What are the consequences of a life filled with secrets and repression? The spirit world becomes Akiko’s sanctuary, her ticket to survival. She escapes pain through her trances and, ultimately, through her death. As a result, Beccah must create her own rules for living and for loving, recognizing and translating the other gifts that her mother has left behind. By deciphering the foreign words uttered in the tape recordings that hold the key to her heritage, by preparing her mother’s dead body for a new life in the spirit world, and by learning the truth of her mother’s past, Beccah can move toward the future.
AUTHOR QUESTIONS
Fortunately for us, there has been a surge of Asian-American writing in this country, especially by women authors. Why do you think this is? How does your heritage as a Korean-American set you apart from writers of Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, or Vietnamese descent?
Whenever I get a question that asks me to speak outside of myself, to speak authoritatively on historical and sociological issues, my first response is “How should I know?”
I don’t have the proper perspective to say, definitively, this is how being a Korean-American woman is different from being Vietnamese or Filipino or Polish or French or whatever. I can only speak from this one body, this one mind, this one life’s experiences.
But I do recognize that I am writing in a time that is more receptive to various voices than ever before. In the seventies, the big name in Asian-American literature was Maxine Hong Kingston. (What a gift The Woman Warrior, the first book I had ever read by an Asian-American writer, was to me; I began to realize I didn’t have to hide my ethnicity in order to become a writer.)
And the eighties were dominated by Amy Tan. The nice thing, the important thing, about the nineties is that there is no one writer that has become the tokenized “It” for Asian-American literature. Kingston and Tan helped push the door open for a new generation of Asian-American writers, both male and female.
Also, there are more Asian-American writers writing now because, generationally speaking, it is a matter of time. The majority of Asian-Americans currently writing are second- and third-generation. Writing is a luxury that is not often an option for the first-generation immigrants. It’s something that comes after food is put on the table; it comes after there is a home in which to put the table. My mother, who came to America in the sixties and raised five children here alone, never wished for me to become an artist. Like many immigrant parents, she was worried about her children’s security in this new country. She wanted me to be an X-ray technician or a dental hygienist (“They make steady money—Americans are always breaking bones and cleaning their teeth”) so I’d always be able to eat.
Growing up in Hawaii you must have been exposed to a wide variety of races and racial blends. How do you think your life in Hawaii shaped your experiences as an Asian-American and as a writer?
I used to think that I could live anywhere, that place didn’t matter because I could adapt, find a niche in any community. But I think that type of arrogance was born from the fact that I grew up secure and accepted in Hawai’i. There are not many other places in the United States where a child who was half Korean and half German could have blended in. Being hapa, the Hawaiian term for mixed-race, was not just considered normal, but was celebrated. I had single-race friends say that when they grew up, one of their goals was to have hapa children. The funny thing is, I never considered that a strange thing for them to say.
It also wasn’t strange to see people of different races loving each other and hating each other, even in the same family. That’s just the way it is in Hawai’i. It’s a small place where the differences between people have a tendency to seem petty and small next to the overwhelming richness of the land, which has its own stories and personalities and life.
And as a writer, I’ve been nurtured by the people from Bamboo Ridge, a press that for twenty years has been dedicated to publishing writers from Hawai’i. I love these guys and the time we spend together. Every month we meet to discuss writing, books, and I have learned not just about things like narrative structure and plot, but about life and generosity of spirit.
Your novel is based on historical fact, and on a chapter in history that few people seem to be aware of. Obviously you felt some responsibility to get the facts out about what happened to these Korean women during the Second World War. Did this responsibility ever feel like a burden? Did the facts ever get in the way of the fiction you wanted to write?
I first heard about “comfort women” in 1993. Keum Ju Hwang, a woman who survived the comfort camps of World War II, was speaking at several American universities in order to “bear witness,” to bring to light this chapter in history.
At that time, there was very little information about comfort women available in English. I contacted one of the professors who helped bring Hwang to the University of Hawai’i—Alica Chai—and she was able to provide me with some documents and essays that she had translated from Korean.
With these documents, I had facts—proof that the camps existed, that hundreds of thousands of women were forced into prostitution there—but I had very little detail, very little personal testimony, about what it was actually like for the women in these camps. I had to imagine their daily lives, their physical and emotional anguish, the aftermath. Taking that leap was scary, and quite often I tried to resist it by postponing writing certain sections for weeks.
Spirits play an important role in your novel—but they’re not commonly a part of American cultural life. Can you tell us a little about the role spirits play in everyday Korean life? Would it be unusual for a young girl to find her mother setting out offerings for various spirits in order to ensure her well-being?
Again, I’m not an expert, an authority on daily Korean life. I don’t know about the “typical” Korean household, but mine was infested with ghosts. To name a few: There was my aunt who died in toddlerhood and somehow we children took to leaving offerings of candy for her spirit. Another ghost followed my sister home from school one day—it must have been a disruptive student in life; we’d sometimes hear that one running up and down the stairs in the middle of the night. And there was my mother’s ex-husband, who was killed by a drunk taxi driver in Pusan, and also my grand-parents, for whose thirsty spirits my mother set out bowls of water. Those were the ghosts particular to my family, but there were also larger spirits, such as the Birth Grandmother, prominent in Korea’s shamanic tradition. From what I understand, shamanism is still very much alive and relevant in Korea, so much so that there is a waiting list of a year and a half to consult the best shamans.