Forays Into Korean Literature

I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoy reading. I’ve written about my love of reading literature by Anne Tyler, and I’ve focused on my enjoyment of autobiographies, including those of John Kerry and Madeleine L’Engle. Lately, I’ve been reading literature with ties to Korea. This probably isn’t surprising, given the interest I have in the country after having lived there for a year on a Fulbright grant. Ever since then, I’ve been intrigued by Korean history and culture.

One of the books I’ve read recently with a focus on Korea is Gone: A Girl, a Violin, a Life Unstrung by Min Kym. This book is an autobiographical memoir written by a former child prodigy violinist who was born in Korea and raised in the United Kingdom. In it, she deals with her upbringing and professional career, touching on the role Korean culture played in her life and her conflicted feelings about her talent.

A major event that occurred in the book was the theft of her beloved Stradivarius violin. I had never known the intimacy of the relationship between leading violinists and their instruments, but apparently, it’s quite profound. As a result, Kym suffered from grief and loss when her violin was taken.

In the aftermath of her loss, Kym tried to raise funds to re-purchase her stolen violin. She described her feelings at that time, writing: 

What had I got to show for my life? It was gone, and had been gone for two and a half years. Meetings were mirages of hope, fading into nothing when decision time came; no one was interested. And the more you’re turned down, the more you start to panic. You start to think you’re unclean, untouchable, that there’s a mark on your head, or a placard around your neck, failure in your eyes and the way you stand. (182)

The hopelessness and despair she felt is palpable in this quotation. It seemed to her that her life was pointless and that she was displaying this pointlessness for all to see in her expression and her posture. This passage illustrates the feelings of panic she experienced as she was thrown into repeating cycles of disappointment when others denied her the ability to achieve her hopes.

How many of us have felt similar rejection and sorrow? I know I have, and this is what makes her book so relatable. Even though I’ve never been a prodigy, never played the violin, never been lauded by the world press, I can relate to her human feelings in her time of distress.

Another book with Korean ties I recently read was The Court Dancer by Kyung-Sook Shin. This book is set in the final years of the Joseon Dynasty at the end of the 19th century, and it tells the tale of an orphan girl who becomes a dancer at the royal palace. I didn’t live in the 19th century, I’ve never been an orphan, and even though I loved dance classes when I was young, I never rose to the level of being selected as an elite dancer. So, like Min Kym’s book, there are differences between me and the main character that would make it seem I couldn’t relate. However, I did.

One reason why I related to the book is its description of how one of the characters was treated despite a disability. Yi Jin, the orphaned palace dancer, was raised along with Yeon, a fellow orphan. Yeon was as close as a brother to Yi Jin, although he also harbored feelings of romantic affection for her, so when she became old enough to stay at the palace permanently, he became a daegum player in the royal palace to stay close to her (a daegum, also spelled daegeum or taegum, is a large Korean flute made of bamboo). 

Daegeum player. (Wikimedia/Badagnani)

 

Yeon was unable to speak. This perhaps could be due to the trauma he suffered in the time he roamed alone as an orphan before he was taken in by the woman who raised him along with Yi Jin, or perhaps it could be due to a congenital defect. The reason was never made clear, but no matter the reason, his disability did not affect his ability to play the daegum.

At one point in the book, the French legate to Korea, Victor, remarked to Bishop Blanc, a French Roman Catholic missionary to Korea, about Jeon’s acceptance in the royal palace. Bishop Blanc replied, “Korea’s treatment of the disabled has that in favor of the French. They do not particularly discriminate against or exclude them. Not even as royal court musicians” (134). These sentences in particular stood out to me because they resonated with an experience I had in Korea.

When I lived in Korea, I taught in a boys’ middle school. One of the boys in this school was unable to communicate verbally. He was able to grunt and laugh, but he did not form words. Yet, he was integrated into a mainstream classroom rather than placed in a special education classroom as I had seen previously in the United States.

I volunteered in the special education classroom as part of the gifted and talented program I was enrolled in when I was in elementary school. I remember helping a girl named Vicky hold her pencil while she completed addition problems on a worksheet. This girl must have been a teenager at the time, but here she was, in a classroom in the basement of an elementary school being tutored by an elementary school student. Despite how she may have felt about me (I confess I don’t know, as she didn’t speak much), I considered Vicky a friend, and I made sure to always spend some time with her when our times on the playground overlapped.

I’m not sure which system is better—integrating students with developmental delays into mainstream classes with their age group peers, or separating students with developmental delays based on their cognitive abilities. It does seem that, as Bishop Blanc suggested in the book, there could be some benefits to the integration approach when it comes to the way people with developmental differences are treated by society. On the other hand, it could be that some more specialized attention paid to that middle school boy I remember from my time in Korea could have helped him learn to communicate more effectively. What’s the right solution? I don’t know, but this book resonated with me as I pondered the situation.

I’ve read a few other books with Korean ties lately, including The Calligrapher’s Daughter and The Kinship of Secrets by Eugenia Kim. Like The Court Dancer, these are pieces of historical fiction, meaning they are fictionalized accounts of real historical periods. They are also based in the author’s family history, so while not autobiographical to the extent that Min Kym’s book is, there are also some overlaps with that literary tradition.

The Calligrapher’s Daughter tells a story of life in Korea during the Japanese occupation, which lasted from 1910 to the end of WWII, while The Kinship of Secrets focuses on the life of a family of Korean immigrants to the United States during and after the Korean War. Both of these books focus on family relationships, including generational differences; the role of women in society; and racial and ethnic tensions. Both contain themes that, despite the differences between me and the books’ characters and their circumstances, allowed me to identify with the characters’ emotions.

Next up in my reading list is Everything Belongs to Us, another piece of historical fiction by Yoojin Grace Wuertz. It tells a story of college students in Korea during the democratization movement of the 1970s. I’m hoping it’s as enjoyable as my other forays into Korean literature, of which I’ve just scratched the surface in this entry. What do you most enjoy reading?

My Favorite Author

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve been a lifelong avid reader. Not surprisingly, my favorite authors have changed over the years. When I was very young, I might have chosen books by A.A. Milne (famous for his Winnie-the-Pooh books, although I loved his poetry), Margret & H.A. Rey (authors of the Curious George books), Dr. Seuss, and Richard Scarry (author of the Busytown books). In my older childhood, I enjoyed books by Judy Blume, Laura Ingalls Wilder (famous for the Little House on the Prairie series), Beverly Cleary (who I was familiar with because of the books in the Ramona series), and Laura Lee Hope (pseudonym for the authors of the syndicated Bobbsey Twins series).

As a teen and adult reader, my tastes changed. I spent a lot of time during these years reading “the classics,” especially in high school and college. I can’t say Homer’s epic poems made him a favorite author of mine, nor did Shakespeare’s poetry or plays. Instead, my tastes skewed more towards the contemporary fiction genre. Some favorite authors from these years include John Irving and Amy Tan. While I’ve read a lot of works by these authors, I haven’t read all of their books, and some of them resonated more strongly with me than others.

I was also introduced to an author during this time who has remained a favorite throughout my adulthood. That author is Anne Tyler. She is perhaps best known for The Accidental Tourist, which was made into a major motion picture starring Geena Davis, William Hurt, and Kathleen Turner. According to Tyler’s website, this book also made it to #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. The book is about an author of tour guides for reluctant travelers, and it follows the ups-and-downs of his relationships with two different women. I enjoyed it mostly for its portrayal of quirky characters and complicated human relationships, which is typical of Tyler’s novels.

Geena Davis won an Oscar for performing in The Accidental Tourist. (Flickr/Alan Light)

Tyler’s website shows several of her other books have also made it onto the New York Times Best Seller list, although no others have made it to #1. However, her site does show that one of her books won a Pulitzer Prize. In short, she is an acclaimed writer, which does not mean she is beloved by everyone. Critics complain about her books being too similar to each other. They want her to write about different subject matter than quirky people and their quirky lives. In my opinion, if she were to do this, she would not be writing an Anne Tyler novel, and the main purpose of her writing would be lost.

According to her official biography, Tyler was born in Minneapolis and grew up in North Carolina. Her website shows that she has written 22 novels in all, with a 23rd scheduled to be released later this year. I also see on her website that she published a short story not too long ago that is only available as an e-book. I’ll have to learn more about that one. So far, I’ve read every book she’s published, and I’d hate for this one to break my record!

Tyler is known for setting her novels in and around Baltimore. As I’ve already mentioned, she’s also known for her quirky characters. To me, these characters help readers see that run-of-the-mill, ordinary people usually aren’t so run-of-the-mill and ordinary after all. In her books, people who seem nondescript or uninteresting at first glance usually reveal deeper musings, entanglements, and complications when we’re able to delve into their inner lives.

The first of her books I read was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant in ninth grade English. I remember being drawn to the somewhat chaotically interlocking story lines of the various characters in the book. Their conversations and thoughts illustrated the conflicts within families that are so often hidden from public view. From then on, I was hooked on Anne Tyler’s books.

I felt incredibly fortunate to take an entire course on Tyler’s work when I was in college. It was thrilling to me that a faculty member in the Rollins College English Department turned out to have a soft spot for Anne Tyler, just like me. That professor, Barbara Carson (now Child), had even published on Tyler’s writing. I never knew before this point that something a person found fun could also form the basis of scholarly study.

I remember how intense this course was. It was a winter term course, which meant it was the only course I took during the month of January. Anne Tyler hadn’t yet written 22 books at that time, but her list of published novels was sizeable, and as I remember it, we read all of them. I worked hard to keep up with the reading, but I was also in heaven. What a joy it was to be able to read nothing but my favorite author for a whole month and get credit for it!

Dr. Carson was so enthusiastic about the books. It was a first for me, to be let in on a faculty member’s favorite reading experiences. Oh sure, some faculty members are lucky enough to be able to pick some favorites each semester, but not always. For example, maybe someone who loves contemporary fiction is stuck teaching British Literature I for a semester. That person’s students won’t get to share favorites in that class! So, to read nothing but Dr. Carson’s favorites for the whole course was such a unique opportunity. I felt privileged to gain insights into her thoughts about Tyler’s body of work as a whole.

I’d have to go back to my class notes, which I can’t find right now (if I even still have them), to remember the discussions we had about each of the books. I’m sure we covered some of the common themes found in Tyler’s writing: feminism, life in Baltimore, and family dramas, to name a few. Coming of age is another theme Tyler often writes about, as is the misfit experience. I remember at the end of the month, Dr. Carson invited the whole class to her house for a celebration. I don’t remember the details of what we ate or drank, but I do remember being impressed by her generosity in having us over.

After this winter term course, I focused in particular on one book, The Clock Winder, and I made it the centerpiece of my senior honors thesis. My thesis project involved learning about theories of teaching and then applying them to actually teaching my peers. I taught The Clock Winder over several class sessions in one of my thesis adviser’s courses. I thought this book would be a good choice because it focuses on a college-aged person’s journey of self-discovery. I liked the book and thought my peers would, too.

However, I can’t say my peers loved the book as much as I did. They had a hard time relating to the main character’s personality, and I remember my adviser, Roy Starling, who I’ve written about before, consoling me about the situation. He helped me understand that teachers often have these missed connections with their students and that the key to moving on is to maintain a sense of humor about it. This gave me a valuable insight into not only teaching but into human relationships in general.

I know I haven’t done justice to Anne Tyler’s novels here. I guess I didn’t intend to. This wasn’t meant to be an in-depth review or literary analysis of her works. However, I hope I’ve given you a sense of what brought me to enjoy her novels and maybe tempted you into reading some of them yourself.