Status Updates From Kori: The Beacon Anthology ...

surface is clearly the result of much aesthetic artifice.
Kim herself has said that "emotionally, the book is very much auto-biographical, but the events are not."

To negate a thing, you must describe it; or, in shamanic terms, to exorcise a spirit, you must fist invoke it.

Korean culture has a long tradition of speaking for—or as— others that has become both a curse and an ideal for Korean American writers.

Many well-known writers have gone as far as to say that they were speaking for their characters, who came to them fully formed. Toni Morrison, for one, has said that the final version of Song of Solomon came to her in her father's voice, which sustained her after many failed drafts.

As writers, we do not always speak for ourselves. In fact, one could argue that we hardly ever speak for ourselves because the self is so complex and indeterminate-always just beyond the reach of our willful consciousness.