Product Description
THIS EDITION IS INTENDED FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. In her mesmerizing first novel, Na traces the life of Korean-born Young Ju from age four through her teenage years. The journey for Young and her family is an acculturation process that is, a ... Read more

Customer Reviews (66)

bi
good book. met the author and she seemed to really have a vision here.It is a great read, but has some difficult material for sensitive kids.

amazing story!
I just LOVE this book!
I remember reading it for the first time in middle school, just randomly grabbing it off the shelf in the library, reading the synopsis and thinking, "Hmm, I'll give this a read, I guess." And I just LOVED the story!! And then recently I was thinking about it and decided I wanted to get my own copy and read it again. So I did get a copy and read it, and still love the book!! I highly recommend it to anyone :) !

A Printz award winner, and rightfully so
Here continues my quest to read all Printz winner books. This one wasn't as impressive as I expected it to be, but 4 stars nonetheless. I'll explain.

A Step from Heaven is story of a Korean family who come to the States to better their lives but fail at it because they bring with them their own personal troubles (mostly in a form of an abusive good-for-nothing father) and their traditional and foreign ideas of pride, honor, and submission.

A Step from Heaven is a gem of a book. In terms of literary quality, this slender volume is almost a perfection. Told from a POV of Young Ju brought to America by her parents at the age of 4, this story is a progression of her voice from childhood to adulthood. It changes as Young grows up, learns English, and finds a better understanding of the events happening around her. The transition of Young's voice, the maturation of it is strikingly authentic.

While I enjoyed the quality of writing, the book was no more than a 3-star read for me until the very end. The story, although compelling, did feel young. It is properly shelved in a juvenile (middle grade) section of my library. But then it made me fight back tears while I was standing in line at a grocery story (I was listening to the book on my iPod) and I was obligated to add another star.

a beautifully written tale of the immigrant childhood
i picked up A Step from Heaven since i'm working my way through the Printz Award winning books and this fell right in line with the past winners that i've read.it was a simple yet powerful tale of the immigrant childhood, told through the eyes of a young girl.

Young Ju and her parents leave everything they know behind in Korea for the opportunity that they are sure awaits them in the United States.as a four year old girl, rising into the sky, Young Ju thinks she has entered heaven. but, when they land and things are not as easy as expected, we are immersed in their lives, with the expected language barriers and cultural struggles.as Young Ju begins to show promise in school, rising to the top of her class, she is placed in the precarious situation of being a Korean-American child of a father who has refused to accept the American life.

"Our hands turn pages of books, press fingertips to keyboard buttons, hold pencils and pens.They are lithe and tender. The hands of dreams come true."

although there are several characters in the book, Young Ju, her parents, her grandmother and her younger brother, the only one that really comes to life is Young Ju.everyone else almost felt as though they were an accessory and at times, i had hoped for a little more development.i especially would have liked more from her brother and her father, since the relationships formed there are very important.however, Young Ju's character was wonderful and her narration made up for the lacking development elsewhere.

the language and style of the book took a bit of getting used to, but it was very effective in immersing the reader into the lives of the family. with no quotations for dialogue and a mock style of broken English, it could be a little difficult to follow at times, but it was well executed and developed.as Young Ju gets older, the style naturally matures with her and it made me so sympathetic towards her situation.

as a very short YA novel, this book is an easy one-sitting read and, though the style made it a little difficult to get into, by the end, i was won over many times.this would probably be suitable for children anywhere from age 12 and up, but there are some mild abuse scenes to keep in mind for younger children.either way, i would definitely recommend this for those looking for a good book regarding immigration and cultural assimilation.

Touchingly captures the ordeals of an immigrant family adjusting to life in this country
A Step from Heaven is told through the eyes of Young Ju in a series of titled vignettes as she grows from preschooler to young woman. When five-year-old Young Ju and her family emigrate from Korea to California, Young Ju believes that the United States will be heaven, a place filled with love, happiness and riches. Life in the United States is more difficult, however, than Young Ju and her family had ever imagined. In a classic immigrant child conflict, Young Ju struggles to adjust to American ways and then disobeys her father in order to participate in typically American activities. The pressures of immigration and working long hours at multiple jobs lead Young Ju's father to become an increasingly violent alcoholic. Young Ju, her mother and her brother contend with the damaging effects of the father's abuse until Young Ju valiantly takes steps that set the family on the path to healing. The novel touchingly captures the ordeals of an immigrant family adjusting to life in this country. The reading level and subject mater make this book appropriate for eighth through twelfth grade students. The book may also succeed with some high level TESOL students. It would work well as reading for social studies and English in studies of culture, immigration, abuse, poverty, point of view, character development, and style. ... Read more

Product Description
The year 2003 marks the hundredth anniversary of Korean immigration to the U.S. Century of the Tiger gathers work by some of the best and most eloquent Korean authors in Korea and America, past and present, in order to tell the dramatic story of Korean culture in America over the last century and the diverse experiences of Korean Americans today, particularly in Hawai'i. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

writing and illustrations weave colorful picture of life
Marita Kim is eight when her mother dies. As the eldest she is in charge of her four half brothers and sisters. The father works long and hard days at the plantation and has little patience with his children when he comeshome. Through the eyes of each child we learn about different aspects ofgrowing up in a Korean camp in Hawai'i decades ago. While financially notmuch is possible, thrift and hard work make ends meet. The stories areentertaining with the children's adventures and Marita's coming of age.There is something in this collection of stories for every age group. Inthe last chapter the long-widowed father (who now lives with his marrieddaughter Marita) reminisces about his life; his coming to Hawai'i, the lossof his wife in childbirth, having to give up their last baby and finallythe reunion with this son. While each story can be read as a separateentity, the whole adds up and comes around like a chapter book. The scratchboard illustrations are delightful and imaginative.

Full of wit and wisdom ... fascinating look at Hawaii
This book has been passed around our family and from friend to friend. It's a beautiful story that inspires readers to examine their own relationships with their parents and to reconsider what they know of theirparents' lives. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Powerful and important testimonials
The mass exodus of unaccompanied children from the lands of their birth is one of the least documented and most dramatic legacies of the twentieth century.When seen through a post-colonial lense, it may also, in some ways, be one of the most troubling.These intensely personal accounts offer us a compassionate glimpse onto one of these vast, secret migrations.In doing so, these voices raise profound questions about the ethical limits of human charity and the burden of memory in the absence of the possiblity of history.

the other side
There may be a biased message in the book, but that does not make it any less valid.The stories/essays/prose/poetry are all personal accounts written by Korean adoptees about their experiences with life, as they knowit, as a Korean adoptee.Personally, I think it is a powerful andendearing book, as these adoptees bear their souls.As an adoptee myself,it's inspiring to finally see something on the market that combats thesappy, romanticized images of adoption that most mainstream books oftenportray.In any case, as member of the adoptee community, I recommend thisbook for anyone involved with adoption in any way, because it does showsome of the raw emotions of the adoptee experience, even if they aren't thepictures you want to see.

Moving, yet biased collection.
As a Korean adoptee, I relate to many of the ideas that the authors are putting forth.I know and understand what it is like to struggle with this identity.To experience growing up as an Asian American in an all whitecommunity, and then have your Asian American identity hit you like a macktruck.I know what it is like to want to deny that part of yourself.Iunderstand the feelings of hurt, of frustration and confusion.However, Iam also beginning to understand the pride in being Asian American.Andpart of the reason that I am able to do this is because of the support andlove of my parents.I feel that many of the poetry and prose that theeditors have included in this anthology has negative connotations towardsthe adoptive parents.I know some really wonderful adoptive parents,including my own.I simply worry that people who are reading this bookfrom outside of adoption will think that all adoptive parents are horribleand all adoptees are maladjusted.

Essential for everyone involved in int'l adoption!
It's the most emotional book I have ever read. It should be essential for everyone who are involved in Korean/int'l adoption, both adoptees, birthparents and adoptive parents, as well as siblings, relatives, friendsand professionals.

STRONGLY RECOMMENDED ... Read more

Product Description
"Yuh has composed a complex, provocative, and compassionate portrayal of the experiences of Korean military brides from the 1950s through the 1990s. . . . Delving into how these women face isolation and aleination from both Korean and US societies because of their transnational status, Yuh's masterful history demonstrates that these women have resisted perceptions of both societies and forged communities based on their claiming Korean and US identities as Korean military brides. A wonderful resource... Highly recommended."
—Choice

"Ji-Yeon Yuh uses a wealth of sources, especially moving oral histories, to tell an important, at times heartbreaking, story of Korean military brides.She takes us beyond the stereotypes and reveals their roles within their families, communities, and Korean immigration to the U.S. Without ignoring their difficult lives, Yuh portrays these women's agency and dignity with skill and compassion."
—K. Scott Wong, Williams College

"By studying the lives and history of Korean "military brides," Ji-Yeon Yuh pays tribute to an important group that has not received the understanding, attention, and respect that it deserves. Full of compelling stories, Beyond the Shadow of the Camptowns is sure to inspire new ways of thinking about U.S. and especially immigration history, as well as Asian American and Asian history."
—Elaine Kim, University of California at Berkeley

"Impeccably researched and seamlessly executed."
—Bitch Magazine

"Where do marriage, diaspora, racism and the politics of global alliances converge? In the dreams and dailiness of the thousands of Korean women living in the United States today.Ji-Yeon Yuh's engaging and revealing book shows us that by listening attentively to the Korean women married to white and black American men, we can become a lot smarter about the realities of globalized living."
—Cynthia Enloe, author of Maneuvers: the International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives

"Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America, immigration historian Ji-Yeon Yuh explores how Korean women relate to American men in these cross-cultural relationships, and how the military link between the dominant U.S. and subservient Korea tends to complicate their marriages, already challenging for many other reasons, with a dose of international politics as well."
—Korean Quarterly

"Through compelling oral histories, she traces the lives of women form successive generations of brides."
—Chronicle of Higher Education

Since the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, nearly 100,000 Korean women have immigrated to the United States as the wives of American soldiers.Based on extensive oral interviews and archival research, Beyond the Shadow of the Camptowns tells the stories of these women, from their presumed association with U.S. military camptowns and prostitution to their struggles within the intercultural families they create in the United States.

Historian Ji-Yeon Yuh argues that military brides are a unique prism through which to view cultural and social contact between Korea and the U.S. After placing these women within the context of Korean-U.S. relations and the legacies of both Japanese and U.S. colonialism vis á vis military prostitution, Yuh goes on to explore their lives, their coping strategies with their new families, and their relationships with their Korean families and homeland.Topics range from the personal—the role of food in their lives—to the communalthe efforts of military wives to form support groups that enable them to affirm Korean identity that both American and Koreans would deny them.

Relayed with warmth and compassion, this is the first in-depth study of Korean military brides, and is a groundbreaking contribution to Asian American, women's, and "new" immigrant studies, while also providing a unique approach to military history.

Customer Reviews (4)

an interesting treatment of another aspect of conflict
Beginning with the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910, followed by its replacement by the United States in 1945, the military governments established a series of bases, and from around these bases grew camptowns, a section of businesses that offered everything from souvenirs to alcohol to prostitution.For her own extended metaphor, Yuh refers to the shadow, or influence, that is cast by these camptowns not only across the Korean landscape but also within the Korean people, most specifically the women who worked, often as indentured servants, within these camptowns and went on to marry soldiers.Yuh makes explicit her change in referring to these women as military brides over war brides.This does not obfuscate, however, the historical value of war brides as being equivalent to war booty and hence configured more as property, even as the remnants of this idea manifest in certain social attitudes (i.e., domestic subservience) that many of the American servicemen may have had toward their Korean wives.

The use of personal case studies set against the backdrop of US military policy in Korea and social attitudes both in the United States as well as Korea shows that these women lived in a perpetual state of dual existence, in many ways no longer being recognized as completely Korean and unable to be regarded as completely American.This concept of identity is made more complex as Yuh traces out some elements of the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula, particularly those aspects of the occupation that forced Korean children to adopt Japanese names and learn Japanese language (spoken and written) and history, thus distancing them from their own Korean heritage, a displacement that would be further complicated by those who married American soldiers.

Since the research on Korean military brides is finite, Yuh's study presents some intriguing insights on a segment of the population that is constantly negotiating the preservation of its ethnic heritage and identity while it adjusts its assimilation into American society.This is particularly important at a time when community and ethnic identity in America finds itself increasingly transformed by world events, such as recent developments with nuclear proliferation in North Korea.

Powerful and Well Written
As the author points out, there is very little work on international military wives, and Korean military wives in particular.By such a logic, this book is a welcome project indeed.

Essentially, Yuh Ji-Yeon sets out to make sense of why Korean women set out to marry American [military] men along with the consequences of such decisions.What becomes apparent throughout this book is the gendered set of relations in both US-Korean and soldier-wife relations.While many Korean women may seek American husands (especially those tricked and coerced into camptown USA) in order to escape Korean societal restrictions and shape better lives for themselves, many American men seek Asian wives in order to fulfill the ultimate Orientalist fantasy of Asian women as meek, erotic, and subservient.Through numerous interviews, Yuh finds out that many of the hopes that Korean military wives bring with them to America become easily dashed as they experience racism and cultural colonization.These Korean wives (many of whom are societal outcasts) thus become marginalized, their identities stolen from them as they are neither accepted for their cultural value by either their own indigenous community and the new American community.While such wives try hard to acculturate themselves to the demands of American life, suffering and pain continues to follow them, and in some cases poverty despite the alllure and so-called attainability of the great American dream.Perhaps even more important, Yuh makes clear that not all Korean wives are former camptown girls.Such simplistic stereotypes carried by the American public is damaging in creating pejorative connotations of the "Korean wife."Furthermore, even those wives who are former camptown girls should not be condescended.Being a prostitute is not exactly a free choice in Korea.Moreover, why should camptown girls be discriminated and labeled whore when the American soldiers who frequent red-light districts are sometimes actively encouraged by their commanders and more often than not treated with minor slaps on the hand for engaging in prostitution.Sadly, US military policy discriminates against the supply rather than dealing with the demand in prostitution.So much for the high morals of the US military.

In this context, many Korean wives act out a latent form of resistance.Their husbands and in-laws may forbid them to speak Korean, to eat Korean food, to teach their children Korean culture, but in the privacy of their homes when husbands and children are out, these women cultivate friendships with other Korean wives, watch Korean movies, and make attempts to demand the respect that they undoubtedly deserve.In short, while Korean wives may be denied meaningful relationships with their husbands and children due to lack of support in learning the English language and subsequently sharing the Korean language, these women are basically trying to survive and separate themselves from their sad and sometimes lurid pasts.

"Beyond the Shadow of Camptown" is a book that anyone in the military, and especially any soldier thinking of taking an Asian wife or mail order bride should read.Conversely, this book should also be read by foreign women around US military bases worldwide, who are thinking that a green card is an entry into a better life.This book shows the complexities of immigration, and of negotiating two different contexts.Truly, this book is very powerful and more importantly supported by interviews and other forms of empirical evidence that even those in self-denial can't rebut.Last but not least, we must consider the stories of each Korean wife that has come to the US.Their stories deserve to be heard and remembered.

A moving and eye-opening account
This book fills a need by covering Korean women who married American military men and their experiences in life, the prejudices they've encountered from other Koreans and white Americans, and how they stake out a place of meaning for themselves through church activities with other Korean military wives.

The author describes the women's family and educational background as well as how they met their husbands.Although a few were sex workers in Korea, the majority were not.

It seems that it's not common for Korean military wives to have Korean girlfriends whose husbands are Korean as well.I found that surprising because I grew up in a Korean community of Jehovah's Witnesses where my mother, a Korean woman married to a Korean man, had (and still has) many girlfriends who were Korean military wives.

I would have appreciated a religious history of these women, whether they were always Christian or became such after meeting their husbands.

Confusing
After reading this book, which reads more like a piece of propaganda work, I'm not sure whether these poor women were actual brides or "comfort women" (no disrespect intended... I'm trying to be skeptical). ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

A story with a good lesson
This is a nicely illustrated story with a good message and my 2.5 year old twins request it from time to time. Yoon receives a Korean story book about a girl who is tricked by a tiger for her birthday, when all she really wants is a jumprope. Her mom also hands down her precious jade bracelet to Yoon. Yoon is tricked at school by a tiger girl, but in the end she outwits her. I like that the story talks about an immigrant girl who is adjusting to life in a new country where she is hoping to meet new friends. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Aging Studies, published by Elsevier in . The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Because most successful interventions for Alzheimer's disease (AD) rely upon early diagnosis and implementation, it is important to understand the factors influencing dementia treatment-seeking behaviors. These include perceptions, beliefs, values, and feelings relating to AD, which may vary among and within ethnic groups according to the strength of culturally-based explanatory models and individual group members' ages and experiences. This study used ten focus groups drawn from Asian American communities representing different national origins (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) to examine the factors shaping attitudes toward AD in general, and treatment-seeking in particular, that may constitute barriers to timely diagnosis and treatment of AD among Asian Americans of various ages and cultural backgrounds. The results suggest that, while these communities share a keen awareness of AD, beliefs regarding the disorder may be influenced at least as strongly by folk wisdom and culturally acceptable partial truths as by scientific information. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 2549 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The publication of the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas marks the return of a reference work that is an essential tool to make the often complex history of what we think accessible to students and general readers. The original 1974 Dictionary of the History of Ideas has long been admired as a landmark document encapsulating the thinking of an era. This thoroughly re-envisioned New Dictionary of the History of Ideas brings fresh intelligence and a global perspective to bear on timeless questions about the individual and society. A distinguished team of international scholars explore new thinking in areas previously covered (communism, linguistics, physics) and present cross-cultural perspectives on more recent topics such as postmodernism, deconstruction and post-colonialism ... Read more

Product Description
Known as the Hermit Kingdom, Korea was the last East Asian country to open its doors to the West. Some 7,200 Koreans migrated to Hawai‘i in search of wealth and fortune—the first in their country’s history to live in the Western world. Most of them, however, found only hardship while working as sugar plantation laborers. Soon after their departure, Korea was colonized by Japan, and overnight they became "international orphans" with no government to protect them. Setting aside their original goal of bettering their own lives, these Korean immigrants redirected their energies to restoring their country’s sovereignty, turning Hawai‘i into a crucially important base of Korean nationalism.

From the Land of Hibiscus traces the story of Koreans in Hawai‘i from their first arrival to the eve of Korea’s liberation in 1945. Using newly uncovered evidence, it challenges previously held ideas on the social origins of immigrants. It also examines their political background, the role of Christian churches in immigration, the image of Koreans as depicted in the media, and, above all, nationalist activities. Different approaches to waging the nationalist struggle uncover the causes of feuds that often bitterly divided the Korean community. Finally, the book provides the first in-depth studies of the nationalist activities of Syngman Rhee, the Korean National Association, and the United Korea Committee.

From the Land of Hibiscus offers a wealth of new perspectives and information on Koreans in Hawai‘i that will be welcomed by historians of Hawai‘i and Korea as well as those with an interest in Asian American history and American studies. ... Read more

Product Description
MY KOREAN IDENTITY AND QUEST FOR UNDERSTANDING (Korean Youth Studies, 1), edited by Sora Yang of Sydney, Australia, is a very important book in the area of Korean studies.This ground-breaking book contains 13 articles by Korean youth from around the world, in India, Africa, Australia, and the USA.The winner of the 2008 Global Rev. Ham Suk-Hyun Essay Contest, on the topic of "My Korean Identity," Sora Yang has contributed important articles on Australian Korean community, which is a growing Korean community around the world.Sora Yang also explores her own identity as a Korean and an Australian.Jung-Im Jeong, a Student Council secretary at Canadian International School in India and the president of Bangalore Korean Presbyterian Church Youth Group in India, who is one of the early Korean settlers in Bangalore, India, due to her father's executive responsibilities in the IT sector, writes about the situation in India in terms of culture, economics, and society.Jung-Im Jeong focuses on how she developed into a leader desiring to help the people of India and also other people in need around the world.Haebin Yoon writes from Senegal, Africa, regarding her "immigration" to Africa with her missionary father, who was sent by the Korean Presbyterian Church (Ko-Shin) in Korea.She desires to follow in her father's footsteps as a missionary to Africa.Paul Sungbae Park, who has received much acclaim as an emerging young historian in his own right, has written an article exploring the experience of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.In the manner of vicarious participation, so emphasized by Professor Robert N. Bellah of University of California at Berkeley, Paul Sungbae Park has placed himself in a vicarious position of a member of the corps of discovery of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.Furthermore, Paul Sungbae Park examines similarities between the Korean Joong-Mae System and the Shakespearean arranged marriage system as found in ROMEO AND JULIET.Michael Chon, the first-born son of a cutting-edge telecommunications company founder in New Jersey, desires to expand his dad's company into a multi-billion-dollar empire.He relates his prowess as a star soccer player to his competitive spirit.As the president of his whole school, Michael Chon explores his own competitive spirit as both inherited and acquired.Joon Park, who is highly ranked in his elite magnate school in New Jersey, recounts his summer trip to South Korea and reminisces about his grandmother who wants him to grow using Korean herbal medicine.Joon Park writes with humor and figurative language that is rarely found in such a young person.Timothy Chon, Andy Jung, and Jake Byun write autobiographically about their experiences in Korea.Their testimonies serve as first-hand primary source accounts not only of the description of youth life in South Korea, but also of primary document preserving Korean youth perspectives on events and issues.Gloria Bae, a star student in her honors class, describes the bond that exists between a Korean mother and a Korean daughter, focuses on Korean food creation.The touching story will not only warm your heart, but it will also give you an insight into Korean cuisine and the Korean family. ... Read more

Product Description
Why did Black-Korean tensions result in violent clashes in Los Angeles but not in New York City? In a book based on fieldwork and on a nationwide database he constructed to track such conflicts, Patrick D. Joyce goes beyond sociological and cultural explanations. No Fire Next Time shows how political practices and urban institutions can channel racial and ethnic tensions into protest or, alternately, leave them free to erupt violently. Few encounters demonstrate this connection better than those between African Americans and Korean Americans.

Cities like New York, where politics is noisy, contentious, and involves people at the grassroots, have seen extensive Black boycotts of Korean-owned businesses (usually small grocery stores). African Americans in Los Angeles have sustained few long-term boycotts of Korean American businesses—but the absence of "routine" contention there goes hand in hand with the large-scale riots of 1992 and continuous acts of individual violence.

In demonstrating how conflicts between these groups were intimately tied to their political surroundings, this book yields practical lessons for the future. City governments can do little to fight widening economic inequality in an increasingly diverse nation, Joyce writes. But officials and activists can restructure political institutions to provide the foundations for new multiracial coalitions. ... Read more

Product Description
This book proves into hearsays surrounding Koreans in America. My writings illustrate how race has impacted my life and other Koreans vis-à-vis white Americans.

I wrote articles to illustrate the interplay of my Korean heritage on my minority status.The range of social issues that I touch upon in my articles includes affirmative action, dating, church life, sexual harassment, volunteerism, sorority life, dorm life, politics, travel and the psycho-dynamics of my relationships with white peers, Koreans abroad, Korean visitors and other Korean immigrants.

Customer Reviews (3)

This Korean-American rocked my world
An important little gem by Miss Hong, pregnant with bracing tenderness, rueful hilarity, and measured diligence. The cover is very nice, too.

Seminal
In this seminal work, Dorothy distills the true meaning of being a Korean maiden through her vivid musings on the nature of American culture, and its juxtaposition with Korean social dynamics.

Excellent
Dorothy Hong tells a different story from Celtic scholarship of Mongolian invasion in Europe and what Mongolians did in Europe( but of course here she is refering to mostly Mongolians in America). She also tells a different story from German's reference to Aryan brothers in Tibet. But her stories are in a continuum of previous scholarships. ... Read more

Product Description
This book is a collection of myths and legends describing the beliefs and customs of the ancient people in the formative stage of Korean civilization, and will help the reader understand the Korean people, their traditions and their culture.The twenty eight myths and legends in this volume are selected from several books of historic importance. Though they have been enjoyed throughout the ages in Korea, they are not known outside so well and this volume will fill that void. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (4)

A non-academic reader strongly recommends
This powerfulbook is amazing--beautifully written,its creative approach opens up ways of understanding even more than its important subject.What can/do we do when we are faced with social and familial silences--how canthose empty spaces be filled?

In ways that feminists of the sixties and seventies would welcome, Cho
blends the personal and the political, and shows how inextricably they are connected in women's lives.Cho also blends her
serious academic research on her subject with the understandings that can come from art and dreams.
It's all woven together in a flow that pulls the reader forward.

I found this book almost unbearably painful and yet so illuminating.As someone who comes from 50 years of progressive and feminist activism and who was a young woman during the 1950-53 years, Cho's work showed me I didn't begin to know how much I didn't know.

I strongly recommend Cho's work, of course to academics, of course to children of the Korean diaspora, but also to any reader who wants to understand her world better and to understand women's place in that world.

A Flawless, Personal andHistorical Narrative
I highly recommend this book!!!

Grace Cho's writing style is amazing.She's managed to blend scholarly and personal writing in a way that neither alienates the reader nor produces un-comfortability.No small feat!This is reading from a personal viewpoint...from the way it affects a people, her family, herself.And...it's deeply political without being preachy.Incredible!

She speaks of the camptown women and her mother in a way that is honest and forthright.Making no claims to have an answer/a conclusion, she uses the idea of fragmented memory and/or haunting in a way that I can understand and relate to...but have never read about before.It is so valid and so moving. --It's a hard topic to discuss when the solution is not, in fact, present.Yet she did it in a way that gives peace to the forgotten, to the silent, to the dying, to the dead.

In closing, I'd like to say that reading a book regarding Comfort Women/Camptown women/the Korean Diaspora/Etc, that was written by a woman, was so refreshing!!!

Somatic Illiteracy in Trauma Transmission?
Somatic Illiteracy?

Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War by Grace M. Cho vividly raises the question of whether the author's approach to trauma transmission is marked by a somatic illiteracy that (a) masks the organic bodily processes by which trauma imprints are transmitted across generations, and (b) blinds her to the existence of powerful new methods of healing trauma imprints invented in the past twenty-five years. "Somatic illiteracy" can be defined as an almost complete ignorance of the mechanisms by which our bodies function as a vehicle of communication and a platform for emotions.In social research, this ignorance is based on a systematic disinterest in such functions fostered by the out-of-body thinking that is the foundation of one's epistemology. The accounts of bodily processes which are used are marked by a the primacy of imagined elements over organic processes, the complete reversal of the relationship in the "realist" view.

There is in fact a voluminous literature on the organic bodily processes of intergenerational transmission of information. Cho does not refer to this literature, and the literature she does refer to is also completely ignorant of any organic mechanisms of transmission or storage of trauma imprints.So, this is a conscious choice.The literature is neglected because the role of the body is discounted a priori, as a feature of the author's worldview.

In her extensive discussion of transgenerational transmission of trauma, she refers to it as"unconscious", "ghosted" and "phantomatic". She and the authors she refers to ignore the fact that even psychoanalytic researchers routinely identify "unconscious communication" as "communication through bodily expression".[1998. Transgenerational Transmission and Chosen Traumas, by Vamik. D. Volkan, M.D.] She notes that Korean women of the diaspora carry a vision of what they did not see and what an earlier generation saw but could not say they saw, as if this not being able to say is the same as not being able to communicate what they saw (experienced). Such a view of the human communication process--omitting the manifold signals used by the organic body, and which are pervasive and intimate in the mother-child relationship -- is a perfect example of somatic illiteracy.

Once we restore the primacy of the organic over the imaginary, the whole account of intergenerational transmission of trauma is transformed entirely, giving us valuable details of the process, and valuable details of the healing process.

According to Cho's out-of-body thinking, healing is to occur by employing exercises of language:"new writing/methods for grasping the materialities and temporalities of bodies, "auto-ethnographies".This claim is a stunning and dangerous half-truth. Techniques such as experimental writing bring the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder into consciousness. This is a possible beginning of healing, but it is far from its completion. The traumatized individual still experiences the symptoms described at length by authors such as Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery.

These symptoms are, generally, the loss of control over the occurrence of hyper-arousal and hypo-arousal of one's emotional repertoire. Hyper-arousal is the kicking in of the sympathetic nervous system - exaggerated startle reflexes, breaks in consciousness, sharp mood swings, chronic fear.Hypo-arousal is "shut-down" -- a relative decrease in heart rate and respiration and a decrease in exterior sensory awareness, sometimes described as a dreamlike state of consciousness.

This also raises the question of what do we mean by "healing", what do we mean by "health"? When we recognize the validity of our somatic existence, "healing" is the ability to return voluntarily to the social engagement state of consciousness from the states of hyper-arousal and hypo-arousal that characterize our response to overwhelming stimuli. "Health" is comfortable access to this "social engagement state". In everyday language we refer to this as "being in our body". [See Trauma and the Body, by Pat Ogden et al. (W.W.Norton, 2006), pp. 26-40.)]

We can give a biological description of the social engagement state:
The social engagement system has a control component in the cortex (i.e., upper motor neurons) that regulates brainstem nuclei (i.e., lower motor neurons) to control eyelid opening (e.g., looking), facial muscles (e.g., emotional expression), middle ear muscles (e.g., extracting human voice from background noise), muscle of mastication (e.g., ingestion), laryngeal and pharyngeal muscles (e.g., prosody) and head tilting and turning muscles (e.g., social gesture and orientation). (Porges, 2003b, p. 35)
Ogden then adds, "Collectively, these components of the social engagement system enable rapid engagement and disengagement with the environment and in social relationships by regulating heart rate without mobilizing the sympathetic nervous system." (p. 30)

Out-of-body thinkers are fully aware that experimental writings bring the symptoms of PTSD to the surface of consciousness, but they do not recognize them as such. They are aware that the symptoms are traumatizing.

They note that the experimental forms of writing that mean to capture trauma often present the subject in blanks or hesitations--a topographic formulation of forgetting, loss, uncertainty, disavowal and defensiveness. These writings can take a nonlinear, disconnected form, using multiple voices. They can fluctuate out of objective facts to subjective memory, weaving in and out of the cold facts of the forgotten war and engaging in dream sequences that both attract and hypnotize the reader.

The do not recognize that these nonlinear, disconnected forms, with blanks and hesitations, having multiple voices, fluctuating between objective facts and subjective memory and engaging in dream sequences are precisely the presentation of the symptoms of PTSD that, now that they are accessible to consciousness, can be treated by the various methods currently being developed by body-centered practitioners.

Purely language techniques are the products of mid-twentieth century French structuralists such as Lacan, Deleuze and Derrida, for whom identity was the result of language, whereas we now know as settled scientific conclusion that individual identity begins long before the acquisition of language, before the awareness of sexual desire, in the pre-linguistic sensory experiences of an individual's somatic boundary (the skin). The structuralists' dissociated consciousness had no direct access to their own embodiment, and their time had almost no knowledge of the sensory components of human knowledge.They had to do all introspection through language.

But, in the last two decades of the twentieth century a body of work arose on the direct access mammals have to their own somatic processes and the consequent discovery of sub-cortical awareness.Schools of trauma treatment trauma such as Eugene Gendlin's Focusing, Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing, and the Hakomi practices of Ron Kurtz and Pat Ogden share the observation that trauma is a biological event, namely, an overwhelm of certain information-processing channels in the organic body. The blockages created by these overwhelming experiences are physiological in nature and cannot be accessed directly by the functions of the neo-cortex.

Sensori-motor practice has learned is that these blockages can be readily accessed through sub-cortical awareness, inner body sensing. No language, no neo-cortical thinking. Just going inside and sensing. In this practice, "It doesn't matter what the treatment is as long as people are paying attention to the body and working with the nervous system directly to help bring back self-regulation. And the most self-regulating of all systems are the lower brain structures that govern life in the body."[Raja Selvam,Santa Barbara Graduate Institute]

[This lack of access to the neo-cortex is, by the way, the source of out-of-body thinkers' tone of frustration and panic at the failures of "memory" (i.e., linguistic memory) and their fondness for the term "ghost" and "haunt" in accounting for the persistence of trauma imprints. Since they have no awareness ofthe organic source of symptoms, they are all completely mysterious, "ghostly".]

Experimental writing is indeed an "unlearning not to speak", an important social and cultural step in healing.But it does not occur to out-of-body thinking that the motivation to speak is actually generated by the presence in the organic body of blocked channels of information transmission. Any form of unlearning not to speak starts to bring traumatic imprints from their suppressed, forgotten, state. Sensori-motor theory notes that the core of trauma imprint is blockage. An organic bodily channel for processing information has been blocked, and for healing to occur, the information must move through the blockage. Becoming consciously aware of the blockage is a key step in releasing it.

However, sensori-motor practice also knows that an incautious recognition of the original imprint can cause, not healing, but re-enactment.The subject simply experiences the original overwhelm all over again, and the symptoms can be damaging.

This is true of intergenerational trauma as well as other forms.Although the second generation has not experienced the original events in their own bodies, they do carry in their own bodies the somatic imprints of those events , imprints that have been transmitted to them by the manifold bodily signals sent by their parental generation.

So, Cho successfully contributes to ending the collective amnesia that has long concealed the traumatization of her mother's generation. And in doing so she brings to the surface of consciousness certain symptoms which can now be treated. However, the symptoms she so forcefully calls to our attention cannot be treated further within the confines of a somatic illiteracy that obscures both the mechanisms of intergenerational transmission and of healingtrauma imprints.

unraveling the fabric of erasure
The subject of the Korean War is often times dominated by a distinctly male point of view and limited to cold war ideological debates. The female perspective has been irrelevant and unvoiced. And the uncomfortable topic of sexual relations in geopolitical sphere's is rarely approached critically. Cho brings to light the thousands of Korean women who have worked inside the camptowns situated on the periphery of the U.S. military bases in South Korea [which once numbered as many as a hundred]. These women have been mostly invisible in the current body of historical literature about the affects of the Korean war. Cho dissects the origins and the complicated role of the 'Yangongju', shamed and yet implicit in spurring South Korea from a third world, war-torn, divided nation into one of the fastest grown economies in the developed world.

Through her book, Cho makes a bold attempt to speak about the things which we are told are unspeakable. And in that process of writing, she begins to identify this collective amnesia about the past which continues to seep into the present psyche. Transgenerational haunting is a fairly new concept that many may dismiss as a mere belief in spirits or ghosts which are quite common place in eastern cultures. This concept, first introduced by psychoanalysts studying family members of holocaust survivors, recognized that psychological trauma's have been unconsciously passed on to generations long after the trauma has been inflicted. The unspoken painful legacies of colonization, war, oppression, injustice, violence all deeply affect our cultural identities. And Cho, by excavating these buried truths, begins to unleash the collective grief and to heal the scars transfered upon the scattered diaspora.

Cho's poetic and at times fragmented narration, also reveal influences by the late artist, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, whosework touched upon themes that often dealt with loss: of country, language, memory, time. Cho also references quotes from "Dictee", the artists' most well-known piece that is written in a nonlinear, disconnected manner, and using multiple voices. Cho's own writing fluctuates out of objective facts to subjective memory, weaving in and out of the cold facts of the forgotten war and at the same time, piecing together a personal story that can never be fully known. One is easily drawn into the dream sequences that Cho so intimately shares with her readers, compelling and effectual in getting a sense of the personal. The style and structure of the book conveys an unconventional experimental approach at unraveling the 'fabric of erasure'.

As a 1.5 generation Korean-American, my immigration to the US was only made possible through the marriage of an aunt who worked in the camptowns and married an American GI.I am often struck by the gaps in my own family past. Reading 'Haunting the Korean Diaspora' is a profound remembrance and acknowledgment of the many thousands of Korean women who survived and their herstories that are both absent and present in our lives. ... Read more