THEN AND NOW: FINDING MY VOICE

Elaine H. Kim, Korea (1961-)

Elaine H. Kin is a professor at the department of Ethnic Studies in the University of California in the USA. As a Korean-American writer, she has expressed her childhood and educational experience in America. She has analysed how gender, race and economic class make an impact on personal life.

In her autobiographical writing “Then and Now: Finding My Voice”, Elaine H. Kim presents her turmoil (a violent disturbance) and personal teenage experience as a Korean refugee child in the USA during the decade of 1950s and 1960s. She expresses the painful suffering that she had undergone in the USA during the post-conflict situation of Korea and its people in the USA.

The writer loved fortune telling and she visited many fortune tellers and shamans (priest-doctors) in Korea. It was suggested that her destiny would give success and happiness to a man. But a disaster for women she would be a better wife or a mother. Some women's fortune teller predicates that she must have a lot of fun in her life. One amateur fortune teller said that whatever shapes her goals and ideas happened to her between the ages of 12 to 17 but she thought it was wrong because that was the unhappiest and most difficult period in her life.

Kim writes she had to go through the problem of language and culture in a newer situation in the USA. As a Korean culturally, she had to speak the Korean language and lived with Korean culture inside at home even within America. By contrast, she had to speak the English language at her school in the US.  Living in a bi-cultural situation was a really painful situation for the writer.

She further expresses how her Korean identity was ignored in her school and how she was being called“JAP” or “CHICK”. Likewise, Elaine also unravels the other bitter experiences that she faced in her school age. She was othered and discriminated against amongst her friends and in American society as well just for not being a US citizen.

During the Korean war of 1950 many refugees filled her house. It was very difficult for her parents to manage food and shelter for them. Their bedrooms were packed with many beds. When she was a teenager, she faced other problems. There was a cultural variation inside and outside her house. People inside her house spoke Korean ate Korean food and talked about what was going on in Korea. But outside her house, no one knew much about Korea. Most people thought that Korea was a state in Japan or China. Her father said that the printing press and gunpowder had been invented in Korea and that a Korean marathon runner had won a gold medal in the 1936 Olympics. But the writer was taught at the school that the greatest inventions were made by European and Americans.

The writer also cites other examples where her family was discriminated against in American society. She writes how her brother was bitten in public places just because of being Korean. In later days, even though she knew to speak good English she was not given equal status. She was always treated as a foreigner. So, she committed to becoming a cheerleader in her American school thinking that she could get recognition and equal status as her American friends.  In this regard, Elaine was always eager to assimilate herself into American culture keeping her interest in the English language and culture. Even though she tried hard for her identity, she was always behaved as a foreigner and othered in America.

The writer finally approves the facts that how the social discrimination and marginalisation that she faced in her teenage period in the US became the source of inspiration for her life and showed the path of her understanding of US history and discrimination, the voice of women, and how Korean suffered during the 1950s.

Interpretation:

Through this autobiographical writing, Elaine tries to establish her different voices.  Firstly, human discrimination and the concept of marginalisation are against humanity. The writer was discriminated in the US at a young age by some contemporary American people on the basis of her cultural affiliation. She was not treated as a human being. So she is against the crime of human discrimination whenever and wherever it is. Secondly, the author is in quest of her voice. It means she is struggling for her identity. When she was in the US as a refugee with her parent, she was not recognised as Korean. She or her community was either taken as Japanese or Chinese.  So, she finds a loss of her identity. Thirdly, her voice is that sustaining life in a bi-cultural context is difficult.

Critical Thinking:

Elaine seeks to establish Korean identity in her migrated land the US and thereby voices against the discrimination she faced in the US. She only picks up the dark sides of her experience in the US and tries to generalise those facts. Despite the author is in a quest for her Korean identity in White-dominated America during the 1950s, she is ignoring the point that it is not easy to welcome 3 million refugees at a time. She undermines that a large number of Korean homeless troubled people were welcomed by the US. It is easy to point out the negative side of a fact than to study the positive aspects of the truth. The fact is that the US recognised and gave shelter to Korean people on a humanitarian basis. But, the writer does not mention this bare fact. In this respect, her writing is not based on facts and represents just emotional sentiments.

Assimilation:

Viewing the context of Elaine’s autobiography, I am very much conscious of the plight of Tibetan refugees in Nepal. The autobiography gave me tremendous insights into how and in which situation the Tibetan refugees are living in Nepal. Do they have access to human rights, are they recognised as stateless human beings or suffering from discrimination inside Nepal? While glancing at their statelessness, I cannot ignore the fact that we have given them shelter in our country.

Further Reading:

Basically, this essay is about a struggle of an Asian-American woman to find her identity in a country where she is treated as a foreigner, the ‘other’. It shows how she suffers as an Asian- American woman in a White male-dominated society in America and how she discovers herself with a strong voice.

An incident of fortune telling takes the writer back to her childhood days, the time when she had to struggle in the USA as a foreigner. Kim reassesses her past, particularly her teenage year and remembers how being brought up in a hybrid culture. She had to struggle to establish her identity, voice and her space in the USA. She had to face two sides of reality: people and culture inside the house and outside the house and she could not understand this disjuncture and felt trapped in between. She found herself suppressed and discriminated against by the White people (European and American), violence and discrimination against the Afro- Americans, racial prejudices and gender discrimination.

She had to face two problems- as a foreigner and as a woman in a male-dominated White society. She was taken as a 'perpetual outsider' and the 'other'. There were strong prejudices against foreigners. Her determination to be a cheerleader was her attempt to be popular and to be recognized. However, her success in becoming the cheerleader did not bring her any new identity. Rather she developed the feeling of isolation and alienation. The suffering brings her a new understanding. The difficulties and confusion during her teenage inspired her to learn about history when she grew up. She learned that she was not alone in her suffering. She learned about racism, American women’s and African Americans’ struggle for equality and social justice.

As a result of her struggle for identity, she discovers herself. Now she views her past from a different perspective. Her experience has stimulated her to work to educate people against racism and sexism. This work has helped her better understand herself. Now she finds herself strong with a new voice.

Kim in "Then and Now: Finding my Voice" talks about fortune-telling. She loves fortune-telling ways of prediction. She brings her own experience as she has once been to Buddhist temples and long waited for her turn. A popular fortuneteller took a glance on her four animals: a horse, dragon, tiger and dog, and asked who that man was.

One particular year these were the sponsor of a fund-raising part by the Korean community centre in Oakland. There Kim showed her saju and was informed that whatever would be was between 12 to 17 years of age.

Kim talks about social injustice. The prediction about her seemed to have been wrong because the period between junior high and high school was the most unhappy and most difficult period in her life. Maybe the fortune teller considered the writer to have been brought up in the US and luckily not to have seen the devastating Korean war of the 1950s though he was wrong in prediction, he insisted that her period was a watershed one according to his numerology figures.

The writer remembers that her house in suburban Maryland was being sheltered by the Korean refugees. Her parents were scraping by themselves, and she never seemed able to catch the attention of her mother. When bad lucks come, they come in a chain. Another disaster she faced between the ages of 12 to 17 was the disjuncture between people and culture inside and outside her house. People inside her house spoke Korean ate Korean food and talked about Korea. But outside her house, none knew much about or was interested in Korea. Those who had heard of Korea thought it was a state in Japan or China.

The 1950s was also a period of violence and discrimination against many people of colour. African Americans were forced to live in segregated neighbourhoods. Moreover, they were victimised by the police. Though Asians were allowed to live in white neighbourhoods, the writer’s brother was beaten by white boys daily. The writer was also harassed in her school. Besides she was not invited into white people’s homes. She was treated as a perpetual outsider or foreigner.

In such a difficult situation, the writer was determined to become a cheerleader. Her determination to be a cheerleader was her attempt to be popular and to be recognised However, her success in becoming the cheerleader did not bring her any new identity. Rather she developed the feeling of isolation and alienation.

Her suffering brought her a new understanding. The difficulties and confusion during her teens inspired her to learn about history when she grew up she learned that she was not alone in her suffering. She learned about racism, American women and Africans. Americans struggle for equality and social justice.

As a result of her struggle for identity, she discovers herself. Their experiences stimulated her to work to educate people against racism and sexism. That work helped her better understand she found herself strong with a new voice.

This essay is about a struggle of an Asian- American woman to find her identity in a country where she is treated as an Asian- American woman in a white male-dominated society of American and how she discovers herself with a strong voice.