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To Tame the Tiger

Pat Matsueda and Jenny Ryun Foster.

Celebrating One Hundred Years of Korean American Literature

By Terry Hong | Special to AsianWeek

In a word, Century of the Tiger: One Hundred Years of Korean Culture in America: 1903-2003 is remarkable. One hundred years after the first group of 102 Koreans arrived in Honolulu Harbor on Jan. 13, 1903 aboard the SS Gaelic, their achievements and those of the immigrants who followed throughout the century are celebrated and immortalized through the literature, poetry, art and photography captured in Tiger.

Published by Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing and the University of Hawai‘i Press in conjunction with the Centennial Committee of Korean Immigration to the United States, Century of the Tiger is edited by Jenny Ryun Foster, a writer and librarian in Honolulu, Frank Stewart, editor of Manoa, and Heinz Insu Fenkl, author of Memories of My Ghost Brother and co-editor with Walter K. Lew of Kori: The Beacon Anthology of Korean American Fiction. Tiger is also an aesthetic masterpiece, thanks to the vision of two gifted designers, Elsa Carl, a granddaughter of one of the first Korean immigrants, and Clarence Lee, designer of the annual Chinese New Year stamp for the U.S. Postal Service.

“The Korean American story has long been hidden in American history, overshadowed by stories of larger immigrant groups such as the Chinese and Japanese. Despite a presence of a hundred years in the United States, Koreans remain largely invisible in American society. [T]he centennial presented a unique opportunity to tell [our] remarkable story,” says Esther Kwon Arinaga, a retired attorney and activist, whose father arrived in Hawai‘i from Korea in 1907 and whose mother was one of the first picture brides from Korea to arrive in 1912. All involved with Tiger point to Arinaga as the “person most responsible for getting the book finished,” says the book’s co-editor Frank Stewart.

“Koreans are only minimally included in anthologies of Asian American literature,” continues Arinaga. “Indeed the writings of Korean American poets, essayists, fiction writers and memoirists are scarcely known, even to Koreans in the United States. [That’s how] the idea to publish a book devoted entirely to Korean American literature took hold.”

Divided into five sections, Tiger is both history lesson and literary feast. Each section begins with a succinct introduction that frames a specific historic period, followed by pertinent literary entries: Chapter One, “The Land of Morning Calm,” gives an overview of Korean history; Chapter Two, “Sailing to the Garden of Mugunghwa” [mugunghwa is Korean for the rose of sharon, Korea’s national flower], introduces the first wave of Korean immigrants who arrived in Hawai‘i and later on the West Coast; Chapter Three, “Manse!,” highlights Korea’s struggle for independence during the Japanese Occupation (officially 1910-1945), much of which was planned, supported and implemented by Koreans immigrants living in the United States; Chapter Four, “War and Liberation,” looks at Korean Americans and their hopes for the defeat of the Japanese during World War II, although ironically, they were considered ‘enemy aliens,’ since Korean Americans were classified as Japanese citizens due to the ongoing occupation; and the final chapter, “New Arrivals in a Changed America,” presents new generations of Korean Americans, post-World War II, post-Korean War and post-1965 immigration law changes.

“The words themselves paint pictures of arrival in a strange land, of yearning for a country lost to invaders, of hardships endured, of difficulty and success in adapting to new ways and new cultures and of the unending spirit of hope and belief in the future,” says Arinaga.

The book, too, has journeyed in its intent and focus since the discussions for an anthology began in the summer of 2000. Tiger’s co-editor Foster who, as a Korean adoptee from the Midwest refers to her involvement on the book as a “moving, powerful experience,” says that the project was initially planned as a collection of mostly contemporary Korean American writing. However, as the book progressed, that focus shifted from the present to include more of the past, as more lost voices from the first generation emerged, says Stewart.

“Many were true heroes and martyrs, though [they were] a tiny minority in a strange land, surrounded on the plantations by tens of thousands of Japanese, trying to survive while also trying to help their homeland. But their stories have been lost, even to their close descendants.”

In its essence, Tiger is a tribute to those original Korean Americans, who paved the way for the next generations. Adds Arinaga, “Tiger provides an important bridge between the immigrants who arrived at the turn of the 20th century and the new arrivals who left Korea toward the latter half of the century.”

Unlike immigrants from other parts of Asia, the Korean American experience has the unique added element of a people escaping an occupied nation. While the initial group of 56 men, 21 women and 25 children were indeed recruited to work on the sugar plantations of Hawai‘i, they also left their homeland in order to escape the growing Japanese presence. Although annexation did not happen officially until 1910, the Japanese began to settle the tiny peninsula as early as the late 1880s.

That Korean/Japanese conflict is strongly represented throughout Tiger. Pat Matsueda, managing editor of Manoa Journal, who was born in Japan and arrived in Hawai‘i as a small child, says “I didn’t think any Japanese with awareness of those deeds could refrain from feeling shame and guilt, but if you combine that sense of shame and guilt with a sense of responsibility and obligation, you get ... Century of the Tiger.”

Indeed, Tiger “is a book to be read regardless of prior knowledge of Korean history and culture and the story of immigration and subsequent Korean American generations,” says Naomi Long, an assistant editor of Manoa and contributor to Tiger: “Several contributors to Tiger remarked at how little they themselves knew about Koreans in America and how much pride they felt about being Korean.”

To order Century of the Tiger, call 808-956-8833 in Hawai‘i or toll free 888-UHPRESS, or visit www.hawaii.edu/mjournal/text/korea02.html.