There have been increasing numbers of Koreans writers in English in this century, and there is no doubt that they are collectively conveying a very distinct identity for the Korean diaspora in fiction. There are themes common to many immigrant groups – culture communicated through food, hard working 1st generation immigrants who are trying to give their children better opportunities, 2nd generation immigrants who assimilate into the host culture better than their parents, but who have mixed identities to negotiate, feelings of dislocation, difference from mainstream, alienation, struggles with sense of belonging. And in common with many Asian migrants, there are themes of their hard-work ethics as well as strongly positive attitude towards education, plus the cohesiveness of the diasporic community who band together to help each other out, and the role aunties (ajummas for in the Korean community) play. But all that said, there are some themes emerging from the Korean diasporic fiction which are particular to Koreans, as distinct from other Asian immigrants to the West.
One of those key themes is the role of the church in many Koreans’ lives in the US, which Yoon Choi as well as the likes of Min Jin Lee have written about. Another key theme is the way Koreans communicate, largely in pragmatics, seemingly. The collection of short stories in Yoon Choi’s Skinship depict a wide range of scenarios – of long married couples, of sibling estrangement, of old loves from childhood, of dying relatives, of families struggling to get along – but in all of them, it comes across as Koreans are not particularly demonstrative in terms of affection, not particularly communicative about emotions, and deal with the practicalities for most part, in a seemingly matter-of-fact manner, but which overlays a lot of extremely complex emotions largely unspoken and unshared.
The story in this collection called First Language was one of the stand out stories for me, because of the style in which it was written, where the Korean vernacular comes through so strongly, giving it a distinctive flavour. It is perhaps particularly the use of articles, using ‘the’ instead of ‘a’, which is most peculiarly Korean-flavoured:
“He was the single guy”
“Once he had the Vietnamese girlfriend” (p46)
“All the girls had the crush on him” (p54);
“I give the shrug” (p57).
It is amusing because it lends a specificity which perhaps is not intended, or perhaps is accurate in Korean, but comes across in English as implying that those items are unique – being ‘the’ and not just ‘a’.
Sometimes the way things are put are quite charming,
“All that afternoon, I had the trouble in my heart. I know that my mother felt the same thing because we would not match eyes” (p50)
“Stop your crying, Sae-ri. Your eyeballs will float away” (p51)
“When he sees me, he stops. Even his face stops” (p78)
“What is this, a joke you are committing?” (p54)
that’s a fascinating little insight into the Korean culture that jokes are ‘committed’ not ‘made’, or ‘cracked’, almost as if the joke were a crime. It is possible these are notions and phrases directly translated from Korean.
It is puzzling that sometimes the verbs and tenses are correct, and sometimes they are not.
“Pastor Rau say the meeting is at three” (p57)
“You already ask me that” ((p57)
and sometimes perfectly grammatical
“James keeps driving” (P58)
“We laughed so much that day” (p63).
There are the odd mix-ups of past and present tenses which changes the meaning of sentences, such as,
“This is so far away from my thoughts that I am confusing” (p60).
However, this is occasional only, by no means consistent. The lack of consistency is puzzling.
The protagonist in First Language openly admits she does not always tell the truth, she tells “light lies’, and explains
“It is very easy to lie in the language that is not your first language” (p78)
This opens up a whole new line of thought, that perhaps it is not always easy for immigrants to be sincere or honest because they are always in a performance when living in a language which is not their own, not their mother tongue, not their first language. That being in perpetual translation compromises integrity, somehow, or compromises accuracy, faithfulness. That’s what Yoon Choi’s writing adds to the vast amount of immigrant-non-belonging literature: the notion that living a life of translation both linguistically and practically/literally, compromises one’s identity, or the integrity of one’s identity, in ways both deliberate and which may not be able to be helped, both at conscious and subconscious levels. That the sense of non-belonging so many immigrants have, is in part of course due to the reception from the host country and its people, but also in part because the immigrant is attempting to be true to a self which cannot entirely be transplanted wholesale into an entirely different context, and still have the same currency or coherence.
A most readable collection of stories, and a great addition to Korean-American diasporic fiction.
Now this looks like a good read! I’ve put it on my list.
I wonder if the differences in grammar reflect the ways different Korean immigrants use English? (pure speculation).