Minor Salvage

The Korean War and Korean American Life Writings
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-0-472-07520-1
Verlag: University of Michigan Press

Buch, Englisch, 336 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

The Korean War, often invoked in American culture as “the forgotten war,” remains ongoing. Though active fighting only occurred between 1950 and 1953, the signing of an armistice resulted in an infamous stalemate and the construction of the Korean Peninsula’s Demilitarized Zone. Minor Salvage reads early Korean American life writings in order to explore the admittedly partial ways in which those made precarious by war seek to rebuild their lives. The titular phrase “minor salvage,” draws on different valences of the word salvage which, while initially associated with naval recovery efforts, can also be used to describe the rescue of waste material. Spurred by the stories told and retold to him by his parents Soon Ho and Yunpyo, Sohn enacts minor salvage by reading overlooked early Korean American life writings penned by Induk Pahk, Taiwon Koh, Joseph Anthony, and Kim Yong-ik alongside a later generation of life writings authored by Sunny Che and K. Connie Kang. In the context of the Korean War, Sohn argues, life writings take on a crucial political orientation precisely because of the fragility attached to refugees, civilians, children, women, and divided family members. To depict the possibility of life is to acknowledge simultaneously the threat of death, violence, and brutality, and in this regard, such life writings are part of a longer genealogy in which marginalized communities find representational power through the creative process.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Militärgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Unfinishing War
- Chapter 1 Proximate Memory Assemblage: Refugee Shapeshifting and the Many Metamorphoses of My Parents
- Chapter 2 Extending the Gift of American Refuge: Beyond Familial Separation in the Life Writings of Induk Pahk and Taiwon Koh
- Chapter 3 Authorial Revisions: Fantasies of the Archive and the Many Faces of Joseph Anthony
- Chapter 4 Critical Refutopias: Adaptation and Representational Resurrections in Yong-ik Kim’s Fictional Life Writings
- Chapter 5 Retrospective Transformations: Recounting Refugee Flight in the Memoirs of K. Connie Kang and Sunny Che
- Coda: On (Un)ending
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Stephen Hong Sohn is Thomas F.X. and Theresa Mullarkey Chair in Literary Studies at Fordham University.