Follow Mia & Simon’s Journey! (Spoiler Alerts!)
This Lit Trip was created collaboratively by librarian Jen Bishop, her middle school students, and me. Here’s how we did it.
Read MoreCreating a Lit Trip with Middle School Students
In April 2018 I saw a tweet from Jennifer Bishop, middle school librarian in Saco, Maine, appreciating the usefulness of this website. This prompted a dialogue:
Fast forward two months, and I was visiting with Jen’s middle school students as we collaboratively created our own Lit Trip for In the Shadow of the Sun. Basing our process on these instructions for creating a Google Lit Journey (https://www.googlelittrips.org),
Jen divided the students into working groups to generate locations in each chapter and any questions.
After the visit, I built on the students’ work to create a list of locations and filled in coordinates and notes, which Jen used to create the final Lit Trip map.
See next post for the Lit Trip reveal!
Read MoreOctober 24 Event: “North Korea: The Stories Behind the Conflict”
Date: Tuesday, October 24 – 6:00pm – 7:00pm
Location: Rines Auditorium, Portland Public Library, Portland, Maine
Audience: Adults, Teens
https://www.portlandlibrary.com/events/north-korea-stories-behind-conflict/
Read More“To Recognize the Humanity of the Other”: Korean Consulate Book Talk
On Thursday, August 24, Consular General Song Jun Ohm hosted a Book Talk featuring In the Shadow of the Sun, at the Korean Consulate in Newton, Massachusetts. An audience representing the Korean American community of Boston, including academics, activists, business people, policy analysts, and others with deep interest in North Korea, were invited to share their expertise and reflections. In his opening remarks, Consul General Ohm said,
As a diplomat, my interest in [Anne’s] novel is about the promotion of understanding Korea and North Korea among Americans… Questions arise such as why North Korea is obsessed with nuclear weapon; why North Korea is attempting to make threats directly to the United States; what is the origin of North Korean hostility to the United States, etc.
… I suggest that we need to see the North Korean people as human beings and see them differently and separate from the dictator and his subordinates. This novel provides me with the new and fresh perspective, because South Koreans also need to understand North Koreans better, and that will be possible when they meet by people to people, not when they see solely through news media or official channel.
I gave a short talk about my childhood in South Korea, the inspiration for the novel, the process of writing it, and the ways in which empathy for the people of North Korea gradually became my focus. Wellesley English professor Yu Jin Ko and Reverend Sung-hyuk Kim followed with reflections on themes in the novel, with Professor Ko emphasizing that “to recognize the humanity of the other” must be the basis for reunification. Audience members responded with their own observations on the importance of a “human-centric” approach to North Korea.
I was deeply honored and humbled by the event, and felt buoyed by the foundation of guidance and support as I communicate the themes of the novel to a wider audience.
BostonKorea.com wrote about the event here.
Read MoreResearch & Process: Arirang Mass Games
I have attempted to present the realities of life in current-day North Korea as accurately as possible based on the present available information. (By the time the book is in print, some of what I have written may already be outdated.)
But I have also made a few decisions in service of my story. For instance, the Arirang Mass Games have not been held since 2013, but I included a performance here, because the scale, organization, and presentation of the event is a uniquely and definitively North Korean phenomenon.
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