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Intersubjectivity and the mother-daughter dyad in Korean American women literature

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Intersubjectivity and the mother-daughter dyad in Korean American women literature

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Content INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND THE MOTHER-DAUGHTER DYAD IN KOREAN AMERICAN WOMEN LITERATURE by Ahnlee Jang A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS East Asian Languages and Cultures August 2005 Copyright 2005 Ahnlee Jang Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1430392 Copyright 2005 by Jang, Ahnlee All rights reserved. INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. ® UMI UMI Microform 1430392 Copyright 2006 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents Abstract.............................................................................................................................. iii I. Introduction..................................................................................................................... 1 II. Chapter One 1.1: Korean American Women Writers............................................................................9 1.2: The Origin of Mother-Daughter Dyad: Freud, Chodorow, and Benjamin........... 19 1.3: Mother-Daughter Dyad in Asian American Women W ritings.............................24 III. Chapter Two The Sources of the Conflicts: Culture and Language....................................................32 IV. Chapter Three Discovery of Korean Identity and Reconciliation.......................................................... 50 V. Conclusion....................................................................................................................66 Bibliography......................................................................................................................69 Appendix A .........................................................................................................................................75 (Translation of the Interview with Caroline Hwang) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iii Ahnlee Jang ABSTRACT This thesis studies intersubjectivity in the Korean American mother-daughter relationship in the context of the mother-daughter relationship theory. The novels I examine are by Korean American women writers: One Thousand Chestnut Trees, In Full Bloom, and Still Life with Rice. These texts focus on the dynamics of the mother- daughter relationship where the daughters feel obliged to stay within the unit of the relationship while the mothers exert great influence over the subjectivity of the daughters. Because the daughters are unsure of their ego boundary, the yearning to achieve autonomy of identity becomes a struggle. Hence, the objective is to regain the subjectivity of the daughters and define their identities in the context of the mother- daughter relationship. The complexities of the relationship are expounded by the mother-daughter dyad and the inter subjective theories. However, because the theories are based on Caucasian Americans, it is insufficient to explain the Korean American mother-daughter relationship. Therefore, particular focus will be on how ethnicity contributes to the Korean American mother-daughter relationship. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 I. Introduction Since the publication of Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1976),1 the discourse on mother-daughter relationships and female identity has evolved to occupy a prominent place in Asian American women’s literature (Grice 37, Davis 60). Asian American literary scholar Rocio Davis observes that these texts are frequently narrated by protagonists who must necessarily deal with the conflicts that involve the mother figure. He also acutely points out that, “ethnic writing in general often reflects gender conflicts transmitted through culturally constructed but frequently misinterpreted roles, specifically those of mothers” (Davis 60). However, the conflicts are difficult to resolve as the presence of the mother in the daughter’s life is often overpowering, making it difficult for daughters to distinguish the self from the (m)other. “The place of mother [in ethnic texts]-personally, socially, culturally- directs, modifies, and influences the daughters’ responses to both individual and cultural demands” (Davis 60). Thus, the power of mothers’ actions and words over the daughter brings uncertainty on the daughter’s own judgment and subjectivity. The blurred individuality of mothers and daughters speaks toward the interdependence of the relationship. Although mothers depend on their daughters, the daughters depend on their mothers on a greater scale as the mother is the first bond, and as such is the teacher of the culture, and perhaps her closest connection to the mother- culture. Therefore, in such ethnic texts, the subjective identity of the daughters, their 1 The Woman Warrior is a ‘semi-realistic’ work depicting the author’s real life; it nevertheless bears eminent social implications. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 differentiation from the mother, and the nature of the intersubjective relationship come into question. As contemporary feminist scholars such as Jessica Benjamin explore the intersubjectivity of the mother-infant relationship, the complicated negotiations between the mother and daughter become more defined. Benjamin’s intersubjective theory purports that an infant recognizes and develops self by connecting to and mutually recognizing the (m)other as subjects. Discovering the mother-daughter dyad running through numerous novels by Korean- American women writers, I began to wonder how language, gender, and culture relate to the relationship. As the fundamental means of communication, language is critical in conveying one’s thoughts to the other. More significantly, one’s native tongue is the language closest to the heart. If the daughter’s native language is different from that of her mother, miscommunication and misinterpretation will occur. Besides language, one’s culture is a part of one’s identity. Culture, due to its inclusive nature, encompasses the history and its heritage, which gives a person a sense of his/her roots and identity. In addition to language and culture, gender plays a critical role in defining women’s status in a society. The deeply rooted patriarchy and Confucianism in Korea have emphasized the hierarchical relationship between men and women, binding Korean women to accept a lower social status. Thus, the gap created by the different language, culture, and gender roles between the mothers, who were bom and raised in Korea and came to the US, and the daughters, who were bom in the U.S. or migrated there at an early age, naturally brings clashing conflicts. The texts illustrate the ambivalent relationship between the mother and the daughter built on love, hate, anger, and the need for mutual approval. Furthermore, the texts elucidate the Korean Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 American mother-daughter relationship that evolves through culture and personal history. Therefore, the authors find it necessary to center on the mother-daughter relationship to reveal the identity of the protagonists. Yet, the focal point is that the daughters are not able to define who they are through the connection to or dependence on their mothers because of the intersubjective relationship. Interdependence troubles the daughters greatly in their search for identity because unless they find the self in the relationship and distinguish themselves from the mothers, the daughters will remain only as extensions of the mothers. Here lies the irony. The daughter must concurrently maintain the intersubjective relationship while she searches her identity, because it is only through the matrilineage that she can discover her Korean identity. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to study the intersubjectivity of the Korean American mother-daughter dyad and the daughter’s search for their identities through matrilineage. In this thesis, three particular novels are examined: Still Life with Rice (1996) by Helie Lee, One Thousand Chestnut Trees (1998) by Mira Stout, and In Full Bloom (2003) by Caroline Hwang. I have chosen these three novels for two reasons. First, the conflicts between the first-generation mothers and the second-generation daughters situated in the U.S. are resourceful and powerfully written. In Full Bloom is alive with conflicts of the protagonist and her mother face at present, whereas the Still Life with Rice and One Thousand Chestnut Trees mainly focus on narrating the mothers’ past; through which the daughters gain deeper understanding of their mothers. All three texts tap into the conflicts that are lurking in the deepest layer of their relationship. The conflicts these mothers and daughters face are difficult to resolve because the burden of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 differences in personal history and cultural conditioning is too great. However, despite the complexity of the relationship, these three novels illustrate the ambivalent relationship by bringing mothers’ voices in juxtaposition with the daughters’ narratives. This constitutes the second reason. By including the mothers’ narratives, the relationship is portrayed in both the mothers and the daughters’ perspectives. By contrast, in novels by many other Korean American women writers, either the mother’s or the daughter’s voice is absent. As feminist maternal scholar Marianne Hirsch has noted, in stories of female development, voices of the daughter as well as the mother need to be present because only in combining both voices can ‘a double voice’ that truly resonates the multiple female consciousness be captured (Hirsch 161). The absence of the mother’s voice would lead to an incomplete understanding of the relationship and vice versa. Though these novels are informative and useful in their focus on the relationships between the Korean American daughters and their mothers, there is no particular theory that coincides accurately with the process of split, understanding, and reconciliation the mother-daughter relationships undergo in the novels. Therefore, I intend to incorporate mother-daughter dyad theory along with the intersubjective theory proposed by various theorists. In addition, as these relationships are complicated by culture, language, and personal history such as the Korean War and immigration experience, the motifs of mother’s silence, war trauma and bi-cultural identity will be discussed to give better understanding of the struggles each mother and daughter experience. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 In the first chapter, I will introduce the body of Korean American women literature and the studies thereof. Subsequently, Freud and Chodorow who are accredited for being the first to theorize and further developing the mother-daughter dyad, respectively, will be addressed to provide some theoretical basis. I also discuss Adrienne Rich’s view because her theory applies to culturally specific critiques, the Asian American model in particular. Following the mother-daughter theory, I explain Jessica Benjamin’s intersubjective theory, as her rendition of the theory accentuates “both the individuality and doubleness of the two subjects” (Yu). (She distinguishes both mother and child as separate subjects). Next, I examine two emblematic novels of Asian American women literature; Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, and the recurring pattern in these two novels. By finding and analyzing the similar patterns in the three Korean American novels, I place the Korean American women’s literature in the context of Asian American women’s literature. I open chapter two with an overview of conflicts caused by the cultural difference and language barrier. Because mothers have high expectations of their daughters in terms of academic success and marriage, expectations which are constructed by Korean culture and their immigration experience to the U.S., mothers and daughters often find these two conflicts most distressing in their relationship. Academic success and marriage are examples of how bicultural identity distances daughters from their mothers. The texts reflect that second-generation daughters consider cultural identity as mutually exclusive. The desire to join Caucasian social group, to fit-in, leads many Korean Americans to reject their Korean identity. Even if Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6 one tries to balance the two clashing cultures, the racial discrimination they experience plays a role in denying Korean identity. Socio-psychological empirical studies also support this view. I will draw sources from the historical and socio- psychological texts to examine these conflicts in Korean American mother-daughter relationship. The purpose of employing socio-historical context in this thesis is to show practical evidence of the conflicts, which include facts on immigration history, and interviews and empirical studies of the struggles second-generations experience with the bicultural identity. Socio-historical information provides answers to certain questions through the process of survey or ethnographical studies. They offer cases and results of conflicts according to designed variables. This is not to say that socio-historical evidences are more important than fiction. Fiction is a reflection of more realistic conflicts; there are more stories, more unexpected twists and turns, and more reconciliation since its structure naturally gives accounts of all that goes unsaid. Fiction in itself is reality where commotion comes alive and emotions can be felt in a way that speaks to the readers. Therefore, the socio-historical approach is meant to supplement my findings. This chapter also introduces how the language barrier affects the relationship. I examine the meaning and the influence the language has in this relationship and the language the mothers have created. The third chapter, which takes a psychological approach for the close readings of the texts, illustrates how the daughters come to understand their mothers’ weaknesses and strengths, which the daughters find both inspiring and repelling. However, when Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7 the daughters discover that aspects they love and hate about their mothers are also immanent in them, the daughters begin to understand their mothers. I also bring in the mothers’ personal histories to emphasize the affect it has on the daughters. By learning and understanding their mother’s past that has been kept in silence the daughters begin to discover their identity as an individual thereby conflicts and ambivalence significantly lessen. Interestingly, besides the deeper level of exchange with their mothers, second-generation Korean Americans face the need to ‘go back’ to the tradition to find their family heritage in order to discover their identity as Koreans. The establishment of their identities within tradition is ‘taking on’ or ‘continuing’ their matrilineage so they have a sense of belonging and are able to pass it down. I examine this process of identification in the daughters’ perspective. The findings of the intersubjectivity of the Korean American mother-daughter relationship will be significant in several ways. First, by studying the mother-daughter bond of Korean American women, readers will be able to understand the mother- daughter relationship of other ethnic groups such as Chinese American. The experiences of immigration, the identity struggle of the second-generation, and the culture and language barriers between mothers and daughters are issues also identifiable in Chinese American mother-daughter relationships. Amy Tan has asserted that to Chinese American daughters, the mother-daughter relationship is one way of reaffirming the Chinese American identity (Heung 27). This statement can be also applicable to Korean American daughters. The second-generation daughters find their roots through the mothers. Secondly, as Lisa Lowe succinctly describes, this Asian American identity is “partly inherited, partly modified, as well as partly invented” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8 (Lowe 6). Indeed, immigration has placed Asian Americans in a unique situation unlike people in their homeland. Their ways of adapting to a completely new environment, culture, and system have brought much displacement, yet through the experience, Asian Americans have found ways to merge their traditions with the American ways to create something different. Through this study, we will be able to distinguish what was inherited by the mother and the mother-culture, what aspects were modified to create a new life in the U.S., as well as what aspects were developed to forge a distinctive Asian American identity. The research on Korean American women writings has yet come into full swing, as the brevity of the bibliography attests. In addition, the analysis of the mother- daughter relationship of these writings is even rarer. Moreover, the study of Korean American women literature is far behind that of the Chinese or Japanese American women literature. I believe my thesis can help to shift the imbalance. On a personal note, I hope my contribution works as a channel to promulgate the Korean American women literature. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 9 II. Chapter One 1.1: Korean American Women Writers Korean immigrants have already been in America for more than 100 year, yet their trials and triumphs have been scantly told, and have attracted little attention. During the past few decades, Korean American literature has been successful in telling stories of Koreans to larger audiences. By grappling with such issues as identity and acculturation, the texts bring out the uniqueness of Korean immigrants. Since 1990, literary works by first and second-generation women have been proliferating. This recent influx of writings by women calls for attention. Elaine Kim gives the credit for this trend toward a heightened interest in women’s writings among U.S. readers, to Asian American women in particular, and an increase in the population of Koreans’ since the Immigration Act of 1965 (Kim 174). As if confirming the latter possibility, one of the first Korean women writers, Sook Nyul Choi, came to the U.S. soon after the law was enacted. She came to the U.S. as a student in 1968 and authored several novels including Year o f Impossible Goodbyes (1991) and the Echoes o f the White Giraffe (1993). Choi wrote, “having lived through [a] turbulent period of Korean history, I wanted to share my experiences [...] so little is known about my homeland, its rich culture and its sad history. My love for my native country and for my adopted country prompted me to write this book to share some of my experiences and foster greater understanding.”2 Both books, set entirely in Korea, are addressed to generations of Koreans bom in the U.S., so that they may better understand their parents and where Dust jacket, Years o f Impossible Goodbyes. 1991. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 10 they came from (Kim 166). The stories of the Japanese colonization of Korea toward the end of WW II, in the Year o f Impossible Goodbyes, and the Korean War, in the Echoes o f the White Giraffe, are told through the eyes of a girl named Sookan. In Year o f Impossible Goodbyes, a 10-year-old Sookan shares history by relaying what she sees and experiences of racism, cruelty, and Japanese exploitation during the colonization. In Echoes o f the White Giraffe, now 15-years old, Sookan dreams of leaving Korea. She thinks the emptiness and restlessness she feels are due to the oppression women face in Korean society and goes to America to fulfill her void and achieve her dream. Whereas Choi’s works are set entirely in Korea, Mary Paik Lee’s Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America (1990) tells her family’s struggle to ‘make it’ in California. The rugged west is described as a battleground for the early immigrants where they had to fight with cold, poverty, and racism on a daily bases. Although Lee’s contribution is significant, her work, as well as Margaret K. Pai’s The Dreams o f Two Yi-Min (1989), has been criticized by feminist scholars for having been written as male-centered narration. These scholars argue that the narration dismisses mothers, sisters, and the writers’ individuality, thus preventing women from being the true subjects (Kim 169). Ronyoung Kim, also known as Gloria Hahn, is another pioneer woman writer who wrote about the lives of the early Korean immigrants. In the dust jacket of her book Clay Walls (1987), she wrote, “A whole generation of Korean immigrants and their American-born children could have lived and died in the United States without anyone knowing they had been here. I could not let that happen.” Indeed, Kim creates a Korean mother, Haesu, who undergoes great hardships to raise three children on her Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11 own while facing harsh racism and poverty. At first, she thinks true nationalists are the ones who participate actively and donate large sum of money. She also used to think her aristocrat lineage defined who she was. However, after her husband’s death, when she loses the luxury of attending meetings and making financial contributions, she begins to change. She transforms from someone who has an arrogant aristocrat descent mentality to a strong and financially independent mother who devotes her life to raise culturally conscious children. Although her circumstance does not allow her to participate as much as she wants, she realizes her nationalism is as strong as that of active advocates. Elaine Kim notes that Haesu’s efforts in shaping an autonomous identity as a woman and as a Korean nationalist is noteworthy (Kim 169). Clay Walls illustrates how successfully the immigrants passed on their fierce resistance against cultural extinction to their children, who did not directly experience Japanese colonialism because they were bom in America (Kim 169). While the authors felt that the mindset of resistance was one of the most important things they could instill in America-born Koreans, they also had other reasons for having confined to these limited themes. Due to the preconceptions of Americans and critics who thought all Asians were alike, regardless of nationality, it was difficult for the early Asian American writers to break away from those assumptions (Lim, xii). Therefore, insisting on a unitary identity was the effective means of opposing and defending against marginalization. For instance, Richard Kim’s The Martyred (1964) was well regarded by the critics because of its foregrounding issues of collaboration with North Korea during the Korean War, Korean Christian values, and general cultural values (KA Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 12 culture).3 However, the sequel The Innocent (1968), which the author thought was more mature work, giving a description of Koreans in the U.S., was not as well received as the first one (Education about Asia). This conveys that American critics only want to read about Asian American as others from a different shore not as people who should be integrated with themselves. This construction necessitated the writers be exclusive in selecting themes and levels in such critical issues as ethnicity, gender, nationality, and class because of such biases (Lim, xii). Moreover, demarcation from the mainstream literature suggests that the struggle of being bound by their ‘cultural otherness’ continues. Although this hegemony has not shifted, there seem to have been changes in the second-generation of writers. Noticeably, the second-generation Asian American writers have begun to break away from the unitary identity. The Ese daughters have began to pull away from previous themes to encompass various others and they do not hesitate to voice their issues. In the works of second-generation women writers, Susan Choi, Nora Okja Keller, Helie Lee, Mira Stout, Caroline Hwang, and Mia Yun, topics vary from comfort women to fictionalizing the Patty Hearst kidnapping incident that occurred 30 years ago. In some works, protagonists are not even Koreans or Korean Americans. Indeed, while Susan Choi’s second book, American Woman, deals with issues of race, class, war, and peace which primarily centers on a Japanese American woman and her boyfriend, the kidnappers. It focuses on Patty and her captors by recreating the year they disappeared. The Martyred won a National Book Award in 1965 and was a best seller the year it was published. One of the reviews it received is: “This memorable document of courage and endurance is written with clarity and vigor, pierced with moments of poignant love and the blazing resentment of the young.” -Saturday Review (dates unknown) (http://www.ucpress.edU/books/pages/8200.html#links) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 13 Still, others choose to write about Koreans or Korean Americans as their main concern. However, it is not to emphasize the painful history of Korea and its unique culture as the first-generation writers aimed for. Rather, they are more concerned with characterization of the people in their stories (Reynolds) as well as issues relevant to them such as Korean identity. In such a case, the theme is not confined to telling the story of Korea’s horrific 20th century experience but instead engages the readers in a wider spectrum of themes. For instance, in Choi’s first novel, The Foreign Student, a story about a Korean student in a middle-class American town in 1955, the subject matter ranges from the protagonist’s experiences during the Korean War to his love- triangle relationship with an Anglo-American woman and his professor at an all- Caucasian institution and his encounter with the Japanese in a foreign country. To him America is foreign; however, in this uncharted place he is able to find his identity. One distinctive second-generation writer is Nora Okja Keller, who made herself known for her works on comfort women. While studying in college, she had a chance to hear the testimony of a woman who was in forced sexual slavery during the WWII. As one of a few living survivors, Keum-ja Hwang had the courage to break the 50 years of silence the comfort women had endured (Lee, Young-Oak 146).4 The shock of the story and the lack of these women’s voice compelled Keller to write her first novel, Comfort Woman (1997). In her novel, Akiko, the protagonist is betrayed and sold by her sister into sexual slavery. There, the Japanese soldiers exploit her. Later, she is 4 At a symposium Keller attended in college, she first heard about the comfort women. Since then, the thought would not escape her and she began to have nightmares about war so she decided to put the story into writing. Keller collected data and wrote the images of wars and blood she had in her dream. That became Mother-Tongue (which won the Pushcart Prize in 1995) and later chapter two of Comfort Woman. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 14 freed but again is sexually exploited by her husband, a U.S. missionary, who is infatuated with her beauty and expects her to be a subservient picture perfect Asian wife. While Keller’s main aspiration was to find a voice for unacknowledged women, she also brings Korean Shamanism, colonialism, patriarchy and American imperialism into her writing. In her sequel Fox Girl (2002), Keller, finds a voice for another group of sufferers, the G.I. girls and their children of the camp towns. In an interview, Keller stated that she wanted to bring forth these stigmatized and outcast women and write about them from a woman’s perspective (Lee, Young-Oak 148). Although both novels are rather grim and painful to read, Fox Girl has a happy conclusion; the protagonist escapes the camp town with her daughter and starts a new life in Hawaii (Keller is preparing a sequel). Yet others focus on family lineage, tracing back the stories of their parents and grandparents. Mira Stout and Frances Park take personal passages to their parents’ past. Stout’s One Thousand Chestnut Trees: A Novel o f Korea (1998) is about a daughter venturing out to unfamiliar territory, Korea, to learn about her mother’s heritage. This journey becomes an eye-opening experience for Anna when the learning of her family’s heritage fulfills her emptiness in life. Co-authored by Frances and Ginger Park, To Swim Across the World (2001), the sisters narrate their parents’ personal experiences during the Japanese colonization. The narration is told in Sei-Young and Heisook’s voices, who tell their stories chronologically from their childhood to the point when they marry and leave Korea for the U.S. Juxtaposing the father’s story with the mother’s, the text reveals Korean’s sentiments towards Japanese colonialism, and how Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 15 the lives of Koreans in different age group, class, and gender were impacted during and after colonization. As examined above, the second-generation women writers explore issues that have not been grappled with. Even if their themes focus on Korea’s history and heritage, they do not redundantly focus on re-tracing the painful memories of history from the standpoint of victims for sympathy. In fact, the writers, being bom or raised in America, have written these novels from perspectives with American values. In other words, these novels reveal what Korea means to the second-generations. Hence, historical incidents are written differently from the first generation writers. The history is used as groundwork to provide the readers the backdrop for where protagonists are coming from. For instance, in such works as One Thousand Chestnut Trees, When My Sister was Cleopatra Moon, and In Full Bloom where the themes grapple with identity crisis of second-generation Korean Americans, Korean history and culture are used as a drawbridge that helps the protagonists discover their Korean identities. Thus, it is not so much about giving a history lesson to the readers as it is about utilizing the past for character analysis. Another paradigm of second-generation writers is that they are breaking the stereotypes of Koreans and Korean families. Suki Kim’s The Interpreter is about a character who comes from a severely dysfunctional family and has an affair with two married men. Kim says in an interview, “I was trying to burst open the stereotype that the Asian family is always a bonding experience. Just because you’re Asian doesn’t mean you have to love your family. Any anger my character feel[s] is not hidden” (Reynolds). Somewhat despondent but nevertheless original are Marie G. Lee’s Summer Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 16 o f My Korean Soldier which portrays a Korean adoptee in Korea in search of her biological parents and Lisa Park’s A Letter to my Sister. Written in letterform, Park’s story reveals how feelings of marginalization can drive a person to suicide especially when one is insecure of his/her identity. These stories and others by contemporary young writers are in a recently published anthology Making More Waves (1997). Helie Lee’s short story of a friendship between a Korean woman and an African American, Kimchee and Corn Bread, is another original writing (Lee 90). In this short story, each tries to break misconceptions about the other’s ethnicity, and teach each other of their unique cultures and confront the schism between Blacks and Koreans. In such varying themes, Korean American women are rising to voice underrepresented people and issues, and push the boundaries to pave a way for later women writers. Interestingly, a common theme running through most of these writings by second-generation women writers is the female relationship with other females, especially that of the mother-daughter relationship. Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman and Fox Girl, and Mira Stout’s One Thousand Chestnut Trees, Caroline Hwang’s In Full Bloom are all about mothers and daughters, and Helie Lee’s Still Life with Rice shed light on the protagonist’s relationship with her mother and grandmother. By focusing on woman-to-woman relationships, the novels illustrate the intersubjective relationship of Korean American women as well as the identity of the second-generation Korean American women. This paper places the mother-daughter relationship at its analytical center particularly on the intersubjectivity of the relationship. Because it is through mother-daughter bond that protagonists discover their Korean identities. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 17 To date, there has been minimal research regarding this particular aspect of Korean American women writers, if not Korean American literature in general. For the most part, recent critical studies about Korean American writers have centered on the pioneers of Korean American writing and the most critically acclaimed works.5 Still some studies on Korean American women writers have been addressed by scholars of Asian American studies or ethnic studies such as Elaine Kim, an influential scholar in Korean American literature study. In her chapter Korean American literature in An Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature (1997), Kim argues that Korean immigrants’ legacies have been modified and filtered through the viewpoints of English-speaking descendants and the writers’ class privileges (Kim 156). She pays special attention to the second-generation women writers’ biracial attributes, heterogeneity and multiple positions as raced and gendered Korean American subjects in the West (Kim 170). Hence, in her essay, she examines the works of early 5 Beginning with Il-Han New’s When I was a Boy in Korea (1928), the best known early works are Younghill Kang’s (1903-72) The Grass Roof (1931) and East Goes West (1937), Richard E. Kim’s The Martyred (1964) and The Innocent (1968) where they wrote of their racial discrimination in U.S., effects of Japanese colonization and their nationalism towards the mother country (Kim 158, Yoo 2). More contemporary works that have been highly praised and carefully studied by American literary critics include Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker (1995) and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s (1951- 82) Dictee published in 1982 (Kim 1997, Yoo 1997, Cheung 2000, Cho 2000). These works as well as those by other second-generation writers grappled with the marginalized Korean Americans endeavoring to assimilate into the WASP mainstream society concomitantly searching for their identities in the backdrop of autobiographical stories of their parents’ struggling lives and of their childhood memories. Although differences in generation and their personal background engender diverse themes, they share common characteristics. For instance, their autobiographical writings give more persuasive accounts of immigrants’ lives to the readers and the usage of Korean language written in transliterated English as well as other glimpse of cultural rituals offer insights to Korean culture and history. Their contribution for having triggered the need and realization for further studies of Korean immigrants to be carried on is noteworthy. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 18 immigrants’ daughters and second and 1.5-generation writers on the issues they have been struggling with (Kim 173). Her comprehensive overview of women writers also includes Making More Waves (1997), an anthology of writings by Asian American women, and productive works done by college students. Kim offers optimistic prospects for Korean American literature. Other research includes exhaustive analysis of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee by scholars including Lisa Lowe, Hyun Yi Kang, Elaine Kim, and Yi-Chun Tricia Lin (Cho 48). Meanwhile some essays investigate Quiet Odyssey for its important autobiographical account of an early immigrant woman. The relatively recent publication Kori: The Beacon Anthology o f Korean American Fiction (2001) introduces Korean American fiction but fails to analyze texts. Unfortunately, besides book reviews and interviews published in periodicals along with dissertations by graduate students, only a few books specifically address recent Korean American literature. Therefore, this paper in itself will be productive for its study on Korean American women writers. The three novels I analyze in this thesis One Thousand Chestnut Trees, Still Life with Rice, and In Full Bloom center on complicated negotiations of mother- daughter relationship. Stout tells a story of Anna, bom of a Korean mother and an Irish descent father, searching for her Korean root. She has always struggled with her ambivalent feelings towards her mother and concludes the great void in her life is caused by the relationship with her mother. Searching for clues to resolve this emptiness, she decides to learn about stories of her family heritage centered on her mother. Helie Lee’s autobiography, Still Life with Rice tells remarkable story of the author’s grandmother. Although the book focuses most on her grandmother’s past, it Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 19 reveals how much Helie Lee’s life has been changed through the story of her grandmother. With its sequel, Absence o f the Sun, Lee’s powerful connection to her matrilineage is revealed. Similar to Stout’s, Caroline Hwang’s In Full Bloom illustrates the conflicts Ginger, the protagonist, has with her mother. When her mother announces that she intends to stay with Ginger until she finds a nice husband for her, Ginger is placed in a situation where she cannot avoid direct conflict with her mother. In order to please her mother, Ginger acts the way she always has around her mother, disempowered and controlled. However, Ginger is given a chance to finally learn ways to communicate with her mother and find herself in the relationship. These novels thus give portraits of diverse mother-daughter relationships, offering possibilities of separation and bonding, and conflicts and its resolutions. 1.2 : The Origin of Mother-Daughter Dyad: Freud, Chodorow, and Benjamin As this paper focuses on Korean American mother-daughter relationships illustrated in Korean American women writings, it is necessary to address the theoretical structure of the mother-daughter dyad. First, I will draw on the theories of Nancy Chodorow, who is one of the prominent figures in feminist studies, as well as Freud, on whom she based her assertion.6 Freud’s theory of the daughter’s pre-Oedipal relationship with the mother and Chodorow’s theory of mother-daughter dyad, in particular, provide useful frameworks for understanding the origins of the psychological 6 It is suggested that Freud’s model of the Oedipal family arrangement is both pre-text and prototext for Chodorow’s seminal publication The Reproduction o f Mothering (1978) (Grice 39). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 20 entanglements of mothers and daughters. Next, I introduce Jessica Benjamin’s theory of intersubjectivity. As a contemporary feminist scholar, Benjamin proposes to acknowledge mother as independent subject and gives clear delineation of the mother- child dyad. Her theories provide a constructive framework, which explains the multilayered structure of the Korean American mother-daughter dyad. The mother-daughter dyad theorized by Freud has been noted for having laid the groundwork for the theories of motherhood and daughterhood (Grice 38). Centered on the Oedipal narrative, Freud asserted that a daughter’s pre-Oedipal bond with her mother is ‘extended, intense, and ambivalent’. Freud posited that the mother treat her daughter as narcissistic physical and mental extension of herself, where the mother experiences a sense of oneness (Chodorow 100). Whereas a mother recognizes her son as a “definite other—opposite-gendered and -sexed other” (110). The son is recognized as a male opposite and the mother encourages this sense of distinction by emphasizing the genital difference (110). Upon recognizing this difference, the son feels threatened by the blurred boundary because his sense of “[his own] genital body identity is not firm” (107). Hence, a male separates from his mother to create a sense of masculinity and sexually different identity (107). Unlike the boy’s final rejection of his mother in favor of the father and the Phallus, the girl never severs herself from the mother. The daughter’s “love for her father and rivalry for her mother is always tempered by love for her mother, even against her will... the internal relation and connection to the mother tend to persist in spite of the daughter’s defensive maneuvers” (Chodorow 122). Flelena Grice observes that this relationship between mother and daughter is fraught with the ambivalence of a desire for separation on the one hand and a need for a continuing Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 21 symbiotic relationship on the other. Therefore, Freud’s Oedipal narration of the daughter’s psychological entanglement with her mother as a primary source of identification is a never-ending story (Grice 38). Despite Freud’s contribution to the foundation of the mother-daughter dyad, his theory confines the mother to her function as child-bearer and caretaker where the relationship between a daughter and a mother is founded only upon the satisfaction of basic needs like food and comfort (Grice 38, Yu). Nancy Chodorow’s revision of the Freud’s Oedipal narration offers a new perspective on the mother in two ways. In her publication of The Reproduction o f Mothering (1978), her attention shifts from the Oedipal drama where the emphasis is on the mother alone, to the mother and the daughter. Her object-relations theory offers a more relationship-centered narrative than the Freudian versions do. Chodorow asserts that a girl never leaves the pre-Oedipal stage completely, and that “the mother tends to experience her daughter as more like, and continuous with, herself. Correspondingly, a girl tends to remain part of the dyadic primary mother-child relationship itself (Chodorow 168). This is because the first bonding in infancy is with the mother. The daughter identifies herself with the mother who is the child’s primary caretaker, female role model, and teacher of cultural values (more than the provider of food and comfort). Therefore, because the mother has been around the daughter taking care of her needs, it becomes a struggle for the daughters to separate or become independent from their mothers. In her theory, the mother is generally positioned as an object, perceived through eyes of a child (Yu). Accordingly, Chodorow’s reorientation of the mother- daughter dyad centers on the relationship, especially on the daughter more than on the mother. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 22 The second revision Chodorow makes is that the continuing inter-subjectivity between mother and daughter is seen in positive terms (Grice 39). Chodorow suggests, “girls emerge with a stronger basis for experiencing another’s needs or feelings as one’s own” (Chodorow 167). The girl’s ego boundaries are more fluid so that she even experiences herself as “continuous with others” (169). This shifting of their identities and ability to relate to each other’s emotions imply difficulties of girls distinguishing self from the others, especially from her mother. Chodorow posits that the achievement of an autonomous self becomes almost impossible for women (212). Importantly, she further purports that neither the mother nor the daughter ever fully appear as independent subjects. The mother remains trapped as mother, identified only with her child rather than as a subject in her own right, and the daughter is unable to emerge as a completely independent being and thus remains locked forever in an Oedipal bond, struggling with her mother to find autonomous identity. Taking a great leap from Freud and Chodorow, Jessica Benjamin’s discovery of intersubjectivity adds social interaction and an interpersonal dimension to the pre- Oedipal tenets (Yu 5). Diverging from Chodorow’s theory which centers on the child who perceives the mother as object, her intersubjective theory reinforces the growth of the self in relation to the (m)other, where both the child and the mother are two separate subjects (Benjamin 17-18). This is very different from that of Chodorow. As Benjamin stresses, the key point is “not [only] how we separate from oneness, but [also] how we connect to and recognize others; the issue is not how we become free of the other, but how we actively engage and make ourselves known in relationship to the other”(l 8). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 23 In an inter subjective view, a person grows in and through her relationships to other subjects. The other whom the self meets is also a self; the self needs to recognize that other subject as different and yet alike, as an other. In mother-child relationship, a child needs to see the mother as an independent subject and not as an “adjunct of his ego” (Benjamin 23). Benjamin’s other crucial concept is that a person recognizes the self in the response of others. When others recognize our acts, intentions, and feelings and give responses, thereby confirming our existence and independence, we recognize ourselves; we recognize ourselves in others and find our identity in relation to other. Benjamin further extends this theory emphasizing mutual recognition: that is recognizing the other as a separate person who is like us yet distinct. However, only when mother is recognized as a subject in her own right, she can give the recognition a child seeks. In other words, a mother cannot give the recognition a child desires if she does not have an independent identity outside of the relationship (23-24). If the mother is unable to recognize her identity from outside of the motherhood, she is likely to feel oneness with the child and never as separated entities, thereby unable to give the recognition the child desires. More significantly, this concept of mutual recognition entails the recognition of resonances and differences between the self and the other (22-23). In short, intersubjective theory purports that a person recognizes and develops self by connecting to and mutually recognizing others. In an ideal relationship, a child establishes an independent center of existence and recognizes the mother as a distinct subject in order to be able to recognize her own separate subjectivity apart from that of her mother’s (25). (Although Benjamin stresses that the mother needs to have an independent identity outside of the relationship, she does not Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 24 specify whether the daughters also need to develop sense of self outside of the relationship). Benjamin’s theory will be particularly important in explaining the relationship in the novels as I strongly believe the daughters need to recognize both their mothers and themselves as subjects and not as extension or completion of each other. Even though Benjamin’s theory is founded upon a developmental stage *in early mother-child relationship, by focusing on the process of human relationship, it can still be utilized to understand a much later stage of the mother-daughter relationship such as those seen in matrilineage texts. As the following passages deal with matrilineage in Asian American texts, the above examined theories will be helpful in understanding the complexities of the Asian American mother-daughter bond. 1.3: Mother-Daughter Dyad in Asian American Women Writings This section explores three particular aspects of Asian American mother- daughter writings. First, it examines recurring patterns in the structure of the mother- daughter relationship in Asian American women writings of mother-daughter narratives. Second, it examines the theoretical framework of Asian American mother-daughter dyads, and third, demonstrates how these aspects can be applied to the works of Korean American women writers. The similarity in ethnicity and immigration experience makes it possible to apply studies done on Chinese American literature to understand Korean American literature. Therefore, in this thesis, some of the arguments and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 25 theories applied to analyze the Chinese American mothers and daughters will be applied to read Korean American texts. Asian American women including Chinese American, Korean American, Japanese American, Filipino American, and Vietnam American women writers have produced a plethora of literature on the theme of matrilineage. Two of the most successful and emblematic works are Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1976) and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989).7 These two works have been canonized and studied in curricula, and are often taught as representations of the Asian American mother-daughter experiences, and Asian American families and communities (Ho 43). However, despite the popularity of these works, as evidenced by high sales, wide readership and numerous critical awards, they have not escaped contentious criticism. Fae Myenne Ng claims that Kingston has “destroyed Chinese history and myths and defined the Chinese as extremely patriarchal, barbaric, authoritarian, uncivilized, irrational, and backward” (Ng 88). Frank Chin also fervently argues Kingston has exploited the identities of Chinese and Chinese American men in favor of Q reinventing female subjectivity (Ma 19). Despite the controversy, readers were moved 7 Out of the blue, Maxine Hong Kingston came and published The Woman Warrior (1976) and claimed a rightful place as an author of color in the mainstream market. When published, 5,000 copies were sold overnight (Milvey 38), and The Woman Warrior became the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1976 and received various other awards. It also was named one of the top ten nonfiction works of the decade by Time magazine (1979) (Ho 43). Following her example, Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989) was also a phenomenal success. In 1989, it was the longest running hardcover on The New York Times bestseller list (34 weeks) and was on the paperback list for another nine months (Ho 44). The distorted images and interpretations of Chinese myths and symbols in Tan’s work are said to be taken from Oriental commodities produced for a white mainstream readership that finds comfort in its reproduction of stereotypes (Wong 186). Denounced Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 26 by how realistic the portrayals of the mothers were (Tan 29) and by the identification of the text with the conflicts between mothers and daughters as a result of cultural dislocation and the assimilation process in the U.S. (Ho 51). Therefore, readers identifying with the narrative of the mother-daughter relationship justify the truth of the conflicts. These texts paved the way for later Asian American women writers to continue with this theme. Of a lesser success, Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone (1993), Bharati Mukherjee’s Wife and Jasmine, and Julie Shigekuni’s A Bridge Between Us (1995) have received favorable criticism for the diversity of the maternal presence portrayed in the texts. Undeniably, in all these texts, the mother-daughter relationship correlates with experiences of cultural dislocation and destabilized, fluid identities (Heung 26). The confusion these experiences bring result in blurred identities that intensify the Asian American women’s need to redefine the mother-daughter relationship. Nan Bauer Maglin, in her essay on matrilineage, identifies five interconnecting themes in the literature of matrilineage: The recognition by the daughter that her voice is not entirely her own; the importance of trying to really see one’s mother in spite of or beyond the blindnesses and skewed vision that growing up together causes; the amazement and humility about the strength of our mothers; the need to recite one’s matrilineage, to find a ritual both to get back there and preserve it and still, the by critics for having written for white readers who find oriental fantasies of Old China (primitive, superstitious, mythic, disempowered) appealing (as opposed to U.S. [progressive, civilized, rational, modem]) (Wong 186), Kingston and Tan have both countered those claims. Frustrated, Kingston has asserted, “I had really believed that the days of gross stereotyping were over... I believed that I had written with such power that the reality and humanity of my characters would bust through any stereotypes of them” (Kingston 55). Tan has also argued that she does not speak for all Chinese Americans. She insists her works not be read as “fixed, monolithic ethnographic description of the Chinese or China” (Grice 47). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 27 anger and despair about the pain and silence born and handed on from mother to daughter (Maglin 258). These themes are immediately recognizable in the works of many Asian American women writers. For instance, The Woman Warrior, which narrates the childhood experiences of a young girl caught between Chinese culture and the American culture, touches upon the conflicting issues of womanhood and the complexities of the gender identity of Chinese American women in relation to class, gender, culture, and ethnicity. In addition, The Joy Luck Club, which tells stories about the relationships among four mothers and their daughters, focuses on the separations and connections between these women. In such ways, the structure of Asian American mother-daughter narration centers on the daughter’s search for identity, especially in the context of the struggle to recover the lost mother. Grice sees the loss of the mother as partly a loss of the mother-culture; therefore, finding the mother is finding the mother- culture (Grice 45). Similarly, Chu asserts that for Chinese women, mother both personifies China and chineseness in their daughters’ minds and mediates (between Chinese culture and the daughter) as the daughters seek to construct narratives of Chinese female subjectivity that will help in Chinese American self-formation (Chu 142). More importantly, for women writers, the mother figure either cannot be cast out but must be recovered from this abjection because the daughter needs to see the mother clearly as a subject in her own right in order to understand her own identity. In other words, the fluid identity, that is, uncertainty of one’s individual identity, coupled with the need to stay within the relationship to find the self all pertain to the intersubjective relationship. The ambiguity and ambivalence are acknowledged as a Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 28 part of the daughter’s struggle to discover herself as well as to recover the mother. Grice claims that, “recognition of intersubjectivity is a source of power” (Grice 46) in this search. Most mother-daughter theory is rooted in a psychoanalytic tradition which sees separation as the ultimate goal, but texts such as The Joy Luck Club and The Woman Warrior conversely sees identifying interconnectedness between women as the objective rather than continuing psychological interdependency (Grice 46). Here we see how the two authors align with Benjamin’s intersubjective view. In these texts, the lament and longing for the mother leads to a search and finally a rediscovery of the maternal through matrilineal storytelling (Grice 46). Through the literary device of storytelling, the novels illustrate how both the mother and the daughter can discover the self within the matrilineage and learn to recognize the other as independent subjects. This interpretation is applicable in Korean American texts because the structure of the conflicts as well as the struggles mothers and daughters experience are comparable. The three novels here analyzed, One Thousand Chestnut Trees, In Full Bloom, and Still Life with Rice illuminate interconnectedness as its mutually affirming objective. I conclude such because the recognition of the separateness with the mother leads to longing and searching for the mother. Moreover, the personal experiences of the mothers differentiate them from other Koreans, which necessitate the daughters to learn their matrilineage, specifically. This situates the daughters to be intersubjective and maintain strong connectedness with the mother, while both the mother and the daughter recognize each other as subjects. Aside from the similarity in the objective of the relationship, the narrative is similar in pattern. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 29 Although the pattern in Korean American texts is not exactly identical, the struggle of the daughter in discovering Korean identity follows similar paths as the Chinese American daughters in The Joy Luck Club. In Korean American literature, daughters reject their Koreanness and separate from their mothers to become “American.” However, upon acknowledging an emptiness within them, they begin a search of their lost mothers. During this journey, daughters discover the mother-culture, their Korean identity, and finally reconcile with the mothers. Therefore, a persisting pattern of narration is the daughters’ concurrent rejection and longing for mother, the daughters’ discovery of identity through matrilineage and ultimately, the reconciliation. Applying the theories needs appropriate contextualization because the ambivalent mother-daughter relationship is complicated by ethnicity. The theory of mother-daughter dyad for literature of ethnic minorities differs from the model proposed by Freud and Chodorow. Freud and Chodorow fail to recognize ethnic and cultural variables such as patriarchy (which is more rigid than the West), cultural philosophy, and religion. Adrienne Rich recognizes this difference, specifically of patriarchy. Rich focuses predominantly on the daughter’s pain and ambivalence towards her mother (Grice 42). The ambivalent feelings of love and hate imply their hunger for attention and approval on one hand and the wish to maintain the personal space on the other. Rich names this ‘Matrophobia,’ which is not the fear of one’s mother but the fear of becoming one’s mother. It is when the daughter recognizes that she may become more like her mother that the negative feelings come about. Rich differentiates motherhood as experience, in terms of the psychological and social interaction between mother and child, from motherhood as institution, which demarcates mothers as instruments of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 30 passing down patriarchal expectations (Grice 42). This is significant because a woman of ethnicity whose motherhood was learned from her traditional mother will most likely pass down patriarchal expectations to her daughter. In other words, even though Rich distinguishes the motherhood as experience from the motherhood as institution, women of ethnicity such as Korean or Chinese women who are embedded with patriarchal expectations do not clearly divide the two. Therefore, the fear comes from being condemned to the same role as the mothers. This ‘Matrophobia’ is therefore due to the social positions of the mothers that the daughters themselves most likely will simulate. The mothers unconsciously pass down the concept of woman as the subordinate gender because that dichotomy has shaped their characters. “Many daughters live in rage at their mothers for having accepted, too readily and passively, whatever comes...a mother’s victimization does not merely humiliate her, it mutilates the daughter who watches her for clues as to what it means to be a woman, like the traditional foot-bound Chinese woman, she passes on her own affliction” (Rich 243). If Rich’s theory provides the reason for the cause of the separation, Benjamin’s intersubjective theory, in its constructive framework provides means for a separated relationship to develop into an ideal intersubjective mother-daughter relationship. For instance, when the daughter sees her mother, she does not want to see a mirror reflection reflecting back an exact reproduction of her mother (Benjamin 24). She desires to see an autonomous self differentiated from the mother. She does not want to find the aspects of her mother that too readily accepted situations like the gender oppression in highly patriarchal societies such as Korea’s in herself. The daughters refuse to inherit such characteristics; even the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 31 possibility enrages them. This argument of Rich’s is the cause of the ‘matrophobia’. However, according to Benjamin, through acknowledging the mother as a self in her own right, “capable of sharing similar mental experiences,” yet still a separate subject from them, they are able to see what parts of their mother are not them. This recognition makes it possible for the daughters to see the aspects that have not been passed down, which distinguishes them as a separate subject. The mother and the daughter have their identity as a unit and their own identity outside the unit. However, oftentimes because of the fluid ego boundaries between women, their identities are recognized primarily through the relationship rather then as an individual outside of the relationship. Hence, when the daughters see themselves, they see their identities largely taken up by the unitary identity. This fear leads the daughters to separate from their mothers. However, when the daughters distance from the mother, they see in themselves personal characteristics that are and are not like their mothers, as well as some, which they would like to inherit from their mothers. Therefore, they choose to stay, though they can never be severed from each other, and go back to the intersubjective relationship. What is important is that while the daughter is separated from the mother, she gains understanding and an objective view of the relationship, which helps her to remain a separate individual even when she reunites with the mother. This is how Rich and Benjamin’s theory connect together. By utilizing the theories, I will demonstrate the intersubjective relationship of the Korean American mother- daughter dyad in terms of socio-historical and psychological contexts. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 32 III. Chapter Two Sources of the Mother-Daughter Conflicts This chapter addresses such issue as cultural difference, language barrier, acculturation, and ethnicity among the immigrant mothers and the second-generation daughters. When the mothers, who are culturally attached to Korea, impose measures imbued with Korean values such as on career choice and marriage, daughters are frustrated because they do not understand the culture behind these concepts. Thereby, these differences bring much tension to the relationship, challenging both mothers and daughters to learn each other’s cultural practices. By examining these conflicts from socio-historical sources, we discover many other Korean American families also experience these tensions. The socio-historical sources are drawn to contextualize the mothers and the daughters experience as immigrants in the new land. Thus, the detailed examination of the Korean American mother-daughter relationship in this thesis serves to represent the struggles Korean American mothers and daughters undergo. Although the daughters may be American citizens, some of the struggles they encounter derive because of their minority status. Thus, in examining the struggle of the daughters in the process of assimilation, for instance, there is a need to introduce the Ethnic school and the Race school to illuminate the contentious issue of defining an American. However, this chapter is not limited to socio-historical contextualization. Through solid textual analysis, I intent to link the cultural conflicts found in the socio- historical sources with psychological theories covered in Chapter one to expound how the texts fit into the theories. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 33 The structure of the narrative reveals the conflicts between mothers and daughters from the onset. By demarcating the voices of the mothers and the daughters’, the narrative of Still Life with Rice and One Thousand Chestnut Trees suggest their fundamental difference. The opening section of One Thousand Chestnut Trees illustrates Anna’s life in New York as a painter. Barely sustaining herself economically, she finds herself spending more time collecting cardboard boxes for moving more than she does painting. She feels disjointed as if her life is missing a canyon of emptiness and she does not know where it is coming from (Stout 33). Helie in the Still Life with Rice is frustrated by her mother and grandmother’s badger for her to marry while she is still young. She detests such traditional mindset and refuses to believe she has any Koreanness. To camouflage her Korean identity, she dyes hair blond and tans her yellow skin, yet she feels something is missing (Lee 12). At the end of the first section, both Helie and Anna find themselves in Korea to learn about their mothers’ past. In the last section of the One Thousand Chestnut Trees, Anna’s voice returns and give account of her discovery of Korean identity. The rest of the chapters in Still Life with Rice and the chapters in between the first and the last of the One Thousand Chestnut Trees, are in their mother or grandparents’ voice. They narrate their personal experiences during the Japanese colonization and the Korean War. In the mothers’ and daughters’ narrations, they seem to have nothing in common. However, the last section shows the daughters’ surprise when their heritage unexpectedly opens their eyes to the commonalities they share with their mothers. The sequence of subtle rebellion, learning of her heritage, self-discovery, and reconciliation Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 34 appears to be common to all three texts. Another significant aspect these texts share is the predominant voice of the mothers. Marianne Hirsch in The Mother/Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism observes that the daughter’s voice predominates and represses the mother’s voice in writings of women of color. Hirsh proposes the need for feminist writers to move the mother “from object to subject” and write mother-daughter plot in the voice of mothers, as well as those of daughters (Hirsch 159). In a sense, Still Life with Rice and One Thousand Chestnut Trees materialize Hirsch’s proposal by bringing the mothers’ voice to narrate their stories. By doing so, while the mothers tell their stories, they are no longer object seen through the daughters’ eyes but subjects of their own (as Benjamin also argues). The exclusion of mothers by the daughters who own the discourse has been regular in writings of Asian American women including The Woman Warrior, Obasan, and Nisei Daughter (Heung 213). However, One Thousand Chestnut Trees and Still Life with Rice depart from this convention and give more voice to the mothers. By narrating the texts this way, the readers understand where the mothers are coming from in terms of their unique positioning in culture and history. This is significant because the daughters need to find out what differentiates them from their mothers, in order to find the self within the relationship. Finding their identity and being able to define their independent selves in relation to their mothers is what the protagonists ultimately seek. Returning to the site of the conflict, the most evident tensions in Korean American mother-daughter relationship arise due to the starkly different cultural values. The two major issues mothers and daughters of the novels clash the most are in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 35 scholastic achievement and marriage. In fact, tension over education and career, and dating and marriage are the issues Asian American parent find most disagreeable with their child (Chung, Gender 382, Yoon 25). Most often, the mothers have high expectation over education and career, and they adamantly insist their daughters marry well-established Korean men. However, these expectations do not coincide with the daughters’ plans. Such studies reflect that which happens in the text. Socio-historical background well supports why Korean parents have high academic expectations. First, most of the immigrants who migrated after the Immigration Act of 1965 are college educated; demographer Won-Moo Hurh characterizes this group as the ‘elite group’(1977). Because they have received higher education, they naturally expect their children to receive equal or higher degree of education. Second, the downward mobility in socioeconomic status they have experienced due to language barrier has brought disappointments. Since they had to resort to blue-collar occupations, parents strongly desire their sons and daughters to raise their family prestige. Upon arrival in the U.S., with small assets and a language barrier, they had to settle for small business like grocery store, restaurants, and laundromat, which only required minimal language proficiency. Even when they achieved success in the first business, they would remain within that socioeconomic sector (Min 178, Park 44, Kang 63) because of the language barrier. As result of the difficulty of upward mobility, the yearning to succeed became stronger and it passed onto their children. The disappointment in not having fulfilled ‘American dream,’ in addition to their sacrifices of youth, skills, and having left the comfort of their lives in Korea for their children Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 36 only increase this expectation. Therefore, parents want their children to succeed in professional and prestigious occupations like doctors, lawyers and professors (Uba 130), so they may, in a way, bring back the socioeconomic status of the family. Meanwhile, the children’s burden is twofold. While growing up, the second- generation witnesses the hardships their parents endure to provide better lives to them, they feel obligated to realize this ‘American dream.’ Secondly, the children feel they must adhere to the parents’ expectation because it is the ultimate sign of filial piety according to traditional values (Kang 131). However, the second-generation were often expected to perform cultural expectation without adequate explanation. Oftentimes, the parents assume they must know these concepts because they are Korean descent. In this way, parents perceive the children as Koreans inside and out, capable of understanding and following Korean cultural practices. (This is another example of the pre-Oedipal relationship where the mother considers her daughter to be an extension or herself, in a way, able to identify with the things she can. This discussion will be further carried out later in this chapter). However, often, this is not the case. The children are confused of their identities because they believe themselves to be American yet, they are expected to follow Korean ways. Nevertheless, to be the proud child the parents expect, their objectives are set to please their parents instead of fulfilling their own dreams. An interesting statistic that is more gender specific is the high number of educated women among this group of immigrants. Various empirical studies attest that high number of Korean women who migrated after 1965 were highly educated and were in white-collar occupations in Korea. A study conducted by demographers Kwang Chung Kim and Won-Moo Hurh reveals that among Korean American married women Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 37 participants, who immigrated after 1965, more then half (57.5%) were college educated and that majority of them (67.9%) were employed (154) in Korea. Another empirical study by Pyong Gap Min indicates out of 298 married Korean women, 70% of wives participated in the labor force (Min 176). These statistics of the Korean women educated in Korea are significant because they bespeak the emphasis Korean women place on education and socioeconomic status. It can be argued that, this group of wives (the study does not specify whether these wives also happen to be mothers; this is a presumption) who are high-achievers expect their daughters to succeed academically and financially. Even though, this group of women may not represent the entire first generation women such as those in the texts, the expectation the mothers in the texts have on their daughters in career is similar. In applying Freud’s theory on pre-Oedipal relationship, a few speculations can be made to understand this tendency of having high expectations. According to Freud, a mother considers the daughter to be physical and emotional extension of herself (Chodorow 100). In the texts, we find the mothers have high expectations of the daughters because of this narcissistic tendency. Because the mothers’ careers were set back due to the language barrier, they wish to fulfill their aspirations for greater success vicariously through their daughters. In addition, the mothers who never had a chance to fulfill their own dreams in Korea due to gender oppression and social condition such as the Korean War want a chance to realize that dream through their daughters. Such mother hopes to raise a daughter freed from Confucian values by imbuing her daughter with American values that are contrary to what she herself has practiced. Here, Freud’s assertion that mothers share a feeling of ‘oneness’ with their daughters can be applied. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 38 Due to this sense of ‘oneness’, they suppose their daughters would naturally understand their intentions and expectations, Moreover, the mothers may construe the daughters’ accomplishments as manifestations of their care, love, and perhaps, parental competency. Hence, to the mothers, the success of the daughters implies their own success. However, the purpose of motivating the daughters to succeed has other reason that does not overlap exactly with the Freud’s theory. More accurately, its purpose seems a precautionary measure to ensure the daughters become financially independent. As a wish for the daughters to avoid hardship, the academic expectation naturally increased (higher education could bring economic stability). For instance, In Full Bloom, Ginger’s mother Betty had to take care of two children all by herself when her husband abandoned her. Anna’s mother had to leave everyone behind in Korea to succeed as a violinist in the U.S., and Helie’s mother and grandmother had to transform to a strong-willed woman to help their husbands economically in order to adjust quickly after migration. Because their hardships were caused owing to the immigration experience, this increase in expectation is particularly true of immigrants. As demonstrated, migration allows the mother to experience a new sense of mothering which makes the tendency for extending their narcissistic self much stronger. However, the daughters’ success is not easily attained, because the daughters struggle with their identities. The close textual analyses of following passages examines how the daughters still desire a strong relationship with their mothers despite their sense of loss due to the blurred ego and the academic expectations. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 39 There is a wide gap between the mothers and the daughters in the texts. In Full Bloom, because Ginger’s mother has high expectations of her, Ginger worries that she might disappoint her mother. She wants to do everything perfectly, to please her mother. In addition, her brother’s absence burdens Ginger with the responsibility of being the son her mother lost as well as the perfect daughter. This double-responsibility leads to Ginger’s indecisiveness and insecurity. As a result, she pursues what would please her mother: a graduate study. However, only after a semester, she abandons the study and gets a job at a magazine company. Whenever Ginger’s mother asks her, why she would want to be work for a magazine, before confiding her true feelings, her confidence vanishes. Ginger is frustrated at herself for her lack of independence while having a strong desire to please her mother because it is important for Ginger to reassures her confidence and confirms her self through the mother. The sense of accomplishment that comes from the mother’s approval is more powerful than the approval she gives to herself and strong enough to sway her decision on career choice. Ginger’s situation well overlaps with Freud’s assertion that daughters can never sever themselves from the mothers. The power mother exerts onto the daughter is so overbearing, the daughter involuntarily loses her self despite her desire to resist. The feelings Ginger experiences can be explained with Chodorow’s elaboration of the relationship. According to Chodorow, the individualization is difficult because the mother is the caregiver; mentally, psychologically and physically, whom the daughters identify with the most. It can be speculated that because of the significance of this first bond, as the daughters grow older, the reliance they have on mothers most likely branches out or deepen, further strengthening the unitary identity. Therefore, although Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 40 Ginger struggles to distinguish herself from the mother and find her self in the relationship, the struggle to distinguish her self from the mother becomes monumental. Despite this rejection to identify herself in relation to her mother, an interesting aspect emerges. Interdependence applies to mothers equally. Just as much as the daughters, the mothers as well want the daughter’s approval by trying to fit into the paradigm of ideal Korean mother figure. It is startling to discover Ginger’s mother cannot cook. Just as much as anyone knows a Korean mother wants nothing more then a good husband for her daughter, it is a given notion that they are great cook. Feeling a little ashamed, Ginger’s mother has hidden this fact from Ginger. This example demonstrates how much cultural conditioning can have long-lasting effect. In a deeper level, this desire to be recognized as an ideal mother suggests that she considers herself as object and not subject on her own right because the mothers are confined to be acknowledged within the paradigm of motherhood, or mother as institution. This is especially true to Korean women for Korea is often recognized to have adhered to the Confucianism the most. Since the Choson Dynasty, social statuses of women were governed by various means such as samjong, the three obedience every women should abide by. Samjong states that before marriage a woman is to obey her father, after marriage she is to obey her husband, and lastly, after the death of her husband, a woman is to obey her son. Thus, according to the ways of samjong, a woman was not allowed to make her own decisions at any point in her life. Therefore, she would be identified as object, as someone’s daughter, wife, or mother. Although the social status of women has elevated, we find the mothers in the texts attempting to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 41 follow the traditional ways. In such a way, ethnicity can restrict women into culturally constructed positions. Therefore, when the daughters witness these in their mothers, they are greatly disappointed. The daughters need to see examples mothers have set in the past when it comes to fulfilling their egos (Rich 245). “The quality of the mother’s life-however embattled and unprotected-is her primary bequest to her daughter, because a woman who can believe in herself, who is a fighter, and who continues to struggle to create livable space around her, is demonstrating to her daughter that these possibilities exist (247).” But underneath the fight the mothers give up whispers the fear to their daughters, unconsciously reaffirming that “woman’s fate is determined” (Rich 248). Such subliminal messages make the daughters feel betrayed wanting them to be further differentiated from their mothers. However, as the daughters struggle to pull away from the mothers, the mothers struggle to gain understanding from their daughters. The mothers and daughters yearning for mutual approval illustrates Korean American mother-daughter relationship is more bilateral then hierarchical. When her mother finally confesses she cannot even make bulgogi, Ginger acknowledges her mother relies on Ginger for an approval and strength just as much as she does on her. The reaffirming act of confidence through acceptance also signifies that mother and daughter identify oneself through each other. When the daughters realize that they also have something to offer to their mothers, they do not feel so disempowered. Therefore, while there is pushing away of the daughters from their mothers, there is also interdependence on both parts that lets the daughter stay close to her mother or even pull the mother closer. This interdependence is powerful enough to hinder mother and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 42 daughter to be autonomous on her own perpetually yet strong enough recover a ‘split’ relationship between mother and daughter. Another aspect of these multilayered conflicts of the relationship is that of the betrayer. Mothers have raised the daughters telling them that they can become anything they want because America is land of opportunity and equality regardless of ethnicity and gender. However, when the daughters grow up to make autonomous decisions, mothers want full control. They want their daughters to depend on them for direction, reassurance, and strength; therefore, mothers continue their role as the assertive voice. As the mothers’ interference encroaches into a wider realm, the daughters feel their autonomy has been violated. The mothers expect the daughters to marry while young and require them to marry a Korean man who is also financially established. Ironically, mothers have instilled their daughters to be independent on her own right yet by stressing the importance of marriage, imply women cannot find happiness unless they marry. Daughters’ confusion in these mixed messages is expected. In fact, it well illustrates where the daughters’ feeling of ‘matrophobia’ comes from. It is the fear of becoming someone like the mother who is constrained with patriarchal ideologies. A culturally sensitive issue mothers and daughters have is dating. This issue brings much contention among Korean American parents and daughters as they face more conflicts with their parents than sons (Chung 381). A study by Ailee Moon and Young Song shows that while 43.5% of Korean mothers agreed that a “Korean American should date only another Korean” and 55.6% agreed “Korean Americans should only marry other Koreans,” only faction of daughters agreed with these terms Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 43 (11.1% and 15.6%, respectively) (Song & Moon 145).9 More than 84.4% and 76.6% of the daughters disagreed, on these two statements respectively. This study indicates that while less than half of the mothers think Koreans are the only suitable match for their daughters, close to 85% of the daughters, almost twice as much, considers other race as compatible match for dating. Although the difference in percentage is slightly less on marriage, nevertheless, the disparity is still significant. Perhaps, the hostility mothers have on interracial dating and marriage triggers the daughters to be significantly divergent on their opinions as to reinforce the differences between them and their mothers. Concerning marriage, interracial marriage is an issue Korean American families have in conflict with their children. Korean American parents stress interethnic marriage, because in traditional Asian societies, marriage marked the continuation of the husband’s family line (Lee & Zane 103). They assume interracial marriage will bring a halt to continuation of Korean heritage. Despite its long history of wars and invasions, Korea has retained one-ethnic race and this homogeneity has given Koreans much pride. Also in the historical context, Asian women who out-married were those who used to work for U.S. servicemen stationed in that particular country. This historical contextualization stigmatizes those who out-marry one’s own race. Besides 9 One hundred fifty Korean immigrant mothers and their eighty-nine adolescent daughters (ages 13-18), residing in Los Angeles County, California, participated in this study. This study does not represent the entire group of Korean American mothers and daughters. The opinions may differ according to such variations as the parental influence, number of Korean friends, dating experience, and majority ethnic group of the neighborhood they reside in. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 44 the anxiety of facing an ‘end’ to one’s family line, the fear of losing one’s child have a share in this context. As seen in all three texts, due to the language barrier, the depth and the variety of topics for conversations become limited. Communication is already difficult as it is even with their daughters, but if they out- marry, the difference in culture and values would only diverge, distancing their relationships further away. The potential is fearful enough for them to make strict measures, such as indoctrinating the importance of marrying within one’s own ethnicity. Such example shows that Koreans are antagonistic to diversity. However, this is because the possibility of this becoming a reality is very likely. Even if they do not out-marry, as the child matures it becomes harder to engage in a conversation much less find things in common. Parents are gradually thrust aside as someone who they cannot confide to. It is difficult for the children to understand why the parents do not learn English and adopt American values even when they have lived in the U.S. for decades. The first generation defends that they did not expect the children would become so Americanized (Jo 111). A parent who does not communicate with her son anymore says, if she knew this was how their relationship was going to be like, they (her husband and her) would not have made so much sacrifices (Jo 111). The reign the mothers clasp on to have their daughters marry Korean men by using every maternal authority they can exercise, such as threat to disown them, well illustrates this latent anxiety. One of these core causes of these conflicts is generated by language. Language barrier is a significant factor in aggravating the mother-daughter relationship. Marina Heung in her analysis of mother-daughter relationship in the The Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 45 Joy Luck Club says that language is what marks their positioning between the cultures and gives them identities. She also argues that language is a medium of transmission from mothers to daughters (Heung 33). In this way, language works as the vehicle in which the daughters can connect with the mother. To immigrants, there is a common language mothers and daughters shares: Gloria Anzaldua terms this as the language of the ‘borderlands’ (Heung 32). The language of borderlands to Korean American mothers is the language mothers have created by inserting English here and there to retain its English meanings while speaking Korean. While they may speak this language of borderlands with people of their own generations, when they speak to the daughters, the language becomes mostly English decorated with Korean words. However, even when this borderlands language is spoken the mothers and the daughters have difficulty understanding each other. The mothers’ deepest thoughts and emotions cannot be articulated in English because English would dilute the power of her meanings. In order for the mothers to express most effectively, she must speak Korean: the language of her heart. However, the mothers cannot speak Korean to her daughters because the daughters do not understand the language. Therefore, despite ineffectiveness, the mothers must speak the language of the borderlands. In One Thousand Chestnut Trees, when her mother uses a word incorrectly or mispronounces a word, Anna becomes impatient. The mispronounced words and unclear meanings frustrate her. Because even when her mother speaks English, “the meaning of her words is pure Korean,” therefore, it is incomprehensible (Stout 56). Helie and Ginger also experience this. When Ginger and her mother are engaged in a heated debate about family matter that Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 46 ought to be confronted and settled, Ginger relinquishes because it is difficult for her mother to articulate her thoughts in English. As consequences, even when something is incomprehensible, the daughters give up finding the exact meaning or do not attempt to continue a deep conversation. Therefore, the daughters’ often interpret the unfinished words according to their preconception of the mother thereby gaining only one dimensional understanding of the mothers. Hence, the chance for the daughters to understand the mothers’ culture and identity greatly lessens. The fear of becoming someone like the mother takes visible shape as the daughters distance themselves from the mothers and disguise Korean face to identify themselves as ‘Americans.’ What concerns them is how others perceive their mothers. When Anna goes out for breakfast with her parents and her uncle, she feels much embarrassed even to be with them because they speak Korean. She is perturbed of what others might think of them and concerned that others might categorize her equally as Koreans. Anna thinks her mother and uncle are just loud and vulgar: different from her. Here we see how language positions the daughter to bear the desire to be identified differently from her mother. Other experiences have convinced Anna that it would be impossible to understand her mother. One night Anna sees her mother and uncle talking in fervor and crying a sad tune. She describes the sounds as, “throbbing Oriental vibrato which sounded surreal and faintly sinister.” Her mother later describes the song was to give vent to han. Han is “sorrow and yearning and resentments” that is “at the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 47 core of us” the Korean people (Stout 10).1 0 The mother by stating that this han is at the core of us, the Koreans, she also distinguishes her daughter as the other. This implies that Anna does not possess Korean identity to understand the concept. Indeed, the text does not indicate Anna fully grasping these complicated emotions at this point. She is more frustrated and jealous for her uncle for having such zealous talks with her mother, which is something she has never had with her mother. Although she distinguishes her uncle and mother as the other, she desires to be intimate with her mother, nonetheless (Stout 10). Helie Lee, likewise, also never bothered to learn about her mother’s or grandmother’s past because she envisions her future where her past, her mother’s past, her grandmother’s past and past of other Koreans’ would be excluded (Lee 12). Due to such entrenched sentiment towards the mothers, the daughters try to eliminate any implication of Koreanness in them and attempt to separate from their mothers. Besides the psychological reason, the daughters want to split from the mothers because as they attempt to assimilate to the mainstream culture, they find any attachment to a different culture a disadvantage. The desire to assimilate into the mainstream society also contributes to the daughters’ rejection of Korean identity. Here we see Anna, Ginger, and Helie all struggling to fit in the WASP mainstream culture. As to fully assimilate into the mainstream culture, they disguise outer appearance, imitate valley accents (Lee 6), and join the mainstream social groups. It comes to a surprise to Anna when she realizes how people see her as the other when she visits her boyfriend’s estate. She becomes 1 0 There may be various reasons for these emotions but most of these feelings of rancor ingrained in Korean people’s hearts are due to oppression during the Japanese colonization and the separation of family due to the Korean War. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 48 uncomfortable as her boyfriend’s parents interrogate her to find out about her “slightly Oriental eyes” (41). Here, Anna realizes that her ethnic background does not fit her squarely in either American or Korean social groups. Considering they (the daughters) have only identified themselves as Americans all their lives, this kind of confrontation where they are identified as the ethnic others leaves them baffled. Although their native tongue is English and are ‘American’ in every sense, they can never be an ‘American.’ Scholars of Race and Ethnic Schools further carry on this contentious issue. The perspective of the Race School in the psychological study is in accordance with this phenomenon. The scholars of the Race School, Ron Takaki and Robert Blauner, purport regardless of the length of years the immigrants stayed in the U.S. the complete assimilation is impossible for people of color unlike the white European immigrants (Takaki 68). Even into 4th or 5th generation, Asian Americans will always be discriminated against because of their racial difference. Other proponents of the Ethnicity School, such as Robert Park and Thomas Sowell, argue that there are differences in degree everyone can become assimilated (Takaki 46). The Ethnicity and Race School both hold plausible arguments. However, incidents such as the Japanese Americans Internment during the World War II tell us Race School is more valid. Such history of social discrimination enrooted in racial prejudice possibly leads to rejection of one’s ethnicity. Laura Uba purports that the experience of discrimination inhibits individuals from adopting and displaying their ethnic identity for fear of becoming its victims (Uba 107). It is precisely such fear of victimization that the daughters rejected their Korean identity fiercely. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 49 Therefore, the fear of finding Korean self make the daughters rejects the mothers and the culture entirely. The loss of mother can be seen as a metaphor for the loss of the mother-culture. Mother symbolizes the mediator of the culture who transmits the mother-culture and brings out the Korean identity of the daughters. Although the daughters believe bicultural identity is mutually exclusive, they could not ignore the powerful emptiness lurking inside that they believe has to do with their Korean self. The void the daughters feel implicitly suggests that the identity they created by building walls around mother and them, to be demarcated from their Korean identity, only imprison them. They are plunged into their own trap; neither knowledgeable of Korean culture nor close to mother as they wish. The daughters must learn about Korea even if it means losing the American identity. When the daughters recognize the need to break away from this entrapment, they become daring. Anna and Helie immediately buy a one-way ticket to Korea. Soon after their quest begins, Anna and Helie are startled to discover they had known so little about their mother. They are astounded to hear their mothers’ incredulously chequered pasts. In this previously uncharted place, Anna and Helie discover that conflicts are not only due to opposing cultures and language barrier but also of personal history. Ginger takes an alterative route. Even though she does not cross the Pacific Ocean, she has a chance to spend sometime with her mother when her mother visits her in New York determined to find a perfect son-in-law. This situates her at an unnerving position because her mother has strong opinions on everything she does. However, this time she decides to confront their conflicts and her emotions truthfully. She takes this opportunity to learn more about her mother and to let her mother know who she is. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 50 The following chapter examines how the daughters’ search of their mother’s past helps them resolve their conflicts and discover the self. These conflicts in a deeper level arise because the daughters refuse to find the / in relation to their mothers despite the need. Therefore, they must find the self as subject from the matrilineage. The tracing act of their mothers’ past is in a sense break of mothers’ silence; the break of the silence is metaphorically the break of the daughters from their previous ways. The daughters take the journey, but the mothers’ stories are told in their voice instead of the daughters’. This implies unless the mothers legitimize the story telling act, the daughters would not be able to understand the mothers. Through learning about their mothers’ past, the daughters begin to understand the experiences that have shaped their mothers. By recognizing their mothers in this new paradigm, the mothers’ cultural values change to something positive and personal that they can identify with. The daughters also find new interpretation of their bicultural identity and relationship with their mother in this underpinning basis. This in extent helps them to transform their identities and reconcile the conflicts with their mothers. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 51 IV. Chapter Three Discovery of Korean Identity and Reconciliation Feeling Korea might be a place to start their quest, both Anna and Helie cross the Pacific Ocean. Unexpectedly, the itinerary becomes the start of a new phase of their relationship as they begin to learn stories about their mother’s past. In the past, the daughters have perceived their mothers as just mothers (i.e. sacrificial and the caregiver of the family) without any in-depth understanding of their characters. However, through their journey to the motherland, the daughters are able to bridge the gaps caused by preconceptions and miscommunication; hence, a sense of stronger connectedness begins to emerge. Moreover, the daughters begin to see how they tie with the older generations that can be traced back to a hundred years back (in Anna’s case) reconnecting them to their root. This kind of attachment is something they have never experienced in their lives. And they are amazed to realize how strong the sense of bonding secures their sense of identity and root. Indeed, the journey enables the daughters to identify themselves through their family legacy and discover their Korean identities. Consequently, this new recognition about their identities helps them to examine their relationship in a new perspective. They come to forgive and forget the petty emotions they once held against the mothers because those aspects they once found appalling were shaped by their experiences such as the Korean War and migration experience (and not exclusively by cultural conditioning as they once thought). Ginger takes a different route. She does not visit Korea, but while her mother stays with her, she continues to work on their relationship with more consciousness to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 52 resolve the conflicts then before. In order to examine these transformations closely I contextualize the Korean War and migration experience in particular and examine how these transformations fit into the theories previously discussed. Immigrant women fight hard “to preserve what they consider to be the essence of their cultural origins, to pass on both survival skills and cultural traditions to their daughters” in this new country (Bannan 165). To them living was for the sake of survival. The portrayal of mothers in other Asian American writings such as The Joy Luck Club, The Woman Warrior, and The Kitchen God’ s Wife are assertive and determined. However, ironically, what immigrant daughters see from their mothers is stubborn spirit more than the preservation of cultural essence. The mother’s assertiveness drives the daughters to either silence or rebellion. Similar characteristics also appear in these three texts. In In Full Bloom, Ginger’s mother, Betty, is a successful career woman; in Still Life with Rice, Helie’s grandmother is a smart woman who quickly learns to do business with decisive mind and determined spirit; and in One Thousand Chestnut Trees, Anna’s mother is independent woman who travels from one country to another as a musical performer. However, what the mothers want to inculcate to their daughters is an independent spirit. They do not want to pass down the contempt of having been bom women impounded by patriarchy principles. But the daughters fear that this might happen. Ginger describes her mother as someone “hard, brusque, and strict” who thinks children’s dissension means lack of love therefore requires absolute obedience (Hwang 111). Helie remembers her grandmother agilely spreading her medical technique, chi-ryo, to heal many who are sick despite her old age and inability to speak English. And Anna recalls her mother always being in control of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 53 her emotions. Since the daughters associate these traits as traditional and Korean, they try to not to have their mothers interfere with their own lives lest they might learn from the mothers. Here, portrayals of the mothers’ strength and determination become aspects the daughters would rather avoid than negotiate with. One of the reasons the daughters pull away from their mothers is that the mothers impose much authority on their daughters intimidating them. When Helie becomes negligent in taking care of herself, she tries to avoid making eye contact with her mother and grandmother to save herself from overprotective advice. She knows their scrutinizing eyes are inescapable; in fact, they intimidate her (Lee 12). Their criticism on her clothes, makeup, relationship, and outlook on life, discourages her. Helie is not willing to change, in reality; she does the things they would not approve of to reassure that she is different from them. Perhaps, she desires constant attention in a deeper level. To Anna, her mother has been a remote figure yet, her influence is all- powerful; she could “bestow warmth or bring coldness into her being” (Stout 56). Frankly, her mood has affects on Anna like rain (Stout 56), swaying her mood like a leaf on a branch. Her mother’s smallest criticism would make her shrink. Similarly, Ginger vacillates in decision-making and is unable to make her own decisions about her life because she always wants to please her mother. Ironically, she claims to be a feminist yet obeys her mother (Hwang 98). The daughters are stifled by the over powering presence of their mothers in their lives. Yet they find it hard to disobey because the mothers’ opinions have come to be associated as authority, which they need to succumb to. As examined, overbearing maternal authority causes the daughters to lose their own subjectivity. As the theories argue, the daughter and the mother must Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 54 recognize each other as subjects of their own rights, who must have their own identities outside of the relationship. The challenges both the mothers and the daughters face here would be, for them to recognize each other’s independent identity outside of the relationship and give the recognition each desires, because a person recognizes self in the response of others. When others recognize our acts, intentions, and feelings and give responds thereby confirming our existence and independence, we recognize ourselves; we recognize ourselves in others and find our identity in relation to other (Benjamin 23). This recognition would allow them to observe the relationship in an objective perspective. Concurrently, each will have more clear idea of the self. The daughters thereby must start to see their mothers as an independent person and not as an adjunct of her ego. Changes in their relationship really start to take place as the daughters see the mothers’ weaknesses. Ginger has often felt her mother was over assertive and over aggressive especially when it came to her children. However, she realizes that her mother’s personality changed only after her father left her. Not only was Betty burdened with financial responsibility, she had to ward off any denigrating remarks by other Koreans because her husband has abandoned her with two children. Therefore, she realizes the indomitable spirit was, in a sense, fortification against an emotional breakdown. As Ginger begins to understand her mother’s weaknesses, she sees aspects of her mother she was unable to observe before. For instance, when Ginger and Betty were about to attend their family friend’s 60th birthday party, Betty becomes increasingly nervous. Even the thought of seeing old acquaintances who know about their family situation was dreadful to her. When Ginger looks into her mothers’ eyes, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 55 she sees fear in her mother and begins to see how much her mother has tried to stay strong to give them better lives. At another incident, she sees through her mother’s vulnerability when her mother becomes irrationally stubborn. Her mother has disowned her and cut all ties with her son when he married a Caucasian instead of a Korean woman. Because Ginger acknowledges her mother’s genuine longing to see her son and perhaps regret for disowning him, Ginger plans a surprise party to reunite her mother with her long separated son and his family. Ginger expects them to embrace and apologize to each other. Nevertheless, she is bewildered when her mother coldly turns away from her son the moment they meet. The abandonment of her husband and disloyalty of her son have hurt her so much that, when she sees her son still holding grudges against her, the fear of another denunciation transforms her into a heartless person. Unless forgiveness is begged, she is unwilling to give in. This shows how much her mother needs acceptance and love from the children. Hence, despite this denial, Ginger sees her mother’s vulnerability and tries to bring her brother and mother into reconciliation without hurting their self-esteem. As Ginger’s experience attests, when the daughter sees both the mother’s weaknesses and strengths, the daughter begins to gain a deeper understanding of their mothers. Meanwhile, Anna has been hurt by her mother. Her mother’s refusal to talk about her brother (Anna’s uncle) in Korea has greatly disappointed her (Stout 58). Anna has recognized this silence as indifference and it would wound her. But, Anna realizes that the source of silence must stems from something great that is unknown to her and that to truly understand her mother she needs inclusive knowledge of her past. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 56 As expected, Anna finds out that silence was one way of keeping her (Anna’s mother) emotions locked so that not even an ounce of sorrow would escape her body, the sorrows from unspeakable tragedies. Bom of noble family, Anna’s mother had witnessed the fall of her family from power by Japanese occupation. What followed was worse. During the Korean War, she had to live in a hideout with her family when the communists occupied Seoul, the capital of Korea. Because the South combatants had retrieved to the Southern part of Korea, the communists ransacked the city to find politicians who remained, like Anna’s father, to interrogate them. Although the family was able to survive the turmoil, the memories of having lived months in constant terror and starvation remained. Those who experienced war trauma often have “fear of impending danger” which takes shape in silence (Liem 119).1 1 These painful memories of the War have turned into silence for Anna’s mother as well. Soon after Anna visits Korea and leams of the poverty, fear, and political turmoil her mother endured during the Korean War she understands her mother’s silence. Another painful memory of the past that shaped into silence is about her brother. Her mother’s avoidance in her brother’s story was because he had abused drugs to deal with personal failure and war trauma. She was not sure if he had lived or died but by not speaking about him, he was alive to her. By remaining silent, she was able to make herself believe that he was well. After learning about this painful family history, Anna is able to feel a strong sense of bonding with her mother. 11 Liem also adds, while the second-generation of Holocaust victims are uncovering the past, not much has been done for Korean War survivors. Koreans tend to suppress the emotions and erase the memories all together rather than confronting them. But, despite the attempt, such war trauma passes down to their children in various forms. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 57 Whereas for Helie, she has always thought her mother and grandmother’s lives have been simple and uneventful. In fact, her grandmother has led a varied life. Her grandmother was a drug smuggler, adroit entrepreneur, healer of chi-ryo (a Chinese folk remedy that treats a sick by slapping the skin with hands, taught by her son’s wet nurse) and survivor of various tragedies. To escape the Japanese oppression during colonialism in Korea, she had fled to China with her husband and children. There, they begin to lay foundation of their new life with sesame oil business. However, it was laborious and unproductive. Determined to make a prosperous life, she jumps to opium trade, smuggling opium from Korea, where it is manufactured by the Japanese, to China, where the users were. After making a quick fortune, she soon turns to restaurant business, succeeding in making one of the prosperous restaurants in the area. However, no power and wealth could bring happiness. While she took care of the business, her husband began grow a lustful habit of frequenting a prostitute quarter. Tormented with jealousy and anger she falls ill. What helps her heal was chi-ryo. She becomes a strong believer in this treatment and uses it to help many when she goes back to Korea after Korea is liberated. But, unfortunately, during the war, her husband passes away to sickness and her first son’s whereabouts becomes unknown after a separation (Lee 107- 209). When Helie leams of the varied experiences that have shaped and strengthened her grandmother, her feelings towards her become overwhelmed with the utmost respect and love. She is proud of her matrilineage and is proud to be her granddaughter. After learning about her grandmother’s past, Helie never can look at her grandmother the same way as before. In fact, she is able to share the pain her grandmother has endured Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 58 for over forty years, that of having left her son in North Korea. 12 To make her last wish come true, Helie resolute to find her uncle. So far, we have examined how the strengths and weaknesses of the mothers (or grandmother) have made the daughters appreciate other aspects of their characteristics and see them in a new perspective. Through the mothers’ stories, the daughters come to identify the mothers as independent subjects outside of their relationship: as a daughter, a businesswoman, and as a survivor. Thereby giving the recognition the mothers desire to receive, just as the recognition daughter also desires. Therefore, the daughters’ view on their mothers, changing from rejection to admiration, is very significant. Through this change, the mothers and the daughters are stepping closer to the objective Jessica Benjamin purports. This transformation is an important phase. Because it implies that the daughters begin to observe what aspects are the same and what are not. Indeed, they are two subjects who are interdependent yet distinguishable. Therefore, the mutual recognition Benjamin stresses begins to take place. In the texts, as the daughters recognize the mothers as separate subjects, they realize some of the qualities the mothers possess are those they want to inherit. This act, which confirms their similarities, is their willingness to maintain inter subjectivity of the relationship. Luckily for the daughters, the strength personified in the mothers’ own lives have already passed down to the daughters. 12 • Her family had become an easy target because of their Christian beliefs and, sensing escalating danger, she could not wait for her son and husband to return from hiding. Luckily, she reunited with her husband later, but she could not learn anything about her son for forty-one years. After 46 years of separation, with Helie’s help, her grandmother is able to reunite with her long-lost son. Actually, Helie and her father succeed in saving seven members of her uncles’ family from North Korea. Helie Lee’s Absence o f Sun is about this exciting yet dangerous venture. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 59 The daughters discover their own strengths and struggles parallel with those of their mothers. Anna has always felt alone in the world disconnected with her heritage and remotely different from her mother. However, one day she realizes her mother is just as much of a lonely person as she is. One day she sees the back of her mother, tired from a long tour, going up the stairs with luggage on her hands. Suddenly she imagines how it must have been when her mother first came to America. She must have been strapped and all alone with a couple of worn out suitcases in her possession. In a new country without the language skills, she must have felt much lonelier then Anna has. Anna finds consolation from this thought. In turn, a sense of affinity is extended and reaffirmed. Moreover, seeing how much she has achieved professionally, Anna finds her strength and principles quite awesome (Stout 57). She gains strength from the thought that she is just as strong as her mother is because she is her daughter. In such a way, from similar experiences of pain, Anna finds strength. Ginger never thought her mother’s uncompromising spirit existed in her. However, while struggling with her career, Ginger starts to compare her struggle with the ‘battle’ her mother must have fought against herself and others to raise two children all by herself. At work, Ginger is talented and dedicated, but she is uncomfortable in speaking out to take credit for her work even though she wants her hard work to show. So, taking a few pieces of advice from her mother into account, Ginger announces her upcoming plans to her colleagues and make an effort to make herself known to others as an assertive person. She is surprised to discover the feeling of empowerment. She senses people paying more attention to her and respecting her boldness. Through the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 60 experience, Ginger is able to understand why her mother had to becofne so strong and begins to identify with her mother. For Helie, after she leams the stories of her matrilineage, she desires to possess the audacity and strong-will her grandmother has portrayed in the past. Lee demonstrates these characteristics through her mission. As to fulfill her grandmother’s last wish, she begins her search for the lost uncle. In her sequel, The Absence o f the Sun, Lee illustrates her success in rescuing nine members of her uncle’s family from the economically and politically oppressed North Korea. This unprecedented success required courage and strong determination on the part of the rescuer. The qualities Lee demonstrates in The Absence o f the Sun are similar to those of her grandmother’s. Anna, Ginger, and Helie all find commonalities with their mothers once they listen to their mothers. The strengths of the mothers the daughters wanted to inherit could not have been obtained even if they wanted to. The daughters were able to find the mother’s strength in them because they were able to connect the mother’s pain with theirs through the maternal storytelling. As the daughters begin to identify resemblances with their mothers and other women of the family, recognition of their Korean identities extends. Indeed, as Ben Xu asserts, ethnic identity is created in juxtaposition with others. According to him, “ethnic identity is not a fixed nature, or an autonomous, unified, self-generating quality. It is a self-awareness based on differentiation and contextualization” (Xu 15). As Xu claim states, the identities of the daughters become much clear as they distinguish their identities with their mothers and contextualize it in connection to their mother and grandmother. As they search for sites to situate their existence within the intricately woven Korean history and family legacy, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 61 they discover their Korean identities. From this point on, they learn to embrace the bicultural identity and balance the two cultures. While in Korea, Anna is surprised to discover she can identify with Koreans in Korea. When she visits the 38th parallel, the division that separates the South from the North Korea, she feels her identity crossing and overlapping with that of Korean ancestors’. A strange pressure built up behind the lump in my throat, burning and pushing at my chest; a surge of grief so powerful that I know it could not be mine alone, but an accumulated, collective grief. My mother’s unclaimed loss lay within me, along with aunts’, uncles’ and grandparents’ suffering, and the interwoven despair of myriad families similarly caught in this division (Stout 302). In this powerful passage, we see the pains coming alive to Anna as she witnesses the past at the 38th parallel. In an instant, Anna feels her mother’s, grandparents’ and other thousands of other Koreans’ past overlapping. Anna feels the painful memories of the past Koreans share and she recognizes it as a part of her. War greatly affects its victims emotionally and mentally; the memory would transform to silence as a medium through which some of the legacies of the war is transmitted (Liem 119) to the children of the victims. Anna identifies that her mother’s suffering has found its own life and has passed down to her and comes to understand the depth of her mother’s suffering. Here, we see the war victim’s affliction passing down to their children regardless of their choice. Anna relates the suffering of her ancestors to her own pain. She knows ‘Korea was where her hurt had been’ because it was Korea that has given her mother great pain. Anna recognizes that the root of her pain stems from history and not from her relationship with her mother. Therefore, Anna accepts the impossibility of healing the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 62 wounds herself (Stout 346). She realizes she cannot demarcate her past from that of Korea’s, her ancestor’s, and her mother’s past. Her history is tied to her family’s history hence, her identity must be found from it. Upon this awareness, her previous hatred towards her mother melts away instantly. Through this experience, Anna becomes conscious of her Korean identity and finds it consoling; the identity confirms her bind with her ancestors and that brings sense of belonging. She no longer rejects her Korean heritage. Discovering her Koreanness comes as a surprise to her because she did not think it existed yet. It is rather pleasing to discover she could embody two divergent identities at the same time. Ginger has always agonized over her identity. Even though she does not understand much about Korea, the fear of disappointing the family and the obligation of representing not only her own family but also all other Koreans have restricted her. She believes the expectations have limited her from doing what she really desires, whatever it may be. Yet she does not identify with other Koreans. She describes that she “occupies the short pause between them, the breach between the two states, like a ghost who is neither alive nor sufficiently dead,” where “Oxymora, dualities, [and] paradoxes” are everywhere (Hwang 99). She is helplessly caught between the two cultures, more so than others are because she feels there is no one she can identify with. She wants to blame her mother for having “raised [her] without her language, detached [her] from her community, given [her] only herself as a link to ancestry and culture” (Hwang 99). Nevertheless, she is not too far from finding her own Korean identity. She makes effort to find her Korean identity when she realizes the need to be an example to others. She thought her identity was as tricky as it could get, but when Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 63 she sees her twelve year-old niece for the first time, who is an Amerasian, her concern for the struggles that will ensue in her niece’s life engulfs her. Ginger identifies with her and realizes the connection she feels derives from the understandings of the struggles her niece might experience. To Ginger’s surprise, the niece does not struggle with her identity nor question her ethnicity. Rather, she is at ease with her identity. Ginger observes her mother and brother’s characteristics in her niece and in turn is able to see Koreanness in her. As if looking at a mirror image of her ideal self, she see how one can appear so secure of herself. When she realizes her niece does not know much about Korea, Ginger becomes charged with obligation to teach her, believing that through the process, she might be able to find her Korean identity. It becomes more apparent to her as she realizes that she knows nothing about Korea besides kimchi and bulgogi. This comes as a bit of a shock; she has not made enough effort to discover her Korean identity. From this point on, she decides to learn the language and culture more actively and this changes her perspective on biculturalism. One way of giving the recognition their mothers’ desires is first to understanding their identity. The identity of the mother is unique, or, rather, the mothers are of a dynamic assembly. Having left the native country decades ago, they are neither native indigenous people of Korea nor are they Americans who have completely assimilated into the mainstream. However, because they have selectively adopted American ways, according to their needs, they do not struggle with the identity as their second- generation daughters. Perhaps due to less pressure to assimilate in the mainstream society, their predominant values and cultures have been consistent with those of the native country. The appropriation also applies in other areas, for instance, their Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 64 parenting styles. Holding steadfast to Korean values, they stress the importance of academic achievements, while selectively adopting American ways such as teaching the daughters to dream big because they can be anything they want in the US. In a way, it is difficult for the daughters to distinguish what aspects of American ways the mothers have accepted. Despite the possibilities that the mother generation was slow in adopting American ways, there are other aspects where mothers are more Americanized than daughters are. As for Ginger, even though she thinks being on good terms with her boss’s enemy was risky and disloyal, her mother adamantly suggest her to broaden opportunities by doing favors for both. The mother tells her to treat her best friend like a boss to keep the friendship. She also offers helpful tips to succeed in America, as she is the experienced. Her mother has maintained a balance between the two cultures while extending one’s sources to the fullest by applying the better of the two worlds according to circumstances. This kind of mischievous portrayal debunks stereotypes of Korean American mothers as they were generally stereotyped as very reserved. Another area that has become a part of their identity through the combining act is language. As discussed in chapter two, the mother tongue one speaks is embedded with one’s culture that is closest to her and culture is an important representation of his/her identity. This language of ‘borderlands’ therefore can be said to represent their identity: an identity situated in between two cultures. The construction of their own new identity is obtained by learning to speak the language of borderlands. Because of this reason, the daughters have rejected learning Korean: the daughters have feared that by speaking the language one might find Koreanness in them, which they were rejecting Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 65 when they were separated from their mothers. Therefore, learning Korean implied the daughters’ desire to discover their Korean identity. In One Thousand Chestnut Trees, when Anna acknowledges she must face her Korean half, she hungrily studies Korean language. She feels it imperative to have language skill to have better understanding of Korea. So does, Ginger; when she realizes the need to help her niece, she starts by learning the language. Hence, to the daughters, language becomes instrument to communicate better with the mothers. Learning mother’s language is an initiation to start an actual dialogue. Because it is through this process, the daughters understand how difficult it must have been for their mothers to learn English. That is how the daughters come to honor and respect their mothers. Learning the language also signifies the daughters are reclaiming the inter subjectivity of the relationship. When the daughters learn to speak the mothers’ language they begin to see the similarities they share with the mothers. However, the daughters must overcome the fear of becoming someone like their mothers and also learn to distinguish how they are different to recognize their mothers as different subjects. As the mothers identity show, the Korean identity and American identity are not entirely separable or clearly definable but rather are intricately combined because of their transformations according to one’s timely usage. Ginger has concluded long before that by faith a second-generation is to live a life that is “eternally struggling, churning, grinding” because of dualities that are everywhere (Hwang 98-99). However, once the daughters discover their Korean identity, this sense of uprootedness lessens. But the daughters need to take further steps to embrace their bicultural identity and one way to do that is understanding how to balance the two cultures. After all, bicultural Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 66 identity could become a contentious issue or it could become an asset depending on how one sees it. As briefly mentioned above, Ginger leams to pacify the internal conflicts by engaging herself to leam more about the culture and work with her family issues. Thereupon, she begins to find a sense of peace within her. So does Anna and Helie. Both of them leams to accept their Korean identities and utilize it to make the best out of it. This realization comes from the reconciliation of once separated relationship. It has stimulated them to leam about the Korean heritage. The learning and discovering of once lost identity is to have their family ‘undie’ (Forster 43). In other words, the separation has discontinued the passing down of family legacy thereby discarding the importance of ethnicity. The suppression of traumatic memories and migration experiences has put a halt to the continuation of Korean heritage to these three families. If the daughters had not asked or listened, the stories of their mothers and grandmothers would have gone untold down the line of posterity. Through these investigations of mothers’ legacies, the daughters are able to pass down their family legacy thereby bring back the past ‘alive’. When the daughters are able to make alive their heritage, they come to be more appreciative of the intersubjectivity of the relationship; they are now able to overcome conflicts built by ethnic and cultural issues. They are no longer shackled by the mothers’ opinions nor do they attempt to delineate their subjectivity from their mothers because they are assured of their own identities. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 67 V. Conclusion Korean American immigrants have migrated to America in flight of political and economical instability of their country. They come with an American dream and a hope of giving a better life to their children. As they adapt to the American ways to actualize their American dream, the immigrants experience transformation of their identity. However, despite the long years of residence in the U.S., the first generation remains strongly attached to Korean values and cultural practice than American ways. Their acculturation level is not attuned to that of their children. Therefore, there are much conflicts with second-generation Korean Americans. By shedding light on various conflicts of the Korean American mother-daughter relationship, the authors of One Thousand Chestnut Trees, In Full Bloom, and Still Life with Rice demonstrate the mobile and fluid identities of Korean American mothers and daughters that are neither exclusively Korean nor American but an identity that must be confirmed through one another. At first, conflicts that arise from cultural difference, language barrier, personal history, assimilation, ethnicity all seems they are individual issues that ought to be addressed separately. However, these issues are intricately woven together to give account of an overarching issue of the inter-subjectivity of the mother-daughter relationship. The daughters work toward a separate selfhood and new identity by excluding the mothers. However, they realize the issue of identity to a significant degree evolves around their relationships with their mothers. Therefore, as shown in the texts, the mothers’ storytelling moves to the center. Here, the introduction of the mothers’ narration is the metaphor of a new phase in their relationship. The Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 68 story-telling act of the mothers and the daughters’ bridges once a separated relationship and brings reconciliation. When the daughters mature and identify self through their relationship, the daughters are able to obtain Korean identities. It can be applied that the matrilineal narration confirms the ethnic identities of the Korean American women as they find it empowering. In this thesis, by providing the theoretical framework of the mother-daughter dyad and the intersubjective theories, we were able to observe where the inter subjectivity of the Korean American mother-daughter relationship coincide with and differentiate from the theories. The findings were that Korean American mothers and daughters align with the theories in terms of having an interdependent relationship where the identities that are mobile due to the blurred boundary. However, when it comes to the maternal silence, which affects the relationship more than the ambivalent feelings proposed by the theories, the differences were more apparent. Because the maternal silence were due to personal history, which had close relation to the Korean history and its culture. Hence, it was through reclaiming one’s own heritage that the daughters were able to discover their identities. Therefore, the daughters must find their identities within the relationship through the matrilineage instead of finding a self outside of the relationship as Benjamin argues. Yet, as Benjamin purports, the daughters and the mothers must leam to recognize each other as independent subject in their own rights, in order to maintain the self with in the relationship. In a larger context, the applicableness of studies done on the Chinese American mother-daughter relationship to that of the Korean American mother-daughter relationship illuminates the commonalities of the tensions in this relationship. These findings tell us that when Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 69 reading an ethnic text, one must consider the role ethnicity plays in the context, especially, when dealing with a mother-daughter relationship. These findings contribute to the study of Korean American literature. Due to brevity of literary criticism on Korean American literature, this thesis comes short of analyzing the mother-daughter relationship in the context of Korean American women literature. Further researches need to be done to give the readers an in-depth understanding of the context and to make available the latest studies done on the varieties of the themes Korean American women writers have been grappling with. As the number of the work by Korean American women writers bespeaks further growth in this literature, literary criticism must also be compatible in the quality and quantity. Because such theme as the mother-daughter relationship is something women of other ethnicities can identify with, scholars of other ethnicity may also utilize studies of the Korean American literature to study literature of other culture. Hence, the study of Korean American literature would further contribute to the study of Asian American literature, reaching readership beyond Asian Americans. Recently, the Asian American literature is being studied in various perspectives. This indicates that the literary critics are rethinking the position of Asian American literature in the context of American literature. Because this borderland identity of the Korean Americans, Chinese Americans and other Americans from varying ethnicity reflected in the literature is yet another aspect of American identity. In this respect, by underscoring the mother- daughter relationship of Korean Americans through One Thousand Chestnut Trees, In Full Bloom and Still Life with Rice, this thesis illuminates another face of Americans. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Bibliography 70 Barman, Helen M. “Warrior Women: Immigrant Mothers in the Works of Their Daughters.” Women’ s Studies 6 (1979): 165-177. Benjamin, Jessica. Bonds o f Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem o f Domination. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998. Cheung, King-Kok. Ed. Words Matter: Conversation with Asian American Writers. Honolulu: University of Hawaii in Association with UCLA Asian American Studies Center. LA., 2000. Cho, Mu-Suk. “Overcoming the Dilemma of Dissimilarity: Korean American Women Writings.” Journal o f Asian Women (SookMyung Women’s UP). 39 (2000). Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction o f Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology o f Gender. 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Translations o f Beauty. New York: Atria Books, 2004. Internet Sources Education About Asia. Flistory as Literature, Literature as History: Lost Names: Scenes From A Korean Boyhood. 4. iss. 2. (1999). <http://www.aasianst.org/EAA/lostname.htm> Korean American Culture. “Issues of Tradition and Modernity in Korean-American Literature.” <www.kamuseum.org/culture/literature/lit3.htm > University of California Press Books. Richard E. Kim. Lost Names: Scenes From A Korean Boyhood. < http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8200.html> Yu, Yi-Lin. Locating Maternal Subjectivity: Storytelling and Mother-Daughter Voices in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. Thirdspace 1.2 (March 2002). [http://www.thirdspace.ca/articles/yu.htm] Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 75 Interviewed and Translated by Ahnlee Jang In Full Bloom 3 4 4 Caroline Hwang 4 3 3 4 # Ahnlee Jang : How autobiographical is your novel? Caroline Hwang : Ginger and I have a lot in common—we both grew up in Milwaukee, we both were in English Ph.D. programs and dropped out, we both worked at fashion magazines in NYC, and we’re both daughters of Korean immigrants. But I don’t think of IFB as autobiographical in that sense. If by autobiographical, you mean what is “true,” I think her feelings/confusion about her identity—being generation 2 .0—are autobiographical. AJ : The text deals with the mother- daughter relationship and the struggle Ginger goes through with her identity, why did you chose to write about those issues and how do these two issues relate to each other? CH : Gosh, I don’t know how to answer the first part of this question. I don’t feel that I chose these issues on a conscious level. They were issues that sort of chose me. I mean, I don’t think I sat down and thought, “What am I going to write about?” Rather, Ginger’s story and the issues it brings up sort of just unfolded. I will say, however, that what excites me as a writer of fiction is the idea of charting new territory—articulating experiences that haven’t been articulated 4 3 : 4 : In Full Bloom # 4 3 3 3 3 - 2 - ? 3 # 3 3 3 : Ginger 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 3 4 3 3 3 4 . f - 4 3 4 3 (Milwakee) 3 3 4 3 # I , 3 # 4 4 4 4 3 # 3 4 3 3 3 3 3 4 3 3 3 1 & 4 4 4 . £ 4 1- 4 4 4 3 3 4 4 4 3 4 4 . in Full Bloom 3 4 3 4 3 4 # 3 4 4 3 3 4 # 3 4 . n 4 4 4 3 3 3 # 4 3 3 # ‘4 4 ’ 3 4 4 4 # 3 4 # 4 4 # 4 4 4 3 , 4 3 2 3 # 3 Ginger 7} 3 3 3 3 # 3 —3 4 4 3 4 # 4 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 4 3 4 3 - 4 3 4 4 4 4 . 3 : 3 # 3 # £ 4 4 3 4 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 3 # 4 3 3 # £ 4 # # 3 4 3 3 4 3 4 4 3 £ 3 4 3 4 4 3 4 3 4 4 - 4 ? 4 : # 3 - 2 -. 3 # 4 # 3 4 3 4 3 4 4 4 £ £ ^ # 3 4 . 37]- 3 # 3 # # 4 3 3 £ £ 3 3 3 4 3 # 4 4 4 4 . 4 4 # 3 4 3 # 3 4 # 3 4 4 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 . 3 4 4 4 4 3 4 3 4 4 3 ‘4 , 3 4 4 3 3 3 # 4 ? ’ 4 jl 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 # 4 3 4 4 . Ginger 4 3 4 4 4 2 13 4 ^ - # 3 # 3 £ # 4 3 # 4 3 € 4 4 4 3 # 3 3 4 £ # # # 4 3 4 # 4 3 # # 4 3 4 # 4 # 4 # # £ # # 3 3 £ # 3 3 # 4 4 4 3 4 4 # 4 3 3 4 . 4 4 4 4 3 4 3 # 4 4 3 4 4 3 4 4 4 3 3 # 3 7 } # 4 3 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. yet. Which isn’t to say that no one has ever written about being second generation before. But Ginger’s time and place and specific concerns and ambitions hadn’t been written before. As to how Ginger’s relationship to her mother is related to her identity struggle, I suppose the answer is that they are entwined. Ginger’s only connection to the Korean side of herself—other than her outward appearance—is her mother. Ginger doesn’t speak or write Korean; her knowledge of Korea and what it is to be Korean are filtered through her mother. AJ : Can you explain what “mother” means to Ginger? CH : I’m afraid I can’t. I leave it to readers to say. AJ : What role does Ginger’s mother play when Ginger searches for her identity? CH : I don’t think Mrs. Lee is aware of the specifics of her daughter’s search. After all, Ginger isn’t alone in this search for self-identity; hers just happens to be complicated or deepened by an ethnicity that is not her nationality. AJ : In Full Bloom deals with intergeneration conflicts, language, bicultural identity, assimilation, misunderstandings, lack of communication, and others can this novel serve as a symbol for the struggles Korean American mothers and daughters experience? 76 °1 44 444 447} 213. o > 2} 4 4 2 4H 4 4 tfijLO]*]*] 3Jol 4 4 Ginger t - t - 4 4 4 4 4 n sj ^ ] 4 < y ^ 4 4 <14 h 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 & & 4 4 4 4 o]u]f-u]u}. .5 L U ]4 4 1 4 Ginger 4 2} o } 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 - i - 4 4 4 £ 4 s = 1 t-A]-o]o] Al^^7]lo]u|4. Ginger 7} 7}4tl 4 ^ 4444 4-44 4 4 4 4 4444^4 a-*- nu]o] o ] u ] u ] oj L | 4 . nu]o] $]S.^ 4 4 4 4 HU] 4 4 4 4 4 4 444 444 S & ^ u ]u } . H i]]: 444# 4 4 4 5 1 ^2]£ $4 4 4 . 7 1 U ] 7\ 4444 4444 4 * 4 4444 44# 7L U ]o] 444t--§-sfl4 H44 4444. 4 : H U ] 6 f l 7 f l ‘ 444’ 4 4# 4444 4 4 * 1 1 #41- f t . . 4 : 44444 7 1 4$ 441417 ] 1 444444. 4 : Ginger * 7} 4 4 7 ] 4 - o } ! 4 4 4 4 7 } $ 4 4 4 4 t ia ] 4444 44 41:4 444? 4 : 4 4 4 4 4 Ginger 4 4 4 4 4 7 4 ] 4 4 4 471 4 L r 4 4 4 1 4»1 44 4444. 4 -c }!- #7i 44 4 7 } 1 - ^ HU] 4 4 $ ^ 4 4 4 4 4 . 44 TIUjo] * j.o } E } ^ (444 44) 444 44 444t i 4444714 4 4444. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 77 CH : think so. I would in fact expand it to Korean parents and their children. On a deep, heartfelt level, Ginger and her mom understand each other perfectly. But on another equally deep and heartfelt level founded or foundering on language and experience, they don’t. What role does Ginger’s mother play when Ginger searches for her identity? I don’t think Mrs. Lee is aware of the specifics of her daughter’s search. After all, Ginger isn’t alone in this search for self-identity; hers just happens to be complicated or deepened by an ethnicity that is not her nationality. AJ : I see that you do not go too much into the Korean culture, family heritage, and the history of Korea as much as other novels by Korean American writers, how important do you think it is for the second-generation daughters to know about these in discovering Korean identity? CH : I suppose it could be said that this absence of Korean and family history conveys Ginger’s distance and isolation. It’s interesting, because a number of Jewish colleagues and friends have told me that their parents or grandparents (who’d come to America as children) were as clueless or incurious about their families’ origins as Ginger was as a child. I don’t think it’s willful or intentional. I think it’s just in the busyness of getting on in life, and if assimilation is the priority, what’s most pressing about the past is putting it behind you. Of course, you can’t ever totally put it behind you, but often it’s not until you’re an adult that you realize this. 4 : In Full Bloom 4 4 1 4 4 4 , 4 4 , 4"or4- 4 414 (bicultural identity), W ¥ 4 ^ 1 1 - 4 4 ^ 4 , 4 4 5 M 1 1 4 4>44l 44-4 £ 4 1 - 4 : 4 £ - 4 1 4 # # ^ 4 ^ 4 4 . 3- 4 4 # # 4 ^ 4 4:441 4 # 4 £ # if - A l- 7 ] ji ^ # 4 4 . 5 .4 , S # 4 1 4 1 4 Ginger 4 5 L 4 4 4 4 4 4 A j^ f- 4 4 4 4 4 4-51 4 ^ 4 4 . 4 4 4 4 # 4 4 4 4 4 4 - 4 # 4 4 4 4 # S 4 4 4 4 # 4 4 4 . 4 : 4 #1# 4# 444 44 441:4 444 4 ^ 4 44 44, 44, 4444 44 4°l £ 7114-4 & # 4 4 . 4 4 2 41-i-oi 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 44 444 ua.44^1 4 4 4 - 4 4 4 - ? 4 : Ginger 7} 4 a] 4 ^>^a>ch] 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 1 - 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 # # 4 * 4 4 . # 4 # # 4 # 4 4 -fi-Eflo] # # 4 - 4 4 1 :5 1 n # 4 4 S . 4 4 2 : 4 ^ 4 1 ( 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 - 5 .4 ) 4 Ginger 4 4 4 4 - 4 - 5 - 4 - 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 1 & & # ^ 4 4 4 4 4 4 ^ 4 4 4 4 4 4 . 4 4 5-714 4 4 4 , 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 # # # 4 4 4 # 4 4 # # 5 . 4 4 4 . 4 4 4 4 4 # # 4 - 4 4 - 1 4 4 4 4 4 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 78 culture too. Of course, in their culture, being Jewish passes on only through the maternal line. That's one thing I would like to explore more— this idea of culture being passed on through mothers, more so than with fathers. AJ : What are your thoughts on bicultural identity? CH : Well, it’s a fact of life for children of immigrant parents. And I’m not sure that when adults leave their homeland for American shores that they are entirely aware of what is in store for their children. On one hand, it’s the parents who have the hardest time, making a go of it in a country where the language isn’t their first and the manners can be mystifying. But on the other hand, it is their children who have a hard time in a different way. It falls on them to translate and broker and figure out things—often when they are young. I think a lot of 1.5 or 2.0 generation people would say they grew up fast—or they had a shorter childhood than their non-immigrant friends. It is also a different life to grow up a minority—to not feel like a member of the community at large, to have one's family be one's only true community. AJ : How important is this ethnic awareness to you as a writer and to the second-generation Korean Americans? CH : I think an individual’s relationship to his or her ethnicity is personal, and I wouldn’t presume to tell people what is important. But I will say that in my lifetime, I have seen the wind shift. When I was little, emphasis was on assimilating, even at the expense of 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 1 3S 3 1 2 ! 1 1 , (3 3 !) 2 3 3 3S 3 H 2 ! 2 2 3 3 . 2 3 3 s-5-j 3 -g.o] s )7 l 3 3 3 1 2 3 3 2 1 2 3 1 2 ! 2 3 1 3 3 3 . 3 1 3 1 2 1 1 3 1S-&3 3 3 1 3 3 ! 1 3 3 3 , 3333 3 ^ 0 ] u s . ^711 3 3 3 3 3 1 ! 333 333-. 2 ! ! 3-333 3 3 3 3 3 2 ! 3 -£-33 w33-. 3 3 3 3 1 ! 3 3 3 3 1 3 2 3 ! 3331- 1 3 3 33)232 1 3 3 1 3 3 1 3 ! 3 1 1 3 1 3 3 1 3 3 1 3 3 3 1 3 1 1 1 3 3 . 3 : 3 1 3 3 3 3 (bicultural identity) 3 3 ^ 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 ? 3 : 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 1 3 3 1 $ 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 . 3 1 3 3 3 1 3 2 - H 3 3 3 1 3 H 1 2 .1 - 3 3 1 3 3 3 1 3 i s s 3 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 :3 1 3 2 3 3 2 . 3 3 3 3 3 . 3 3 3 3 3 2 s 3 1 1 1 2 3 3 i s ! 3 3 3 . s i l l 3-8-3-*! 1 3 1 1 3 3 , 3 s i 3 3 ! 3 3 3 3 3 1 3 3 3 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 1 3 3 3 . s 3 3 3 1 3 3 3 1 S 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 i s # l 3 ! 1 3 3 3 . i s 3 3 3 3 3 1 1 S 3 1 3 3 3 3 1 7 )1 3 , 1 ! ! 3 3 3 3 ! 3 1 3 3 3 m 3 1 3 3 3 s 3 3 3 . 3 3 3 3 1 1.5 3 , 2 3 1 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 1 3 3 ! S 3 3 3 1 2 3 3 ! 3 : 3 3 1 ^ 3 2 3 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 79 losing touch with one’s culture. But now, there is a heightened awareness of or sensitivity to culture. Or maybe it’s that we put a higher value on being. Korean or Chinese or non-white (here in the U.S.). As a writer, I think ethnic awareness is a sphere of experience that is worth exploring. AJ : Towards the end of the novel, Ginger decides to accept her Korean identity and take the best of the two cultures and we see her becoming more comfortable with that idea. Does that mean her internal struggles with her identity are over? If not, what are still left? CH : Well, I wouldn’t say her internal struggles are entirely over. But by the end of the book, she has moved toward acceptance. I imagine as she moves forward in life— falls in love or doesn’t, has children or doesn’t, becomes middle- aged— more identity issues will arise, as they do for everyone. AJ : You say in the preface that you have had this idea for a long time. Having written this book must have been a big accomplishment. Did you write everything that you had in mind and what does it mean to you now that you have written it? CH : I wish I had written everything I have on my mind, because then I would be done. No, I still have things I’d like to say, explore, try to say and explore better. t £ # t i # # 4 # # # # 4 4 4 4 # # 4 1 # $ - # 4 7 1 # # ###£#144. 41# £1# 44# ## 4# 1#4 ###44- ## 4#°1 4-JH 4 5 ^ 4 s]# # 4 # # 4 4 4 4 4 Z L A>5)o] #4## 444# #4ie| j a . 444 7>^n>o| 4 # o ] # # 5 . £44### ###4# £ } 7 l 4## 4 4- 4 : 4# 4 #14# 44 444 JL #4# ## 44^4, £# 4# 2 4## 4 #44 #£44ti ^ W 4 ? 4: # 7 f l ## 44 7 1 #i^ ##4 # # 4 4 4 4 4 # 4 # 4 4 s # 4# # 4ti 4444 4#4 ^}7} 44 444 #£4 4 ti 444# #4#144. 444 4 #4 # 44) 4 4 # 4# £#144. 44 4 4# 44# ##£4 #£# 4# #4444 #4 4 # 4 ##144. 44 n#££ 444 444 #41- 4 4 44jl444s 4444 #14 4. 7 1 4 4 4## #44 44 444 4 1 4 4 4 4 4 # 4 4 4 1 4 4 . - 7 1 4## 44# 4444 444 4#4 4# 44# #4# 44# #4 4# #-#4 4444 4## # £ # 4 t i ^ 4 4 4 4 . 4 #7]-s 4 # 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #44# 4# 4# 4-4## 444 ##4#4ti 4 4 4 4 4 . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 80 AJ : What message did you want to convey the readers? CH : Gosh, I don’t know that message is the word I would use. Again, I was interested in expressing or depicting the life of a second-generation Korean American living in this age of growing cultural sensitivity and of feminism, among other things, with her specific struggles and ambitions. AJ : Who is your favorite author and why (please explain). CH : I have more than one favorite writer and I like them all for different reasons. I love Jane Austen for her wit; Zora Neale Hurston for her beautiful language; Edith Wharton for the way she brings societal pressures into her story; F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Maddox Ford and Raymond Carver for their storytelling; Nabokov for his brilliance; Wilde and Woolf for their wit and brilliance; the list goes on. More recently, I very much admire Lorrie Moore for her intelligence and humor and the way she is never predictable. AJ : Do you personally know any Korean American writers or have you read any of their works? CH : I’ve of course read Chang Rae Lee, but I don’t know him. AJ : What made you write about Korean girl/ family/ culture (instead of a girl of a different ethnicity), when you grew up in : ¥ ¥ tE^fvH l ¥ ¥ Ginger ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ 4 0 >1 - J E jL ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ « ■ # ?ll ufol-S.oj7l A ] 2 j-< § -!_ ) tf. o j ^ n o ] ¥ ¥ ¥ s f l i ¥ ¥ ¥ 7 1 ¥ ¥ ^ 2 1/7}^.? ¥ - ¥ ¥ ¥ , # ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ - ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ? % : 2 ¥ £*ll7> ¥ ^ ¥ ¥ ¥ 7 1 t ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ • n ¥ ¥ ¥ # ¥ 7 H ¥ ¥ ¥ ( ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ) ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ z l ¥ 1 : ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ . ¥ ¥ ¥ z l ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ , W ¥ ¥ ¥ £ * ] & ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ti, ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ . ¥ ¥ ¥ # ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ # ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ . ¥ : ol olo]:7ll- o } ^ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ^ ¥ ^ ¥ 7 1 ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ # ¥ ¥ . ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ €■ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ # ¥ ¥ • # 2 # ¥ ¥ ol o>7]l- 2 # ¥ ¥ 1 " 3 ^ 2 ¥ 2 # ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ a] 2 . % : 7)1 v\ £] ^o\) ol ¥ oj 0 ) 7 1 1 - ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥41 # ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ • 2 5 S ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ 2 -¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ . ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ £ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ 2 3 U , ¥ ¥ ¥ 7 1 ¥ ¥ o |j i , 2 7131# # ¥ ¥ ¥ 7 1 ¥ # ¥ ¥ . ¥ : 2 ¥ # # ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ l ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ 2 ¥ # ¥ ¥ ? ¥ : # ¥ 1 2 . ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ # ¥ ¥ 1 - —7i 32¥ & # ¥ ¥ . ¥ ¥ ¥ # Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 81 an environment where you had limited exposure to Korean culture? CH : I suppose you can write only what you know—or think you know. AJ : Was there a specific incident that triggered you to write about it? CH : There wasn’t a specific incident in my life, if that is what you’re asking. But I will tell you that years before I wrote the novel, I’d published an essay in Newsweek about being second- generation. It was a 900-word piece, but this one paragraph about parents’ expecting their children to marry in “the tribe” was what everyone who wrote in to the magazine wrote about. Newsweek sent me a sampling of the letters, and they made me realize I’d hit a hot button. AJ : Do you think second-generation Korean Americans are different from the first-generations, if so how? CH : Different in the way that experiences are what make a person. ^1 ^■'^1 °1 (i'lH l-'H Tie} Tie13:) ^ - 3 3 : I W ^ 1 4 HA}, 3 : 7 } # # 6>^}}r ^ 7 } } r % : # ° } ^ R r 47}7} H * 2 . ^ 1 - 4 4 4 ^ °lT°r^ # 4 Y M 4 . Jane Austen £ 7 2 .4 4 ^ o}-5}jl, Zora Neale Hurston £ 4 # 4 £ 4 ° i Edith Wharton -8r 4 3 ^ 1 < £ 4 ^ 4 4 < 3 } o)o>7] of A S 7] FI F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Maddox Ford 3} Raymond Carver 4 71-&4 4 6 >7] ^}7l ^ 4 4 , Nabokov 4 7Z.4 T M 4 zfl.7 ] rcfl^-o)|, Raymond Wilds 4 Woolf 4 71H A ) 7 f l4 4 xfl7l .a . 4 4 4 # °1 7 } 4 Lorrie Moore 4 4 ^ 4 ] 4 4 ^ 4 4 4 . 7 l 4 4 # 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 AJ : Who do you think would appreciate xv . 7)] 4 4 o_jg_ 7 ] w.o| 4 4 ^1-4 4 your work the most? When you wrote In ' 4 4 7 V ii.3 -^1 Full Bloom, who did you think would be \ 2 , 4 L ^ 4 * 7 7 the main audience? D ' ^ ^ CH : You can’t really think about that 4 : Chang Rae Lee 4 t5‘~ } t *1 f> ] when you’re writing your first novel. At k L # # 3 4 . 4 4 4 yI v e t 01 4 4 A least I didn’t. I just hoped the audience 4 7 f 4 cj-. would number more than myself. 4 : 4 4444, 44 7}#4 ■ § - 2 } ° 1 | AJ : What is your next project? 4 4 4 * , 7] ] £ § # 4 7 }? 4 7 } Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 82 CH : I’m presently working on a new novel. But I’m afraid I can’t talk about it, as I’ve found that talking about an unwritten book sort of takes the steam out of the plan. AJ : What do you see yourself as in ten years? CH : Gosh, I can’t think about that. * Personal and Professional background I was bom in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1969, the last of four children and the only one to be bom in the U.S. I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. (1991) and from New York University with an M.F.A. (2001) I’ve worked as an editor at magazines—Mademoiselle, Glamour, Redbook, Good Housekeeping—on and off for the past decade. I’ve also published articles and essays. % : o>n>SL o}-ji oi - ^ * R 1 ol oj.rq.j7 ^z]- ^j-ij # "r £71 7 % . o] ^ l o j ) cpl) M t] 1^ nj-E. A M 7} % : 7 1 ] ° ] ± ^ 7| ^ o ] o^jo] 7 A ^r £ £ ^ 4 . °1 o]oj:7 ] i j o] M 7] ^ k! £ Newsweek A}9l 2 *j]o] ^^oj] ^ -o . ^ zjo] o l^ u ] 4 . 900 S ] ^ #o]o^ji zl ^ * V cj-st-o] if-5 . ^ 0 ) 4 / 0 oj z } v \^ o ] “ 21 ^ (tribe)” S M H rrj-z) Z l ^ J L = -A > l-£ S .^- o] rflsfl Newsweek 7} H ^ 7 ] ^ ^ £ j ^ ^ o ^ t - ] ] ZL nfl ( ^ a ] # # f-Sflx-1) > 1 )7 1 - 2 A M olojA) o } ^ ^ a j o ] ^A l^-T lll- 71 ^ ^ ^ 1 Sj 4 . £ : 2 ^ 7 } £ £ 1 o)£tH 4 s 4 j i ^ z]-£U|^}? % : ^oj zl A } e J - | - £ ^ 1 £ : S7> ol 2 ] - # # £ £ £ ^ £ ^ U |7 ]-? o] £ n fl ^ -a} ^ 7]^1]A-] Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 83 % : ^ ^ 2 2 ^ ^ 1 4 . # =L*\ ^ 9l-§: 4 t f ° l *1 « 1 - M - ^ »>5a ^ 4 . # : 4-§- 313 ^ 9 1 * ) % : *1^- 3 - # ° ) * m 5 ^ ^ 4 . S}*1 ^ ^ ^ °fl 31 * fl °l°>7l 3 - ^ 3 J £ # ° H * H tflBfl o lo > 7 ]5 :}^ zl 3 1 3 3 Qo] ^ ^ H . & . # : 10 \1 M * R I 3 % : # 3 |.9 .. <3^*1 M-x] # ^ ! : 1969 #■ ' * ' < § X 1 : Milwaukee, Wisconsin 3* ^ : University of Pennsylvania B.A. (1991) New York University M.F.A (2001) ^ 3 : Mademoiselle, glamour, Redbook, Good Housekeeping vfS) ^j-x| A j-oj] a] 10 t d # Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Jang, Ahnlee (author)

Core Title Intersubjectivity and the mother-daughter dyad in Korean American women literature

School Graduate School

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program East Asian Languages and Cultures

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag literature, American,OAI-PMH Harvest,sociology, ethnic and racial studies,women's studies

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-45821

Unique identifier UC11337840

Identifier 1430392.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-45821 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 1430392.pdf

Dmrecord 45821

Document Type Thesis

Rights Jang, Ahnlee

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA