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Summary Of Beyond The Shadow Of Camptown By Ji-Yeon Yuh

884 Words4 Pages

Jasmine Pham
Professor Wu
AAS 51 – Christopher Chamberlin
22 April 2016
Diaspora for the Shadow-dwellers Ji-Yeon Yuh, author of Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America, revealed in 2002 in her novel that through racial and gender subordination and geopolitics, Korean military brides created a new perspective in which people think about nationalism, ethnicity, and identity (Yuh 221). With the introduction of Americans into Korea during the Korean War, the emergence of Korean camptowns came to be (Wu (a) 2). These camptowns were established to meet the needs of American soldiers in the area, such as laundry, food, and prostitutes (Yuh 23). Due to poor economic conditions, many women sought work and were taken advantage …show more content…

She explains how she was writing about a history that was hidden deep in the shadows of the darkest alleys; it was the most intimate form of research (Chamberlin 2). Furthermore, because Yuh was able to meet these Korean military brides through personal connections, she was very much treated like a surrogate daughter of the community that allowed for deep ethnographic observation (Wu (c) 1). Moreover, as the interviews focused on the experiences of the Korean women, there was a chance to focus primarily on their perspectives without the possible distracts of zooming out if there were inclusions of the husbands or children (Wu (b) 3). Through the interviews, formal and informal, as well as ethnographic observation as a surrogate daughter, Yuh brought the stories of the Korean military brides to life where they shared their hardships and joyful times, showing that they were able to find content in their lives in the United …show more content…

There is the tendency to believe that it takes the unison of many people to make a change or something new, but just the small community of Korean military brides was able to make a great impact. The Korean military brides through access to American society through international marriage were able to bring about a larger Korean American society. And although this community that they helped bring to life marginalized them, they continued to help by being translators, finding housing, and finding work for the Korean immigrants. Many chose do form these networks to show that they are Koreans (Wu (b) 2); they direct these declarations towards the communities that marginalize them and assert their identity as being Koreans in the United States through international marriage to American soldiers. In this way, they were able to change the ways in which people can think of how to categorize them. The ideas of nationalism, ethnicity, and identity had to be redefined with the space that they created for themselves in the shadows that followed them; they found a diaspora for themselves as those

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