킹스턴의 『여인 무사』 : 중국계 미국 여성주체의 텍스트적 재구성

구은숙 한국현대영미소설학회 1995 현대영미소설 Vol.2 No.-

In her autobiographical novel The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston presents her search for identity. She is an American born Chinese woman who struggles with the contradictions that arise from two distinct cultures. Kingston contextualizes her quest for identity through the mother-daughter relationship. She defines herself by and against her mother who is the signifier of Chinese culture. However, Chinese culture which is fraught with misogyny, becomes a psychological burden to Kingston. Thus she has to separate herself from her mother and the Chinese culture. Paradoxically, her search for identity is incomplete as long as she denies her cultural heritage. She constructs her identity both by individuating herself from her mother and claiming her Chinese ancestry. The process of creating her identity parallels Kingston's struggle to break silence and find her own authentic voice. Kingston is doubly silenced by her own culture as well as by the dominant culture. She suffers from silence when she has to speak in English at school. Thus Kingston describes how the cultural displacement of Chinese American women is reproduced in the level of language. Her silence is further complicated by her parents' injunction not to tell Americans about immigration secrets. Finally she overcomes her silence and finds her own voice with which she reinterprets and revises her mother's stories. She uses her doubly marginalized position to challenge not only the dominant culture but also the misogynistic Chinese culture. In other words she transforms her precarious and paradoxical double positions into an advantageous one. Through her storytelling, she unravels the old myths and legends in order to reclaim a positive cultural heritages and to rejcet the negative. In rewriting a Chinese legend which is oppressive to women, Kingston creates a viable myth and reinvents a female Chinese American identity.

흑인 페미니스트 비평 : 이론과 현실의 경계를 뛰어 넘는 실천의 정치학 Transcending the Binary between Theory and Practice

구은숙 청주대학교 인문과학연구소 1999 人文科學論集 Vol.19 No.-

유령 화자의 흑인 역사 다시쓰기 : 토니 모리슨의 『러브』(Love)

구은숙 청주대학교 인문과학연구소 2015 人文科學論集 Vol.50 No.-

Toni Morrison's eighth novel Love explores the distortion of love and the loss of female relationship interrupted by the black patriarchal power. In the 1930s, still reeling under the aftermath of Depression, Bill Cosey becomes a successful entrepreneur catering to the desire of black bourgeoisie by providing a space for material comfort and music in building Cosey Hotel and Resort. He thus becomes a ideal model for black community. However, his business begins to fail after the Civil Rights Movement and ensuing racial integration phenomenon. Morrison explores what has been lost in black community with the Civil Right Movement although there was undeniable gains with the change of racial politics. Cosey also has a shameful past of his father being a court informer and of accumulating wealth by selling information to the white policemen. In addition, Bill Cosey's marriage in his fifties to eleven year old girl who is his granddaughter's best friend destroys two girls' friendship. Separated by the heterosexual desire of a black male, two women suffer from the loss of their childhood as well as of their subjectivity. Only with the death of a friend, Christine comes to the understanding of what was stolen from them and how they willingly gave themselves up and subjugated to the male power. Morrison investigates the conflicts within black community and the hypocrisy of black male power, and in doing so she rewrites African American history.

입양, 가족, 정체성 찾기: 영화 속에 재현된 해외 입양인의 삶

구은숙 청주대학교 인문과학연구소 2021 人文科學論集 Vol.62 No.-

Transantional Korean adoptees have been coming back to Korea to search for their birth mothers as well as what they had lost in the process of transnational adoption. These adoptees have begun to represent their experiences of being abandoned and being transferred to the totally strange environment in addition to their loss of family, language and nationality. By writing and expressing their complicated feelings of loss and sadness through art, Korean adoptees are able to find their psychological roots and to heal their trauma. Couleur de pear=Miel, Susan Brink’s Arirang and First Person Plural are the films that represent the lives of three Korean transnational adoptees, and adoptees’ effort to put together their fragmented memories and rewrite the history of Korean adoptees. These films are the products of adoptees’ desire to reconstruct both their identity and personal histories and to record their journey of homecoming. They also ask the Korean society to reflect the dark side of Korean history in which Korean children had been expelled from the home country even in the midst of Korean economic development. In the process of expressing their conflicting feelings toward Korea, Korean adoptees are abel to come to terms with their past and realize how much they are loved by both their birth mothers and adopted mothers. Jun Jung Shik’s animation film and Deanne Borsay Liem’s documentary film are the visual record of their search for identity as well as recuperating what has been erased in Korean national history. Susan Brink’s Arirang rewrites the history of Korean adoptees by exposing the physical and emotional abuse that a Korean adoptee had to endure in order to survive in the unfamiliar culture. These films force the Korean audience to rethink the problems of Korean society and why the Korean children continue to be sent out of the country.

타자의 윤리학과 치유: 폴 윤(Paul Yoon)의 『원스 더 쇼어』(Once the Shore)

구은숙 청주대학교 인문과학연구소 2019 人文科學論集 Vol.58 No.-

Paul Yoon’s first short story collection Once the Shore depicts the history of Japanese colonialism, the Korean War, and the American military occupation of the Korean peninsula. In the stories, the author portrays the characters whose lives are affected by the loss of their loved ones during the history of oppression. As Emmanuel Levinas argues, the subject is constituted by the presence of the other, and to recognize the other is to offer kindness and hospitality and to feel responsibility towards the other. Paul Yoon presents characters who are able to empathize with the other in spite of their suffering and isolation by reconstructing their fragmented memories. They are freed from spiritual isolation by connecting to the others who show their kindness and hospitality. In “Once the Shore,” an American widow comes to Solla Island that her husband had visited during the Pacific war. The husband told her that he inscribed his initials and hers on the wall of the cave. The American widow’s wish to go to the cave is fulfilled by the help of a young Korean waiter, Jim, who works at the resort. Jim also suffers from the loss of his brother whose fishing boat collided with an the American submarine. The American widow and Jim, unable to deal with their own sufferings, refuse to confront the reality. However, when Jim listens to American widow’s story, she is able to open her heart and to articulate her feelings of mourning, anger and sadness resulting from the death of her husband. Jim also decides to attend the funeral of his brother in order to tell his brother’s story to the people. In “So That They Do Not Hear Us,” Ahrim, a woman diver on the island, befriends a Japanese boy, Sinaru, who emigrated from Japan with his parents. Ahrim whose husband was conscripted by the Japanese military during the Japanese colonial occupation lives a lonely life without much communication with her neighbors. She extends her motherly care to the Japanese boy who had lost his arm from a shark attack. Both of them who suffer from loss are able to connect and communicate with the other by transcending national, cultural and linguistic boundaries.

침묵의 트랜스내셔널 이주, 모성 상실과 여성 정체성: : 엘리자베스 김 (Elizabeth Kim)의 『만가지 슬픔』(Ten ThousandSorrows)

구은숙 청주대학교 인문과학연구소 2013 人文科學論集 Vol.46 No.-

As Kim Su Rasmussen argues, "international adoption is a constitutive blind spot in modern Korean society and the history of Korean adoption is the past nobody wants to remember." Transnational adoption of Korean children began as the international project of humanitarian support for and rescue of Korean War orphans after the Korean War. However, it was made possible by the Koreanmodernization project which supported the exportation of illegitimate children of mixed blood who could not be embraced by the patriarchal family structures. Korean transnational adoptees are positioned in white society differently from the Korean immigrants as they have to live with white families, identifying themselves as whites while they are seen as the others by the whites. In spite of the fact that they are culturally and linguistically white, they are still recognized as the racial others in white society. Elizabeth Kim's memoir Ten Thousand Sorrows portrays the painful experiences of witnessing her mother's death by her own family's "honor killing" and of later being adopted by a white couple who are religious fundamentalists. Kim's mother was killed by her father and brother since she gave birth to a mixed blood child out of wedlock and refused to give her up. As an orphan, Kim is involuntarily migrated to America. Kim has to confront both racism and religious oppression at home. Her parents are so judgmental and physically abusive that she constantly feels she is worthless and becomes suicidal. Her husband also abuses her sexually and physically, and she decides to leave her marriage. The only hope for Kim is her own daughter. Kim is able to remember her mother by becoming a loving and devoted mother to her daughter. She also writes and talks to her dead mother, and in doing so she mourns the loss of her mother and overcomes the trauma of separation from her mother and culture. Working as a journalist and writing about the lives of other people with desperate needs, she develops compassion for others, and finally finds herself as she reconstructs her fragmented self in writing The Korean adoptee's memoir indicts not only America's racism and religious oppression but also the patriarchy and sexual oppression of Korean society. In writing about her own life, Kim reconstructs her subjectivity and rewrites her history of adoption in which life history of a Korean birth mother is unrepresented.

일반논문 : 한국 입양서사에 나타난 귀향과 기원 신화에 대한 재정의 제인 정 트렌카의 『덧없는 환영』

구은숙 국제비교한국학회 2010 비교한국학 Comparative Korean Studies Vol.18 No.3

제인 정 트렌카의 자서전은 해외입양 한국인의 귀향에 대한 열망뿐 아니라 상실감과 정체성, 소속감 등의 문제를 재현한다. 첫 자서전 『피의 언어』에서 저자는 기존 입양서사에서 침묵되어온 생모의 존재를 부각시킨다. 두 번째 자서전 『덧없는 환영』은 상실한 언어, 문화적 정체성, 가족 관계 등을 되찾고자 하는 의지뿐 아니라 한국에 귀향해 정착하려는 해외입양 한국인들의 삶을 재현한다. 해외 입양인 들의 귀향에 대한 열망은 삶의 일관성과 연속성의 부재에서 출발한다. 따라서 입양서사는 정체성의 중요한 구성요소인 뿌리와 기원의 문제를 천착한다. 트렌카는 귀향한 입양 한국인들의 경험을 재현함으로써 상실된 것을 기억, 애도할 뿐 아니라 침묵된 한국 입양인의 존재를 역사에 재위치 시킨다. 또한 그들이 어떻게 다양한 정체성을 지속적으로 협상해나가면서 새로운 관계를 구성하는지 보여준다. 그녀는 한국사회의 이데올로기적 모순을 비판적 시각에서 조명하면서 외국인 노동자와 결혼 이주여성과 같은 한국사회의 주변인들과 동일시한다. 트렌카의 귀향과 정체성 재구성 서사는 해외입양 한국인들에게 대안적 가정, 관계, 소속감등을 가져다주는 정치적이며 또한 미학적인 행위이다. Jane Jeong Trenka's two autobiographies represent a Korean adoptee's desire to go back to the place of origin and her anxiety to deal with the sense of loss, belonging and cultural identity. Her first autobiography, The Language of Blood, brings to the fore the presence of a birth mother silenced in most adoption narratives. The second autobiography, Fugitive Visions, represents the effort to reclaim what she has lost and redefine her identity as she struggles to resettle and readjust in the place of origin as a resident, not as a temporary visitor. Adoptees' desire for the return is, in a sense, a way to deal with incoherence and discontinuity which have permeated their lives. Therefore, adoptee narratives are deeply involved with the idea of roots and origin which is the essential part of identity. In portraying the experiences of returning Korean adoptees living in Seoul, Trenka remembers and mourns what was lost and reinscribes the presence of silently migrated Korean children back into Korean history. She turns a critical eye towards the ideological contradictions of Korean society and identifies with other socially marginalized people such as migrant workers and foreign brides. In presenting a growing community of Korean adoptees in Korea, she illustrates their continuous struggles to construct a new kind of kinship and community while constantly negotiating with multiple subject positions. Her narrative of return and reconstruction is an aesthetic as well as political gesture which provides them with an alternative home, kinship and sense of belonging.

History, Trauma, and Motherhood in a Korean Adoptee Narrative: Marie Myung-Ok Lee’s Somebody’s Daughter

구은숙 한국영어영문학회 2009 영어 영문학 Vol.55 No.6

Korean adoptee narratives have proliferated over the last ten years as adopted Koreans have begun to represent their own experiences of violent dislocation, displacement and loss in various forms of literary and artistic works, including poems, autobiographical works, novels, documentaries and films. These narratives by Korean adoptees have intervened in the current diaspora discourse to question further the traditional categories of race, ethnicity, culture and nation by representing the unique experiences of the forced and involuntary migration of adopted Koreans. For a long time, the adoption discourse has been mostly constructed from the perspectives of adoptive parents. Therefore the voice of adoptees as well as that of the birth mothers have not been properly heard or represented in adoption discourse. According to Hosu Kim, the U. S. adoption discourse, feeling pressured to deal with the stigma of the commodification of children, changed from viewing the adoptees as children who had been rescued from poverty and abandonment to considering them as a gift from the birth mothers. With the emergence of the gift rhetoric in transnational adoption, the birth mothers erased from adoption discourse have begun to be acknowledged as one of the central characters in the adoption triad. If Korean adoptees are the “the ghostly children of Korean history,” the birth mothers are their “ghostly doubles” who “bear the mark of a repressed national trauma.” Somebody’s Daughter represents the female experiences of becoming an adopted child and of being a birth mother. In particular, the novel makes a birth mother, the forgotten presence in adoptee narratives, into a central figure in the triangular relationship created by international adoption. The novel historicizes the experiences of a Korean adoptee growing up in America as well as those of a mother who had suffered silently from feelings of unbearable loss, guilt, grief and from unforgettable memories. In addition, narrating the birth mother’s story is a way to give humanity back to these forgotten women in Korean adoption history. Revisiting the site of loss both for a mother and a daughter through the novel is an act of collective mourning. The narratives about and by Korean adoptees force Korean intellectuals to reflect seriously upon Korean society and its underlying ideology which prevents a woman from mothering her own baby, and to take an ethical and political stand on this current social and political issue. Korean adoptee narratives have proliferated over the last ten years as adopted Koreans have begun to represent their own experiences of violent dislocation, displacement and loss in various forms of literary and artistic works, including poems, autobiographical works, novels, documentaries and films. These narratives by Korean adoptees have intervened in the current diaspora discourse to question further the traditional categories of race, ethnicity, culture and nation by representing the unique experiences of the forced and involuntary migration of adopted Koreans. For a long time, the adoption discourse has been mostly constructed from the perspectives of adoptive parents. Therefore the voice of adoptees as well as that of the birth mothers have not been properly heard or represented in adoption discourse. According to Hosu Kim, the U. S. adoption discourse, feeling pressured to deal with the stigma of the commodification of children, changed from viewing the adoptees as children who had been rescued from poverty and abandonment to considering them as a gift from the birth mothers. With the emergence of the gift rhetoric in transnational adoption, the birth mothers erased from adoption discourse have begun to be acknowledged as one of the central characters in the adoption triad. If Korean adoptees are the “the ghostly children of Korean history,” the birth mothers are their “ghostly doubles” who “bear the mark of a repressed national trauma.” Somebody’s Daughter represents the female experiences of becoming an adopted child and of being a birth mother. In particular, the novel makes a birth mother, the forgotten presence in adoptee narratives, into a central figure in the triangular relationship created by international adoption. The novel historicizes the experiences of a Korean adoptee growing up in America as well as those of a mother who had suffered silently from feelings of unbearable loss, guilt, grief and from unforgettable memories. In addition, narrating the birth mother’s story is a way to give humanity back to these forgotten women in Korean adoption history. Revisiting the site of loss both for a mother and a daughter through the novel is an act of collective mourning. The narratives about and by Korean adoptees force Korean intellectuals to reflect seriously upon Korean society and its underlying ideology which prevents a woman from mothering her own baby, and to take an ethical and political stand on this current social and political issue.

기고논문 : 백인의 시혜로 얻어진 반쪽의 자유 - 흑인 노예문학과 스티븐 스필버그의 『 아미스타드 』 -

구은숙 문학과영상학회 2000 문학과영상 Vol.1 No.1

W.E.B. Du Bois`s argument in 1903 that the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line, the relation of the darker to the lighters races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the island of the sea has predicted the emergence of racial conflicts as the central social and cultural issues of the twentieth century. Even today the racial issue is still at the core of the international and interpersonal conflicts around the world. In the American history, slavery has dominated the national discourse and consciousness and constituted the sub-text of American literature. Thus Toni Morrison poignantly argues that the contemplation of this black presence is central to any understanding of our national literature and should not be permitted to hover at the margin of the literary imagination. In this paper I discuss the two texts on the experience of slavery; Harret Jacobs`s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, a biographical novel written by a black women writer in the nineteenth century, and the film Amistad directed by Steven Speilberg, a Jewish male, in 1997. This paper brings into focus such issues as the construction of black and white identities, the struggle for freedom of black slaves, the sexual exploitation and oppression of female slaves. In particular, I examine how the two texts approach to the issue of slavery differently, resulting from the racial, sexual and historical identities of Harriet Jacobs and Steven Spielberg. A troubling aspect of the two texts is that the achievement of freedom of blacks presented in the texts is portrayed as something given by whites. In Jacobs`s narrative, Linda`s final freedom has to be bought by her benevolent white employer, Mrs. Bruce. Seeing the bill of sale, Linda is sarcastic about the fact that women were the articles of traffic in the free city of New York. In the film Amistad, the process of struggles of blacks toward freedom seems to be reduced as blacks are removed from the center of the stories while establishing whites as the benevolent and heroic figures in this battle for freedom. As a result, the deep-rooted racial superiority of whites is never critically analyzed, and historical repentance for the part of whites which is due to black is never presented as the important issue in the film. In spite of this shortcomings, this film shows through visual images the importance of memory and ancestors in the construction of black identities, the motherhood of slave women, the power of language, which become recurringly the important subject matters of African American literature. Since Koreans are not acutely aware of or sensitive to racial discrimination and oppression, and our knowledge of slavery is fragmentary, these two texts can be a very useful preparatory readings toward the deep understanding of African American history and literature.

여성의 정체성 추구와 모성 : 앨리스 워커의 『 메리디안 』과 맥신 홍 킹스턴의 『 여인무사 』를 중심으로

구은숙 한국중앙영어영문학회 1998 영어영문학연구 Vol.40 No.2