Nam Kun and Nam Ki Han, brothers born on a Wahiawa sugar plantation, could not have been more different. Pragmatic and stubborn, Nam Kun dutifully supported his family but refused to become “one Christian fanatic” like his widowed mother and youngest sibling, Nam Ki. When Nam Ki is drafted into the army at the start … [Read More]
Booklist: Korean diaspora (page 6)
Mobile Subjects: Boundaries and Identities in the Modern Korean Diaspora
From the publisher’s website: The essays in this collection offer a rich and complex picture of changing circumstances on the Korean peninsula over the past one-and-a-half centuries. By drawing attention to mobility in subjectivity—to the contested nature of subjectivity in the processes of mobility—this volume seeks to connect the experiences of the Korean diaspora with … [Read More]
Kim’s Convenience
Mr. Kim is a first-generation Korean immigrant and the proud owner of Kim’s Convenience, a variety store located in the heart of downtown Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood. As the neighbourhood quickly gentrifies, Mr. Kim is offered a generous sum of money to sell — enough to allow him and his wife to finally retire. But … [Read More]
When the Korean World in Hawaii Was Young, 1903–1940
From the publisher’s website: When the Korean World in Hawaii Was Young tells the stories of some “1.5” and second-generation Koreans who experienced life in Hawaii or on the U.S. Mainland since childhood. Most of them were born in Hawaii of the first wave of Korean immigrants who came to Hawaii before 1906. Some tales are … [Read More]
Black Flower
In 1904, as the Russo-Japanese War deepened, Asia was parceled out to rising powers and the Korean empire was annexed by Japan. Facing war and the loss of their nation, more than a thousand Koreans left their homes to seek possibility elsewhere—in unknown Mexico. After a long sea voyage, these emigrants—thieves and royals, priests and … [Read More]
Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas
From the publisher’s website: Showcasing the dynamism of contemporary Korean diasporic theater, this anthology features seven plays by second-generation Korean diasporic writers from the United States, Canada, and Chile. By bringing the plays together in this collection, Esther Kim Lee highlights the themes and styles that have enlivened Korean diasporic theater in the Americas since … [Read More]
Reframing Transracial Adoption: Adopted Koreans, White Parents, and the Politics of Kinship
From the publisher’s website: A provocative critique of transnational, transracial adoption from a critical race and feminist perspective and a vision for reform. Until the late twentieth century, the majority of foreign-born children adopted in the United States came from Korea. In the absorbing book Reframing Transracial Adoption, Kristi Brian investigates the power dynamics at … [Read More]
Transnational Sport: Gender, Media, and Global Korea
From the publisher’s website: Based on ethnographic research in Seoul and Los Angeles, Transnational Sport tells how sports shape experiences of global Koreanness, and how those experiences are affected by national cultures. Rachael Miyung Joo focuses on superstar Korean athletes and sporting events produced for transnational media consumption. She explains how Korean athletes who achieve success on … [Read More]
Drifting House
A haunting and unforgettable debut spanning the last seventy years of Korean history, including the BBC Short Story Prize shortlisted story ‘The Goose Father’. Alternating between the lives of Koreans struggling through seventy years of turbulent, post-World War II history in their homeland and the communities of Korean immigrants grappling with assimilation in the United … [Read More]
The Quest for Statehood: Korean Immigrant Nationalism and U.S. Sovereignty, 1905-1945
From the publisher’s website: Korean diasporic nationalism in the years between 1905 and 1945 played a foundational role in the emergence of the two separate Koreas after 1945 that both exist to this day. Koreans in the United States were a constitutive part of this historical trajectory. The Quest for Statehood traces the development of … [Read More]
Diaspora: Korean Nomadism
From the publisher’s website: Diaspora: Korean Nomadism (Contemporary Korean Arts Series #2) is a brief study of international nomads, introducing those who contributed to the development of Korean art. By presenting Korean aesthetic sensibility and artistic creativity to the international world of art, they were responsible for introducing diverse artistry to Korea. Artists often leave their home countries … [Read More]
Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging
From the publisher’s website: Since the end of the Korean War, an estimated 200,000 children from South Korea have been adopted into white families in North America, Europe, and Australia. While these transnational adoptions were initiated as an emergency measure to find homes for mixed-race children born in the aftermath of the war, the practice … [Read More]
The Dance of Identities: Korean Adoptees and Their Journey toward Empowerment
From the publisher’s website: Korean adoptees have a difficult time relating to any of the racial identity models because they are people of color who often grew up in white homes and communities. Biracial and nonadopted people of color typically have at least one parent whom they can racially identify with, which may also allow … [Read More]
The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan
From the publisher’s website: Koreans constituted the largest colonial labor force in imperial Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. Caught between the Scylla of agricultural destitution in Korea and the Charybdis of industrial depression in Japan, migrant Korean peasants arrived on Japanese soil amid extreme instability in the labor and housing markets. In The Proletarian Gamble, … [Read More]
Diaspora without Homeland: Being Korean in Japan
From the publisher’s website: More than one-half million people of Korean descent reside in Japan today—the largest ethnic minority in a country often assumed to be homogeneous. This timely, interdisciplinary volume blends original empirical research with the vibrant field of diaspora studies to understand the complicated history, identity, and status of the Korean minority in … [Read More]
Zainichi (Koreans in Japan): Diasporic Nationalism and Postcolonial Identity
This book traces the origins and transformations of a people-the Zainichi, or Koreans “residing in Japan.” Using a wide range of arguments and evidence-historical and comparative, political and social, literary and pop-cultural-John Lie reveals the social and historical conditions that gave rise to Zainichi identity, while exploring its vicissitudes and complexity. In the process he sheds … [Read More]