• Title/Summary/Keyword: familial drama

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Universal Narrative of a Familial Comedy: Ins Choi's Kim's Convenience (보편 서사로서의 가족희극, 인스 최의 『김씨네 편의점』)

  • Lee, Yonghee
    • American Studies
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    • v.44 no.2
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    • pp.67-96
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    • 2021

  • The Canadian public broadcaster CBC had successfully aired a sitcom centered on a Korean immigrant family from 2016 to 2021. The show is based on the play Kim's Convenience written by a Korean-Canadian playwright Ins Choi. This study explores literary features of Kim's Convenience that accounts for its popularity; three elements of the show play crucial roles in maintaining the balance between specificity and universality. First, Choi deploys a Korean immigrant story in the form of comedy. Second, the main plot revolves around an ordinary family with generational strains that ends in reconciliation. Third. the Kims are depicted more as an archetypical family than a stereotypically Asian one. By closely interweaving these elements, Choi induces the audience to find commonalities from the show, and racial specificities of the Kim's family become "spicy" attractions of the play.

Ethnic Difference in the Construction of War Bride Narrative: Velina Hasu Houston's Tea and Julia Cho's The Architecture of Loss

  • Hyeon, Youngbin
    • American Studies
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    • v.44 no.2
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    • pp.131-158
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    • 2021

  • This paper examines how nation-specific history of Asian war brides affects different representations of war brides in Velina Hasu Houston's Tea (1984) and Julia Cho's The Architecture of Loss (2003). While war brides had long been excluded from American history, Japanese war brides were brought to public attention in the 1980s. Korean war brides, on the other hand, were kept out of sight until the 2000s. Focusing on how this time gap is related to ethnic difference, this paper analyzes dramaturgical differences between the two plays such as the presence/absence of war bride on stage or ethnic solidarity/familial reconciliation as the main device of war bride memorialization. Such differences, the paper suggests, stem from ethnic/historical differences between Korean and Japanese war brides. Through historical interpretations of the plays, this paper argues that America's military relationships with Korea and Japan were reproduced within the Asian-American families of each drama in ways that raise questions about pan-Asian identity.