In this episode of Poets at Work, guest host CGU student and poet Stacey Park talks with Emily Jungmin Yoon, 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award finalist, about the role that poetry can play in remembering history and grappling with the way the past lives in the present.
Our intro and outro music for this episode is Lee Rosevere's "Night Caves", licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/
Stacy Park:
You're listening up to Poets at Work, a podcast featuring conversations with poets and readers. I'm your guest host, Stacy Park. In this episode, we are speaking with 2020 Kate Tufts award finalist. Emily Jungmin Yoon. Emily Jungmin Yoon is the author of A Cruelty Special to Our Species, winner of the Devil's Kitchen reading award, as well as a 2020 Kate Tufts award finalist. An ordinary misfortunes, winner of the Sunken Garden Chatbook prize. She is the translator of Against Healing, a chatbook of poems by Korean women writers. She has accepted awards and fellowships from the poetry foundation, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Aspen Institute, and elsewhere. She is the poetry editor for the Margins, the literary magazine of the Asian Americans writers workshop and a PhD candidate in Korean literature at the University of Chicago. Hi Emily, thank you for being here.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Hi, thanks for having me.
Stacy Park:
Would you mind opening the podcast by reading a poem from your latest collection?
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Yeah, I think I'll read Bell Theory.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Bell theory. When I was laughed up for my clumsy English, I touched my throat. Which said ear, when my ear said year. And year after year, I pronounced the new thing wrong and other throw slack, elevator, library, vibrating bells in their mouths. How to say azalea. How to say, forsythia. Say instead, golden bells. Say I'm in ESL. In French class, a boy whose last name is Kring called me belle. Called me by my Korean name, pronouncing it wrong. Called it loudly. Called attention to my alien.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
I touched the globe moving in my throat, a hemisphere sinking called me across the field line with golden bells. I wanted to run and loved at the same time. By Kring. As in ring of people, where are you going? We're laughing with you. The bell in our throat that rings with laughter is called uvula, from uva. Grape. In theory, special to our species, this grape bell has to do with speech, which separates us from animals. Kring looked at me and said, "Just curious, do you eat dogs?" And I wanted to end my small life. Be reborn a golden retriever of North America. Lie on a field lined with golden bells. Well, today in a country where dogs are more cherished than foreign child.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
An Oregon Senate candidate says no to refugees. Says years ago, Vietnamese refugees ate dogs, harvested other people's pets. Harvest as in harvest grapes. Harvest as in harvest the field of golden rice. As do people from rice countries. As in people-eat-dog worlds. Years ago, 1923 Japan, the phrase [foreign language 00:03:20] is used to set apart Koreans. Say 15 yen, 50 sen. The colonize who use the chaos of the Kanto Earthquake to poison waters set by the cruelty special to our species. The cruelty special to our species. How to say jugo, how to say gojit. How jugo Sounds like die in Korean, how gojit sounds like lie. Lie, lie, library, azalea, library. I'm going to the library. I lied, years ago on a field lined with forsythia.
Stacy Park:
Thank you. I think like off the top, I just have to give you all the praise and thanks for this collection and your work. I read the first, I don't remember how, but I stumbled upon Say Grace, I think on the poetry foundation website. And it was a poem that looked me in my eyes and was reading me. As a first generation, Korean Canadian woman, for me, your collection and your poems just hit me viscerally. And the collection I think is very Korean and it's very centered in womanhood, especially. And I just want to get really hell Korean with you, for a second. And just talk about that
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Thanks for your kind words.
Stacy Park:
Of course.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
And I'm really happy that the poem spoke to you, reached out to you and that you like the book as well, as a whole. So thank you.
Stacy Park:
For sure. There's those types of poems or collections or authors where it really just feels providential to me, for a lack of a better word, not to make it super spiritual or anything like that. But, it does kind of feel like something is striking you from above. And you're like, "Holy shit, this poem is like writing me." It really feels like that.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Really? Thank you.
Stacy Park:
There's like a sense of... Obviously having a shared cultural background, I have a connection to the text in that way. So I want to start out by asking you how being Korean figures into this collection and Korea's colonial history sort of being everywhere, pervading throughout the text. And so how do you reckon with the weight of that history and how do you think the past still lingers?
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Yeah. So this book, I can say really started when I started investigating the history of the so called comfort women, which as you know, is a euphemistic term of the sex slaves of the Japanese empire. And having grown up in Korea until I was almost 11, I already knew about that history and the existence of these women and their stories. And when I was at NYU completing my MFA, I realized that a lot of people actually didn't know about these women and generally about the US involvement in Asian wars, or just outside of the US in general. So my friends of color and I were talking about how can we convey things that are important to us culturally, personally, but in a way that works as [inaudible 00:07:18]. Because our impulse is to inform.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
But sometimes that doesn't work in the poetic genre. Just through those conversations, I decided that I want to try doing my part as a poet in not only helping increase the level of awareness about these women's histories, but also think about how to add emotional information for people who are already aware of this history. Yeah. So I started writing a lot of the poems about them, the women, and then it kind of grew there. And I do think that the women's stories and of course, the [inaudible 00:08:09] Japanese wars and all of that, it's in the past.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
A lot of people say, "Why are Korean is still not over this history, over colonization." But I think that something that happened in the past is still an unresolved issue that we're living in the present. And it is our job as people who came after to amplify these stories and continue the conversations. So, yeah. And there aren't that many former comfort women alive right now, but they are alive and they're still looking for affirmation. So I don't like to think that these are things that we should just leave behind, but they're still ongoing. That could live these stories with them.
Stacy Park:
Absolutely. Yeah. I think the quote on the back of this latest issue of poetry magazine, I forget which poet it was, but it said something like that, like poetry assumes that the past is never over or something like that. And I thought that was really apt, thinking about coming into this interview with you specifically and how your collection is reckoning with history. That false assumption that the past is somehow over or the idea of getting over something is like, do we ever really get over things, just in general? Yeah.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Yeah. And I do think about what can we do as poets for history that we hear about. And in a way, I was really struck by what [inaudible 00:09:48] said in a reading, we were reading together and she was talking about her book scene. And she just said, "This book is a problematic book," about her own book, because it's not actually going to... The lives of these women are not going to significantly change. And I thought it was really kind of cool to acknowledge that.
Stacy Park:
Yeah, totally.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
To not overburden yourself with this soul person or the sole voice. And I really don't want this book to be the sole voice or kind of the only book that people read about this history. I want people to kind of maybe use this as a stepping stone to learn more. And I do to think about what can I do with this book to help the women in a more concrete and real way. Yeah. And I try to use whatever cultural, financial means I have to, to help them by maybe doing a little fundraiser or donating to them using some of my stipends from readings and all of that. So yeah. It does make me think about, what more can I do? In the beginning I say, "What can I do as a poet, but, so what comes after?"
Stacy Park:
Yeah. I think that, and you mentioned this, the generation of comfort women, there's not a lot of them left. And a part of, I think, what a lot of Korean feminists and people in Korea have been vocal about, is commemorating and remembering this part of our history and the financial reparations is a part of that, but also in the collective memory of the current generation and the present generation. So how do you think poetry serves as a way to remember, or to commemorate?
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Just talking about my poems and specifically what I wanted to do with these poems. I did have a Western audience in mind when I was writing this book. I was coming from a context of being an MFA student in the United States. And like I mentioned before, a lot of people around me didn't know anything about these women. So I feel like if I was writing this book in Korean or in Korea, it would be a lot different. Because, of course, I feel like there are some poems in this book that I did write in order to add knowledge. But these are some things like, for example, the poem, Notes, which is kind of like what happened in 2015 between the Japan and South Korean agreement. But I do wonder, would I have written this poem in Korea, in Korean? I might have. I was to say, I wouldn't have, but I did feel like I needed to write some poems that inform.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
But I do think that poetry is necessary because again, like I mentioned before, we need to add emotional information to what we already know. So when I write poems, like for example testimony calls, in the voices of the former comfort women, I think it allows people to really reckon with the fact that these testimonies are out there and these are stories that happen, that should be circulated. And they get personally invested in what happened to these women. Because I think it's very easy to be desensitized by, I don't know, historical text and whatever you see on the news. So I think poetry is a way of kind of undoing that desensitization.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
But also perhaps if people are emotionally, personally invested in these people's stories. Even the readers were not Korean. They can maybe link it to stories that they are more aware of, that are important to me in their cultures, communities and their nations.
Stacy Park:
Yeah. How do you feel connected to cultural heritage and cultural past as a Korean person living abroad? For me, I like to use the Roxanne Gay bad feminist kind of term. Some times I'm like, I feel like a bad Korean. Sometimes I feel remiss about the fact that I don't know a ton as much as I read and as much as I want to be educated about those things and understand where I come from and where we come from. And our parents have stories and our parents have knowledge, but it feels, and I think this is true for most diasporadic communities and immigrant homes, is that feeling of never being connected enough in some way, or feeling like, "Yeah, I'm a bad Korean or I'm a bad whatever," fill in the blank. So how do you feel connected to land and heritage and past? How do you honor that? Or how do you reckon with feeling apart from that? That makes sense?
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Yeah. So I do have to admit that my family is all in Korea. So all my relatives are in Korea and I spend a few weeks every summer and every winter and just like spend time in Korea. And I have Korean friends that I meet up during those times. So my experience as a diasporic Korean is very different from a lot of people whose whole families moved to the United States or other countries. But I am Canadian by nationality and I want to link this to this exhibit that I saw at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Arts. So there was an exhibit going on and it was about the concept of us. And there were walls of surveys that I think it was like random selection. Just people filled out on who they think constitutes the concept of us.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
So it was multiple choice question. And number one, I think was like, who do you include? And you say uli, we. And number one was Korean born like whatever. And two, Korean person by ethnicity, but with different nationality. All of these different options. I couldn't read all of them. I could never do it. But I did see that a lot of people only checked, a Korean person in Korea with a Korean passport or whatever. So it did make me think. To a lot of people, maybe I don't count as uli. But at the same time, I mean, what the survey doesn't show is, how people feel when they actually encounter these people.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
They will probably see you like an ethnically Korean person with a Korean name. And especially if you speak Korean fluently, they will be like, "Oh, you're a part of us." Or that you are Korean. Or if they even see like a white person, like Korean food. People love to say like, "Oh, you're totally Korean." What I'm trying to say is, that concept of Korean is so amorphous. And I do feel like it depends on an individual person to claim that or disclaim that identity.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
I like to think that as I am maybe 100% North American, I am also a 100% Korean. I don't want to have to choose like, "Am I half Korean and half American? Or part that is, part that?" I claim both of those because they were both formative in who I think myself to be. That's really all that matters.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
But to be more, I guess, direct about your question, how do you kind of keep in touch with the land and all of that. I do try to keep abreast of things that are not just accessible to me here. Like Korean food or Korean face masks. It's easy to get these products. But I do want to be aware of the discourses, the political issues that are really circulating in our society like what's going on with feminism. And you also think about, well, if you gather a bunch of Korean feminists in one room, they will be able to tell you about the big war and maybe even like [Louisa Eregen 00:20:44] and all these white feminists, but most people don't know anything about Korean feminism, right on with Western feminism.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
So in that way, I do think that... I'm kind of spiraling here. But being more involved in these specifically Korean discourses and trying to include them in our conversations about feminism. Here, for instance, does make me feel like, I guess that it really solidified the notion that I can be 100% American, 100% Korean. I mean, if it makes any sense.
Stacy Park:
Yeah. I think that's totally fair. And I think that has to be the resolve to sort of make sense of our existence. Like for me, we immigrated when I was four. I speak pretty rudimentary Korean. My reading writing is maybe at a second grader's level, but I speak Korean at home. My parents speak Korean to me, I have [inaudible 00:21:56], my grandmas and aunts are the only ones in Korea and a few cousins. We have cousins here also in the states. But I grew up... As a four year old, you don't have really a memory of anything. And so I, being called banana all the time, stuff like that and really believing that like, "Oh yeah, I'm white on the inside, but I'm yellow on the outside."
Stacy Park:
And then those sorts of discourse and that cultural language to try to make sense of your identity or to split it up that way. And it's always by the gaze of others and they want to make sense of you. So they put all of those types of categories on you, at least that's been my experience. And so that's how I have to resolve it for myself. I completely resonate with what you're saying. In my innermost self it's like I do have to claim, I have to have an idea or a claiming of both worlds, because otherwise I'm going to try to play somebody else's game to make sense of who I am. And that's not fair to me. Yeah.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Yeah. I think that there should be some distinction between Korean American identity and a Korean identity. I think of I want to be divisive, but if you're a Korean American who grew up in the US and didn't really have chances to go back to Korea or whatever. Being Korean is like an unachievable act. And you were always left in the zone where you're always lacking something. But I don't think people should feel that way. Korean American history is very unique and Koreans will not understand that. What it is to be Korean American. But I think there's all ways this demand that Asian Americans need to, I guess, plea some kind of allegiance to Asia, which itself can be problematic as well. Korea is not this idealized place. And you don't have to be like, you need to return, quote unquote return.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
But I do think it's like... No, I'm not saying you are doing this or your personal problem, but I feel like there is this pressure for Asian Americans to be as Asian as they can. And like I said, it's such an amorphous thing. And people shouldn't be feeling like they're stuck in some kind of liminal state, you're full and full for who you are. So that's my 2 cents.
Stacy Park:
For sure. Yeah. Poetry draws me in as that space to sort of work through at least at the level of language. Because it is the perfect metaphor or way in which we sort of tease this stuff out because we live in translation. I often feel like that's how I live as a Korean Canadian Korean American person. And so how do you think that poetry sort of serves as a space, especially when we're talking about like cultural identity and the fact that it is amorphous? How do you approach poetry as a space to enter to the blob or to the sort of big idea, abstract idea, and to work it out?
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
For me, poetry serves in space in which my relationship with language can really manifest and it's a messy and sometimes beautiful way. And for a lot of people, language does have a big part in identity formation. In poetry, I get to experiment with Korean, but see how it lives alongside English, very metaphorically. I would try to incorporate Korean words or Korean sounds into my English language poems and see what kind of cacophony or harmony that would create. And that's kind of a way of investigating that level of space that you are always put into as an Asian living in the United States, between two languages, between two cultures. So between this stuff thrust on us, but also seeing that that being in between doesn't have to be some kind of accident. But it's another kind of fullness and another rich ground for creation, for poetry and thinking about how translation can be a poetic performance. So I do think about poetry as a space in which I can negotiate those maybe like conflict or friction that comes from being in two places or being from two places.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
And also I do envision my writing in English about Korea as a means of keeping me close to Korea, in an ironic way. Because as I'm writing these poems, when you're writing poems in general, you have to think a lot about what can I see differently? What other angle can I use to approach this issue that I've been so ingrained in me, that I'm used to? So when I'm writing about Korea in poetry, I realize, this word actually sounds like this or this word I should really think about, because I didn't think about it before just using a daily speech. So poetry can be a methodology, I think, to really probe deep into how you form your own subjectivity.
Stacy Park:
Yeah. For sure. I wanted to ask about the process of writing this collection specifically too. Was it over the course of several years or was it... About how long the process of putting these specific poems together?
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Yeah. I find it always really difficult to put a start and time to generating a poem or a book because I'm the type of person who revises a lot. And she goes along, I know some people who are just like, oh, type, type and here's a draft. And then they edit it and have many, many different drafts afterwards. But I find it hard to move on from a single poem if I am not satisfied with it in some way, right then and there. So it's hard to say, but I did write a lot of the poems in this book in my last semester during my MFA program, which was in 2015.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
And there were some poems here and there that came before, then and after. And so if I have to say, just in a number of years, maybe four or five years. That's what I want to say right now, but I might change my mind later.
Stacy Park:
Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. It's like a hard... Does the poem begin in your head or does it begin when it's on the page? Like to do it that time. I get that. I also want to ask, what's next for you after this? I feel like that's such a hard thing to think about. I think Ocean Vong, somebody asked him about his next book and he was like, "Why? There's nothing left to say." And I was like, I feel like putting, birthing a book is so like, "Give me a break." And I understand that relief and break is necessary. But in terms of creative process, do you feel like this is like a reprieve time, like break time or do you feel so compelled to write more? How are you feeling creatively now that this book is in the world?
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
I do want this book to live its life on its own for a little bit. I'm not so prolific and I can publish one book after another. There are poet who can do that and I really admire that naturally. But I think it's going to be a slow process for me. Even though I do kind of have a very vague sense of what my next book to be about, I've said this elsewhere before, but I want it to be more about tenderness and how I can activate these feelings of love and friendship, as cheesy as that sounds, to say something new. I say this because I think my first book, Cruelty, a lot of the feelings that I was channeling were rage and frustration. And so I'm thinking about what comes after that.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
So that's kind of the direction I want to take, but I'm still a little ambivalent about that. And I'm still going around with this book and in that process also kind of changing. My relationship with his book is also transforming and I appreciate that, and I do want to take time with that. But I am also writing a dissertation for my PhD program.
Stacy Park:
No big deal. A walk in the park, right?
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Do you feel this way? Sometimes you're writing, you're like, "I'm totally depleted. I have no more ideas in my plate."
Stacy Park:
I'm still in coursework. So I have some time to think about it, but I feel like... Someone says dissertation and I shutter like, "I don't even want to, I surrender."
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Yeah. No, it's very appealing. But coming up with an original idea is this so... For a pros piece or a poet project, it's always a very difficult work. And I used to think it's like a solitary kind of enterprise, but it doesn't have to be. I think I get a lot of inspiration and encouragement from fellow poets and fellow scholars or colleagues. Those are the kind of things that motivate me to keep writing. Oftentimes, when I want to write a poem, I read other people's poems. Because they're also writing, that I can do this and just kind of recaptures the reason that I came into this medium in the first place.
Stacy Park:
For sure. That's good. So I'm glad it's overall feeling of encouragement and motivation and not feeling like...
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Yeah, I really don't take it for granted.
Stacy Park:
Yeah. That's great.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Now you and I are in the same community too, that we met through this and I hope we can encourage each other to keep reading and writing poetry and treading along in the world.
Stacy Park:
Yeah. For sure. I appreciate so much of how just warm and cordial you've been, just even online. And I know it's so stupid and a lot of people think Twitter, and it is a hellscape. Twitter is a nightmare hellscape also, but it's also been a place where I've met scholars and Asian American scholar community, academic community, like sociologists, communications people, and I definitely feel a sense of like, there are people out there who I've not met, but who get it and who are doing it alongside me, even if they aren't alongside me. And that's super encouraging. Yeah.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
It's a very fought kind of space for sure. You've been really supportive of my work. Yeah. I also appreciate that you've been vocal about it. I'm not always so good to tell people that I really love this book. As I feel like, I love this or this meant a lot. And then I don't always... I mean, there are so many opportunities to do that, now that we live this age of cyber space.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
So I appreciate that you-
Stacy Park:
If you're in need of hype man, I'm there.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
[inaudible 00:36:23] defense down the road.
Stacy Park:
If you ever have readings in California at all, and you need somebody to just shout it from the rooftops on there, [crosstalk 00:36:35] for sure. Would you mind closing us out by reading another poem?
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Yeah. I'll finish with, Say Grace.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
Say Grace. In my country, our shamans were women and our gods multiple, until white people brought an ecstasy of rosaries and our cities today glow with process like graveyards. As a child, in Sunday school, I was told I'd go to hell. If I didn't believe in God, our teacher was a woman whose daughters wanted to be nuns. And I asked, what about babies? And what about Buddha? And she said, "They're in hell too." And so I memorized prayer and recited them in front of women.
Emily Jungmin Yoon:
I did not believe in deliver us from evil. O sweet Virgin Mary, amen. O sweet, O sweet. In this country, which called itself Christian. What is sweeter than hearing "Have mercy on us", from those who serve different gods. O clements. O loving. O God. O God. Amidst ruins, amidst waters, fleeing, fleeing. Deliver us from evil. O sweet. O sweet. In this country, point at the moon, at the stars point at the way, the lake lies with a handful of feathers. And they will look at the feathers and kill you for it. If a word for religion, they don't believe in is magic, so be it. Let us have magic. Let us have our own mothers and stars, our spirits, our shamans and our sacred books. Let us keep our stars to ourselves and we shall pray to no one, let us eat what makes us holy.
Stacy Park:
Thank you, Emily. You've been listening to Poets at Work, recorded live in studio B3, at Claremont Graduate University. If you enjoyed the podcast, check out the Tufts Poetry blog at cgu.edu/tufts, or follow us on Instagram and Facebook @CGUTufts and Twitter, @CGUTuftsawards. I'm Stacy Park.
