The INNERview
During my June trip to Korea, I was invited to be the subject of “The INNERview” on Arirang TV. The hour-long program, #71, aired the week of July 8. It can be viewed on YouTube here.
Arirang TV (livestream here) broadcasts 24/7 news, culture and all things Korean, in English, for overseas Koreans and the English language community in South Korea. The INNERview includes a wide range of interesting subjects – Koreans, Korean Americans, and a few foreigners like me who’ve made deep connections with Korea.
Here are a few behind-the-scenes pictures of the taping:
Kim Cha Ryung – or “Paige” – my liaison with Arirang TV, with my friend Yoo Myung Ja, who made the connection for me.
Host Susan Lee MacDonald, makeup artist, cameraman and producer reacting to my book,
The Legend of Hong Kil Dong.
The shoot, in a traditional house at Nam-San-Gol Han-ok folk village in downtown Seoul
Umbrellas over the cameras during a rain shower.
The entire experience was an honor and a delight and I’m very pleased with the program that Arirang produced.
Read MoreTeaching Korean Students
The first group was a class of 6th graders from Daejeon on an overnight retreat near Sejong City, run by the Humanity Recovery Movement Council (Huremo) a nonprofit focusing on personal development through the use of journals – called “love diaries” – to “help children think and plan for themselves and make their dreams come true.”
I talked about my own childhood dream of becoming an artist, and of how growing up in Korea gave me a vision of the common humanity of all people. Then I shared a little of the process of creating my graphic novel, The Legend of Hong Kil Dong: The Robin Hood of Korea, and some tricks for enhancing the elements of story when composing comics, such as zoom-in (character), zoom-out (setting), and using diagonals to convey a sense of movement.
What a sweet treat to spend time with such a small group of kids!
Read More
Korea, Again
I’m writing from Seoul where I’m connecting with old friends as well as doing a few presentations, including talking about my graphic novel, The Legend of Hong Kil Dong, with a classroom of Korean 6th graders – in Korean! Quite a stretch for my language skills, requiring learning/trying to recall a whole set of vocabulary: editor, research, picture book, manuscript, theme, final art, etc. (Another group of vocabulary is easier because it’s just a Korean pronunciation of the English word: sketch = su-keh-chi; character = keh-rik-tuh, and so on.)
Next week I’ll be joined by my mother and siblings, to take some of my father’s ashes to Geoje Island for a memorial service and reunion with former staff members, colleagues and friends. (Dad was the director of the Kojedo Community Health Project from 1969-1978.)
Read MoreParenting Across Race
A new essay I wrote,”Raising Yunhee” on transracial adoption and parenting across race, has just been published at Korean American Story.
“Adopting Yunhee was one journey; raising her was another. My own passion for Korea, which became my second homeland and the source of my second culture and second language, made me determined to give Yunhee a sense of her birth legacy. But how does a white American, even one who grew up in Korea, raise a Korean American – on an island in Maine?“
The essay examines how we attempted to give our daughter not just a sense of where she came from, but also encouragement to voice her experience of growing up as an American of color, and the challenge that posed for us as white parents:
“Talking about race gave Yunhee permission and language to unpack her own observations and experiences, and a structure for understanding the nuances of racial identity in America. At various ages and stages, it helped her find her voice to express her grief, her rage, her confusion (at age six, “Why couldn’t somebody in Korea take care of me?”)… It was essential for me not just to convey that all her thoughts and feelings were welcome, but also to become aware enough of the filter of my own white and non-adopted privilege that I could respect Yunhee’s authority in naming realities as she perceived them. I had to work to not inadvertently discount her observations and difficulties just because I wished they weren’t true.”
Korean American Story is building a fine and useful archive of narratives across the spectrum of Korean American identity, a significant contribution to exploring what it means to be American.
Go take a look.
Shanghai!
In October, I spent two delightful weeks at Shanghai American School. The school has two campuses, one to the west (Puxi), one to the east (Pudong) of downtown Shanghai, and an international student body of 3200! (I was told that it’s also the largest employer of expats in China.)
I connected with SAS through my sister-in-law’s brother, Jonathan Borden, who is the current high school principal at the Pudong campus, and his wife, Soon-ok, who teaches kindergarten. (We all worked together on Koje Island in Korea in 1975.)
Soon-ok’s class, like the entire student body, comes from all over the world.
Jonathan shared my books with librarian Barbara Boyer (here, with me and staff member Ruby, on the Bund, with some of the world’s tallest buildings behind us), who invited me to SAS.
The extraordinary team of librarians had planned a full schedule of presentations, from pre-K to high school Art, focusing on about a dozen of my titles.
I had fun surprising the Korean-American students by introducing myself in Korean.
There was even time for sharing writing and reading with individual students – so sweet.
Most of my time was spent in the international school community, but I was taken on a few forays into the city, where I ate some fabulous meals – soup dumplings!, Szechuan, Yunnan, Thai, Japanese; explored local markets; met new acquaintances …
and got a glimpse of the extraordinary contrast between people’s lives at different ends of the economic spectrum.
It was amazing to travel to China, retracing a journey my great-grandparents made one hundred and twenty-one years ago. I can’t wait to go back!
