I have never heard an Asian woman – certainly one over the age of eighty – abused as enthusiastically or consistently as the late filmmaker Dae Sil Kim Gibson. I imagine her throwing her head back, glass raised, screaming at the sound of her own F-bomb, her wild hair moving: spirals of kinetic iron. She cooked just as she lived and filmed with emotion. he made the best bindatok, Or Korean mung bean pancakes, battered, warm and crusted. (Her secret ingredient: kimchi juice.)
She was also famous for her Iowa Fried Chicken, which was based on a dish made by her beloved husband’s mother and, by all reports, even better. (Here, too, a touch of acid-lemon blows it up.) From this riotous cook, activist, writer, and keeper of history—Dai Sill, as she liked to be called by all—I learned two important lessons of storytelling that These are also living texts that changed my writing and me.
These lessons start with Korean words Han, What has been called the Korean phenomenon of existential grief or suffering defies translation – although recently, there has been some controversy over the term and its meaning. in his book The silence broke, Dae Sil tells of Korean women who were systematically sexually enslaved by the Japanese during World War II han Such as: “Prolonged grief and pain turned inward.” “Long” is not limited to a lifetime. It collects in layers, grows in lumps, individually, but potentially even across generations.
Dai Sill defines han Such as: “Prolonged grief and suffering turned inward.” “Long” is not limited to a lifetime. It accumulates in layers, grows in lumps, individually, but potentially even across generations.
han satiates his work – whether sa-i-gu, his film about the Los Angeles riots; Or a forgotten people, about Koreans left on the Sakhalin Islands; film version of or silence broken, In each of these documentaries, han It hurts. And yet, Dae Sil’s power as a storyteller comes from her ability to see the individuals whose suffering she tells, beyond their collective trauma.
My first, important lesson on this topic from Dai Sil came to me in the form of a story. I assisted him and his dear friend and frequent film collaborator, Charles Burnett, on the film version in Korea. The silence broke. But I was not present for his early interviews of the “halmeonis,” or grandmothers, as Dae Sil liked to call the former “comfort women”—a terrible euphemism he deployed deliberately. (I respect her word choice here, only I wish I knew the women’s different names, as she knew them.) When stories are relayed, especially in translation, the names are often the first thing that comes up. )
Dai Sil told me how, when she initially contacted “Helmeonis,” many of them had already been interviewed – repeatedly – and would launch into what had become a text of trauma. Dai Sil found this disturbing and recalled that she had asked a particular Helmoni if she could tell her something about what she knew, liked, and did in her life before the camps.
“You want to know about my childhood?” Halmoni was incredulous at first. No one had shown any interest in who he was before the events that defined him, at least in the public eye. But Dae Sil recognized the entirety of this woman and, in doing so, captured and represented the entirety of her story.
The Helmonis, despite many of them frequently speaking to the press—could be particular about who they told their stories to, who they wanted to be in the room with. When a young male production assistant entered the space, a man named Helmoni, Dai Sil remembered, he pointed at him and ordered: “Out.” She was convinced that he was of Japanese ancestry and was angered by his appearance, even when Dae Sil had promised her that he was of Korean ancestry. Another Helmoni questioned why Charles Burnett was directing the project. What did this American filmmaker know about his story? It didn’t factor into the equation that he was black: all they cared about was that he was American, not Korean. Then Dai Sil said softly: “His people know han, Halmoni. And with this quiet utterance, a word became a bridge through which these women admitted an unknown traveler into their world.
I have returned to these stories again and again as I worked on telling the story of two individuals whose experiences and histories are far removed from my own – Ellen and William Craft – in my latest book. Master slave husband wife. Dai Sill’s oral history interviews have reminded me of the importance of trying to see who the Crafts were before and after the unforgettable escape from slavery that has come to define them – the totality of who they are. And his phrase—“His people have come to know Han”-Gave me a framework to see the totality of their experience, what they encountered, what they brought with them and what they gave back. (Incidentally, it would be Charles Burnett who introduced me to a descendant of the craft, a great-granddaughter, Peggy Trotter Daymond Presley.)
Then, there was another operative Korean word, which was also considered a translation challenge: War, Approximation involves love or affection or sympathy or attachment, but it is like han, is experienced in layers, and it is complex. you can hate someone and feel War For them. you can feel War Inspite of yourself. War, also, resides and haunts.
Both these concepts, Han And WarGuided my understanding of the crafts and their story: on the one hand, saturated suffering, unlimited by time or lifetime, on the other, War This connected the crafts not only with each other, but also with their people and their world, making it possible and necessary for them to continue. That’s why my original title for the book read: Master Slave Husband Wife: An American Love Story, Only in my mind, it was American War Story.
Purists may say that these expressions are uniquely Korean. Or, as a Korean American writing in English, I’m not getting them right, that they are in translation.
Purists may say that these expressions are uniquely Korean. Or, that as a Korean American writing in English, I am not getting them right, that they are in translation. Just a flavor, a style, a flair, just like my cooking isn’t “really” Korean, just like Dae Sil’s chicken isn’t “really” Iowa. I’m pretty sure I know what Dai Sil Azuma is – from whom I learned about a word, hanFeeling, deeply, the other, War-Tell him, and this is not printable. But I can understand the sentiment independently, as Decille, laughing with her husband Don, hoots and raises her glass.
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Ilian Wu’s master slave husband wife Available now.
