Last Saturday after Korean class (where we learned "this is what" and "pencil it is"), I went to a part of Seoul called Itaewon to What the Book?, a bookstore for foreigners. I wasn't able to convince any of my friends it would be a good time, but there was a reading that I, at least, was excited about: Krys Lee was going to read from her collection of fiction stories "Drifting House". I could give a review, but the work has won a significant amount of attention on its own, so all I recommend is that you experience it for yourself. Ripe with questions about outsiders, what makes a home, and the decisions and sacrifices we make throughout our lives it's impossible to not have the book affect you. Although it does deal with North Korean refugees and South Korean lives as well, much the book takes place abroad with people living day to day lives in clever, beautiful, captivating phrasing. As she said, she's more interested in people who seem like they belong, but underneath are inherently displaced for one reason or another more than she is concerned about people's backgrounds.
I was hoping that this reading would be different than those in New York--turns out the question and answer segment of these readings will always be torture no matter what country I'm in. Half of the questions are from older men who take forever getting to their points because they're going on about some NPR show they are obsessed with. A famous, accomplished writer is sharing her work, and she has to patiently nod as this man goes on about his favorite episode of "This American Life". Most people aren't as aware of this as I am, but actually working for NPR for three years, I am a little jaded. For a long time it was my job to control these grown-up children as I fielded the audience for questions, and as they tried to grab the mic from me I had to struggle to maintain control and try my best to limit their monologue to under five minutes. Most of the time they would finish and the host or I would say, "So what's your question?"
The other half of the questions are always from a younger crowd, maybe 16-23. They think that since writer has written a book, they can ask some asinine question about how to fix writer's block and she will have all the answers. Again, all she can do is joke about how "there's a future writer in my audience" and make up some obscure answer off the top of her head about motivational advice.
My question, which I tried to get in early to scare off some of these offenders, was regarding post-colonial literature and the tendency to call any book that contains minorities a "Immigration Tale". I took an Immigration Literature class in college and was baffled: 3 of the 5 books the characters didn't even move houses. They contained different cultures, yes, but many of the characters were second generation Americans. Yet, because the author was a minority, the book is labelled under this genre. This might not be the worst thing in the world, but when it stops critics from looking at more important themes like social hierarchies, family dynamics, and coming-of-age, it hurts the work.
She looked at me for a second and said it was a good question. She answered in a socially acceptable way, only marginally hinting that she doesn't agree with her given classification, and told me to e-mail her. (Yessah!)
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