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KOREAN STUDIES
REVIEW
Passages to Paradise: Early Korean Immigrant Narratives from
Hawai'i, by Daisy Chun Rhodes. Los Angeles and Taegu: Academia
Koreana, Keimyung
University Press, 1998. (ISBN 0-9657616-2-2). xxiii + 288 pp.
Reviewed by Richard S. Kim
University of Michigan
[This review first appeared in
Acta Koreana, 1
(1998): 157-60]
In Passages to Paradise: Early Korean Immigrant Narratives from
Hawai'i,
independent scholar Daisy Chun Rhodes has compiled over thirty oral
history
narratives from the American-born children of first-wave Korean
immigrants,
most of whom emigrated to Hawaii between 1903 and 1924. Passages to
Paradise is the fruition of several years of interview work Rhodes
conducted with the participants. Through the eyes of the
second-generation,
Rhodes provides readers with intimate glimpses into the lives of
first-generation Korean immigrants. The oral histories also shed light
on
the experiences of the second generation, a conspicuously understudied
group.
In her introduction, Rhodes explains that Passages to Paradise is
intended
to address deficiencies in the existing historical literature on early
Korean immigration to the United States. Since much of the literature
draws primarily upon written archival documents, Rhodes suggests that
our
knowledge of Korean immigrant experiences has been limited to a
macro-level
perspective that focuses on large-scale structural forces. These
top-down
histories often afford little or no agency to historical actors. They
typically portray individuals as passive, helpless victims of huge
economic
and social forces that they cannot control or comprehend. Through the
oral
histories in Passages to Paradise, Rhodes attempts to complicate
such
portrayals by looking "at historical processes much more through
personal
experiences of those, for instance, who were directly and indirectly
affected by national and territorial political decision-making" (pp.
xvi-xvii). Rhodes, therefore, does not deny the significance of
structural
factors. Rather, she seeks to capture a sense of lived experiences
within
these larger forces.
The reasons and motivations for emigration from Korea was a primary area
of
inquiry for Rhodes in her interviews. In explaining the causes for
migration and the subsequent patterns of immigrant adjustment, a
macro-level perspective typically depicts immigrants as a monolithic,
inchoate mass with collectively similar motives and experiences. In
contrast, Rhodes aims to provide a bottom-up view that highlights the
complexity and uniqueness of individual choices and decisions in the
migration and adjustment processes. In doing so, Rhodes asserts that
the
compilation of first-person narratives in Passages to Paradise
purports "to
validate the lives of these Korean pioneers as individuals, thereby
sharpening the identity of a group of people previously referred to only
as
Koreans who immigrated to Hawai'i" (p. xvii).
Overall, Rhodes skillfully uncovers detailed aspects of daily life among
first-wave Korean immigrants and their children. Unlike some other oral
history collections, Rhodes chose not to disrupt the narratives or
reassemble disparate segments under interpretative categories. Given
the
diversity of experiences contained in the narratives, a cogent summary
of
the contents of Passages to Paradise is nearly impossible.
Nevertheless,
some shared topics and themes emerged from the collection of narratives
such as work, school, marriage, family, politics, community, and
culture.
In seeking to validate the lives of individuals, Rhodes finds the
extraordinary in the ordinary. Many of the narratives, more than half
from
women, contain compelling accounts of struggle and survival as
immigrants
and of how their families overcame severely adverse conditions to
flourish
in their respective economic and educational endeavors. In giving
primacy
to human agency, Rhodes shows readers the multiple ways in which
individuals created strategies of resistance and adaptation to difficult
circumstances in a new and occasionally hostile environment.
The oral histories also reveal insights into forms of ethnic solidarity
and
cultural resilience among Koreans in the U.S. Nearly all the narratives
recounted experiences with the national liberation movement to free
Korea
from Japanese colonial rule. As a community in exile, many individuals
coalesced around the common goal of preserving and maintaining their
Korean
identities in the U.S. At the same time, the independence movement
created
deep fissures in the community, often along factional lines that either
supported or opposed Syngman Rhee. Though Passages to Paradise
does not
shed much new light on the Korean national independence movement, the
narratives illuminate the extent to which the movement occupied the
daily
lives of most immigrants and their families.
Although Passages to Paradise offers valuable vignettes of an
array of
individual experiences, the book, as a whole, would have benefited from
a
more thoroughly developed contextual or theoretical framework to hold
together the disparate information contained in the numerous narratives.
For the most part, Passages to Paradise is descriptive and
episodic,
failing to provide a critical analysis of important issues. Such
shortcomings are largely indicative of an overemphasis on a micro-level
perspective. Individual motivations and actions are inevitably embedded
within larger economic, political, and social contexts. The explication
of
these structural factors is necessary for a fuller understanding of the
dynamics of decision-making processes at the individual level. In the
foreword to Passages to Paradise, historian Wayne Patterson,
author of The
Korean Frontier in America: Immigration to Hawaii, 1896-1910,
provides a
general contextual discussion of the economic and political factors that
precipitated Korean immigration to the U.S., but his discussion leaves
little room for individual voices and human agency. Rhodes' attempts
fill
these gaps by shifting the focus of attention to actual lived
experiences
in the collection of oral histories that follow. Ultimately, however,
Passages to Paradise fails to connect its first-person narratives
to larger
historical themes such as those set forth in Patterson's foreword.
Without
adequate contextual information, one cannot critically evaluate the
reliability and the representative merit of the experiences recounted in
the narratives in Passages to Paradise.
Overall, Rhodes seems to have underestimated her own role in the
compilation of the oral histories in her book. In seeking to supplement
scholarly works that rely exclusively on archival documents, Rhodes
fails
to recognize that oral histories, like written documents, are primary
sources. Many of the narratives were incomplete and disjointed. For
instance, chronological references to particular events and people were
usually scattered throughout single narrative accounts. The disjunctive
nature of the majority of the narratives in Passages to Paradise
is
characteristic of most types of primary source material. Like any other
primary source, oral histories are incomplete scraps of the past that
scholars must piece together to construct a historical argument,
explanation, or narrative. Primary sources, thus, require an
interpretative structure to give meaning and context to the information
contained in them. Yet, Rhodes problematically assumes that the oral
histories in her book are capable of standing on their own as autonomous
historical narratives.
Despite its shortcomings, Passages to Paradise makes an important
contribution to the literature on Korean American history. Given the
dearth of oral history materials on early Korean immigrant life, Rhodes
offers a useful resource. The information contained in the first-person
narrative opens up an array of questions, issues, and topics for further
exploration. As such, Passages to Paradise serves as a valuable
building
block for future research in Korean American Studies.
Citation:
Kim, Richard S. 1998
Review of Daisy Chun Rhodes, Passages to Paradise: Early Korean
Immigrant
Narratives from Hawai'i (1998)
Korean Studies Review 1998, no. 12
Electronic file:
http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr98-12.htm
[This review first appeared in Acta Koreana, 1 (1998): 157-60]
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