170
• /
• 2011

This paper elucidates the characteristics of transnational adoption, estimates the possibility of beyond-borders identity of transnational adoptees, and tries to analyze Jane Jeong Trenka's The Language of Blood in its context. Though it has been regarded as one of the most humanitarian ways of helping orphans and poor children of the world, transnational adoption, a one-way flow of children from poor Asian countries to rich white countries, has been operated under the market logic between countries. Transnational adoptees, who had been abandoned and forced to be taken away from their birth mother, and later, to fulfill the desire of white parents for a perfect family, perform an ideological labor, serving to make the heterogeneous nuclear family complete. Korean transnational adoptees, forced to transcend the borders of nation, culture, and ethnicity, experience racial conflict and alienation in white adoptive family and society. Their diaspora experience of violent dislocation creates frustration and confusion in establishing their identity as a whole being. When they return to Korea to find their birth mother and their true identity, Korean adoptees, however, are faced with other obstructing issues, such as language problem, culture conflict, and maternal nationalism. Finally, Korean transnational adoptees reject Korean nationalism discourse based on blood, and try to redefine themselves as beyond-borders subjectivities with new and fluid identities. Jane Jeong Trenka's The Language of Blood, an autobiographical novel based on her experiences as a transnational adoptee, represents a Korean adopted girl's personal, cultural, and racial conflict within her white adoptive family, and questions the image of benevolent white mother and the myth of multiculturalism. The novel further represents Jane's return to Korea to find out her true identity, and shows Jane's disappointment and alienation in her birth country due to her ignorance of language and culture. Returning to USA again, and trying to be reconciled with her American mother, Jane shows the promise of accepting her new identity capable of transcending the borders, and thus, the possibility of enlarging the category of belonging.