아시아계 미국시의 재편성

Re-positioning Asian American Poetry: On the Differences between Cathy Song, Myung Mi Kim, and Suji Kwock Kim

This study examines Asian American poets’ activities that have contributed to contemporary American poetry's heterogeneity and pluralism, and especially focuses on the works of three women poets−Cathy Song, Myung Mi Kim, and Suji Kwock Kim. Reading closely Cathy Song's Picture Bride (1983), Myung Mi Kim's Under Flag (1991), and Suji Kwock Kim's Notes from the Divided Country (2003), this paper discusses not only their shared views but also their differences, which are particularly noteworthy. These three poets share their consciousness of the problems of culture, identity, family, ethnicity, region, and language. Yet there exist differences among these poets arising from dissimilarities in their family background, time of immigration, birthplace, and generation. This paper explores how differently and in what ways they embody their seemingly similar themes. Through her lyrical voice and organic images, Cathy Song's Picture Bride deals with issues of family, assimilation, female experience, ethnic identity, and bond or distance between different generations. At the same time, Song, from the first generation of Asian American poets, attempts to show a threshold of imagination and creation, and a space where creative transformation begins. Myung Mi Kim's Under Flag in an epic narrative explores the ruptures of Korean culture and history. With her experimental language and forms, Kim, a 1.5 generation Korean American, expresses “the uncertainties and sense of ruptured suspension of personal and communal displacement,” more subversively than Song. Through the work of “postmemory” and the deliberate distance between the poet and the speaker, and in dealing with Korean War and the psychology of individuals “traveling between” the living and the dead, between past and future, Suji Kwock Kim, a second generation Korean American, reveals a “more fluid sense of ethnic boundaries.” Since for her Asian heritage is just one of many facets of her identity, she can venture into new subject matter with a certain air of feminine strength. This research attempts to expand critical views of Asian American (women) poets that have been less visible than those of Asian American fiction writers, and mostly presented in terms of ethnicity and gender. Thus, this study will provide a foundation for future discussion of Asian American poetry's implications for language, form, and narrative on the broader landscape of American poetry.