A presidential statement today was made in honor of Korean-American Day, January 13. Exactly 121 years ago, the first Korean immigrants landed in the U.S., which now has the largest number of Korean immigrants anywhere in the world.
I have noticed that there are more and more Korean-American and Korean authors whose books reflect their history and their arrival in the U.S. I have read several contemporary books, nonfiction and fiction, by these authors who bring their reality to readers everywhere.
The memoir offers very personal stories about growing up in America in a Korean immigrant family.
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Publisher description of Kinda Korean :
Korean diaspora | Coming-of-age angst & pain
Torn between her two identities as a Korean woman and a first-generation American, Sung bares her struggles in an honest and bare confessional. From her experiences with microaggressions to the over-fetishization of Asian women, Sung connects the COVID pandemic with the decades of violence and racism experienced by Asian American communities through her research on race and representation.
Joan Sung breaks the generational silence that curses her family in this courageous memoir of parental love, intergenerational trauma, and perseverance. By intentionally overcoming the stereotype that all Asians are quiet, Sung tells her stories of coming-of-age with a Tiger Mom who did not understand American society.
Published: Feb. 25, 2020 by One World.
"Cathy Park Hong was born to Korean immigrants in 1976 and raised in a bilingual home. She recalls her childhood in Los Angeles as a “profoundly lonely experience,” during which she first began to comprehend the cultural invisibility of Asian Americans in the United States."Book Description: Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative—and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world.
Binding these essays together is Hong’s theory of “minor feelings.” As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these “minor feelings” occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality—when you believe the lies you’re told about your own racial identity. Minor feelings are not small, they’re dissonant—and in their tension Hong finds the key to the questions that haunt her.
With sly humor and a poet’s searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche—and of a writer’s search to both uncover and speak the truth.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, FINALIST FOR PULITZER PRIZE, WINNER OF NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD, AMERICAN BOOK AWARD, ONE OF BEST TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE OF 2021
These are just two of the books written by Korean-American women about their experiences as immigrants to the U.S. I think they bring valuable insights that many immigrants, no matter from which part of the world, might feel or experience as newcomers to a new society.
Cathy Park Hong's memoir was written four to five years ago. Hopefully, things have improved somewhat for her situation since then.
Have you read any other memoirs or novels by Korean-Americans?
These books sound amazing, Harvee. Love the cover for Kinda Korean. Thanks for sharing and for visiting my blog.
ReplyDeleteKinda Korean is a really neat book. An eye/opening experience reading it.
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