[KS] KSR 1998-10: _Korean American Women Living in Two Cultures_,

[Stephen Epstein]

Korean American Women Living in Two Cultures.  Young In Song and Ailee
Moon, (ed.) Los Angeles and Taegu: Academia Koreana, Keimyung University
Press, 1997. 317 pp. (ISBN 0-9657616-0)

Reviewed by Soo-Young Chin
University of Southern California

[This review first appeared in Acta Koreana, 1 (1998): 163-64]


Crafted of the debates and experiences that emerge from those living in the
margins of two cultures, this volume attempts to describe the status of
Korean culture, traditions, and personal and community experiences.  Many
essays in the book illustrate the ways in which immigrant Korean women have
appropriated and transformed traditional roles for their own purposes,
while others express concern over the continued oppression of Korean women
in new contexts.  Yet another set of essays focuses on younger 1.5
generation women, and their on-going attempts to confront the sources of
their oppression more openly.  Even though several of the essays discuss
the importance of traditional Korean strategies for traversing between
cultures, that women are not recognized for their contributions to family,
work and community and that Korean American women are oppressed are the
generalizations more often repeated.

The topical focus of the anthology is its strength as this allows for a
diversity of disciplines, methods, and perspectives to be included.  This
ensures that there is at least one essay of interest to students and
scholars of Korean American women.  The topical focus is, however, also its
weakness.  As most students and scholars are not as broadly trained as the
representation of disciplines and methods in the volume, it is hard for any
reader to fully appreciate the range of approaches and perspectives
included in the volume. While the introductory chapter provides a general
sense of the materials included in the volume, the essays are not
conceptually analyzed or organized for the reader, an effort that could
have provided readers with a better handle on the materials.

While the table of contents suggests that the materials are divided into
scholarly and personal perspectives, this is not the most evident division
of essays.  Rather, essays seem divided along three purposes.  First, there
are a set of survey articles that map an area of research and study to make
suggestions for intervention. Ailee Moon and Trang Hoang's essay on
intergeneration relations (Chapter 4), Daniel Boo Duk Lee's article on
servicemen's wives (Chapter 6), Young In Song's piece on domestic violence
(Chapter 9), and Jun Hee Kim Ailee Moon, & Hae Sook Shin's article on
elderly Korean women (Chapter 10) are articles that seem to address the
service provider or policy maker.

Second are essays that embed empirical findings about Korean American women
into western conceptual models, not only in defining terms such as sexual
oppression, but also in terms of constructing ethnicity. Young In Song's
essay on the patriarchal structure of the Korean American Christian church
(chapter 5), Young In Song's article on midlife (Chapter 9), Aera Kim's
piece of Christianity and Korean immigrant women (chapter 11) and Young In
Song's article regarding global feminist issues are theoretically tied to
standard western ideals. While this strategy was critical as a means of
bringing issues of ethnicity to the table, it is unfortunate because it
bifurcates identity along a continuum which differentiates American
(modern, civilized, masculine, whole) from ethnic (primitive, savage,
feminine, fractured).  The problem with the use of western paradigms to
explain non-western or hybrid practices is the frequent lack of fit which
renders the non-western or hybrid somehow less desirable, primitive, or
somehow inferior to western ways.

The personal essays of this genre attempt to re-interpret the ethnic end of
the continuum.  While the essays are responses to the bifurcated model of
American versus ethnic, Paula J. Trout's tribute to her adopted parents
(Chapter 13), Sandra Lim's personal essay about growing up (Chapter 14),
Elizabeth Shon's essay about identity and self-esteem (Chapter 15),
Kristine Kim's piece on building ethnic identity and pride (Chapter 17),
and Nellie Byun's essay of personal history (Chapter 18) bring out the
positives of Korean American cultural influences on identity processes.
While this is an important step in re-shaping the ethnocentrisms inherent
in conventional western conceptual models, it still takes the either/or
position of a binary as its starting point.

The last type of article attempts to move beyond binary conceptual models.
Rather than conceptualizing identity as pulls along a continuum of two
extremes, these essays suggest multiple axes of identification, of which
ethnic identity may be just one. Alice Yang Murray's descriptive
re-interpretation of early women's contribution to the early community
(Chapter 2), Brenda Kwon's analysis of multiple tongues in Choi's _Year of
Impossible Goodbyes_ (Chapter 3), Jung Ha Kim's ethnographic study of women
in the Korean church (Chapter 7), Mia Kim's essay on interracial marriage
(Chapter 16), Judy Han's essay of Queer Korean America (Chapter 19), and
Janet Chunghee Chan'g's essay on multiple roles complicate the cartography
of identity construction. While ethnic affiliation is acknowledged as a
significant pull, it is also evident that identity is multi-faceted,
influenced by situational and interpersonal factors as well as life stage,
age, and cohort influences.

The purpose to which these articles speak, in many ways, reflects the
diversity of the experiences of Korean American women in America.  There is
a wide range of attitudes, beliefs, and practices among Korean American
women - from those whose lives are primarily a struggle for survival, to
those who adhere to more western standards of self-construction, to women
who have reconstructed themselves in a more organic fashion which reflects
their lives.

Citation:
Chin, Soo-Young 1998
Review of Young In Song and Ailee Moon, edd. Korean American Women Living
in Two Cultures,
Korean Studies Review 1998, no. 10
Electronic file:
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/korean-studies/files/ksr98-10.htm
[This review first appeared in Acta Koreana, 1 (1998): 163-64]






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