What if you are in bed and, if you consider a t-shirt and underpants a matched pair, you aren't very matched at all?
Is it a mitigating circumstance that the weather in Hometown USA is depressing and gray?
Probably not... so I have done a bit of work on the paper... I am up to 1,000 words or so although two paragraphs are still almost complete plagiarism and some vestigial memory reminds me that this is a "very bad thing!" Before I left work last night I printed out my clipped notes, almost 30 pages of them, so when I do get revved up it should be a very short and disorganized wade through a bunch of silly crap to get the other 2k words written.
Anyway, with plagiarism in italics, here is the critter as she exists..
In Kim Yong Ik’s, "They Won't Crack It Open," readers find a brilliant but rather surprising and subtle examination of the destructive effects of racial essentialism. Kim takes a multicultural lens and by inverting it tells a deeply personal, but at the same time generally applicable tale of how racial essentialism can destroy individuals. Part of the literary beauty of this piece is that it takes a path usually not taken and, when arriving at the common destination, more clearly limns the difficulties of arriving there.
Part of the subtlety is that Kim is writing about racial (social really) essentialism in the United States that has nothing to do with racism or foreigners and little to do with immigrants. Kim uses a kind of reverse etching to sharply outline the effect that dominant culture essentialism has on its less successful members.
To simplify Dyson, essentialism is based upon the philosophical claim that any particular racial entity can be, at least theoretically, defined by a finite list of criteria which must all be present in order for an entity to belong to that race or ethnicity.
Some Philosophical Conclusions from Essentialism
The essentialist claim that only people within a group can understand the group leads us to the good old “slippery slope” argument (one of my favorite straw men) If I can't be a feminist because I haven't had the experiences of a woman, then we might say that an American feminist can't really be a feminist because she hasn't experienced the sort of oppression of women that, say, a woman from China has (or vice versa! The Chinese feminist can't be a real feminist because she hasn't experienced the sort of oppression that American woman have!). The point here is that if different experiences are seen as dividing lines, then there have to be good reasons to draw those lines one place (between male and female feminists) and not others (between American feminists and Chinese feminists). So far I haven't been shown any good reasons for doing so.
Essentialism is also divisive by nature (it has a black and white, or, in or out nature), and by implication this divisiveness is permanent and can’t be overcome. That seems wrong to me--I don't see feminism, for instance, as inherently female--historically its ideas came from the reaction of women to their own oppression, but reacting to oppression isn't 'female'.
It may be a function of a multicultural environment today and not a clever stratagem by Kim, but the title is a lovely mis-signifier as it seems to be considering the United States from the perspective of a visitor or immigrant who can’t get in. Yet, like the coconut that will never be cracked, the title signifies the “inner” circle that unfortunate citizens of the United States can never achieve.
It is worth admitting that Dick and his mother aren’t completely insiders. They are immigrants to the United States as well. Dick’s mother is clearly an immigrant ( 52) and Dick’s birthplace is never explicitly mentioned, although it is likely
Mom’s blindness!
Brilliant description of the distance of proximity, “When he was away, he was so good to me, writing to me every week. Now at home he never talks to me and gets cross with me easy.” (52)
Dick’s largesse to the Korean children is stolen. When, just prior to leaving Korean he brings blankets and food to the blind children, it is the fruit of larceny, “Later an army investigator had come a few times inquiring about some missing army goods.” (53) Dick can only live out the “Greatest Show on Earth” when he is divorced from it and even then he must steal from it’s fringe traveling show.
“The Greatest Show on Earth” is clearly a metaphor for the United States and when Kim gets here and it is clear that it shuts down for the season, that it’s geography is limited, and that not all are invited to see it, he metaphorically sees that it is only a vision, not a reality.
The blind Korean kids are at least two kinds of metaphors
1) The third world looking on, uncomprehending
2) Uncorrupted innocence
The fact they will never crack the coconut (and what another lovely symbol!) may mean that they will never taste the liquor within, but also that they will never be disappointed by contents they might not understand
Kim cleverly contrasts and compares the experience of Dick’s mothers to Korea. By doing this, Kim orientalizes (in the sense Edward Said would use the word) the lifestyle of poor white United States Citizens.
Kim typically wrote stories, although in English and for and English audience, of Korea. "They Won't Crack It Open” is a fairly substantial departure from this ouvre.
The intro is brilliant once you finish the story and as you read it you wonder how much is intentional and how much is (THAT WORD FOR EXTRA LUCKY). As you go on and experience the clever imagery and subtle wordplay that Kim uses throughout, you realize it is primarily intentional
Compare to frozen hands story for the pain coming from “within” the culture. Dick is essentially killed by the expectation of his own culture. Kim brilliantly models this as his cab driver takes the narrator from the airport through the steps of decline. (INSERT THE DRIVE)
2 comments:
HEYYY! *mt*
we real coo' we left schoo!
we strike gin, we real thin!
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