대항서사로서의 김은국의 『잃어버린 이름』과 최숙렬의 『떠나보낼 수 없는 세월』

초록

This paper discusses Richard E. Kim's Lost Name and Sook Nyul Choi's Year of Impossible Goodbyes which narrate the Korean history colonized by Japan and the Korean War. In their novels Kim and Choi describe the Korean history that is not taught or provided for American Children in the American school curricula. This paper focuses on the possibility of counternarratives of Kim's Lost Names and Choi's Year of Impossible Goodbyes to Yoko Kawashima Watkins's So Far from the Bamboo Grove based upon the idea that Kim's and Choi's narratives reveal the Korean history that Yoko's narrative conceals or disguises. Kim's and Choi's narratives also challenge official versions of historical events by highlighting the private stories over the public versions and making a reinterpretation of the past. This paper also examines Kim's and Choi's narratives as the multicultural texts for the American children. Those narratives centering on their childhood, specifically the experiences of the colonized and the war in Korea, not the USA, validate a multiplicity of historical and cultural experiences as constitutive of American citizen's lives and posit Americanization as a process rather than as a fixed characteristic or merely an inherited property.

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