ABSTRACT Title of Document: MEGATEXTUAL READINGS: ACCESSING AN ARCHIVE OF KOREAN/AMERICAN CONSTRUCTIONS Tracy Chung, Doctor of Philosophy, 2006 Directed By: Professor Kandice Chuh Department of English This dissertation formulates an approach to reading Korean/American narratives through what I call a “megatext” in order to understand the uneven and dynamic production of Korean/Americanness. By advancing a “megatextual” approach to conceiving of identity and politics, I argue for a way of addressing the critical gap Asian Americanist practitioners continue to witness between activist demands for social justice and scholarly articulations of those demands. A megatextual approach seeks to be an alternative reading practice that bridges different realms of knowledge production. Megatexts argue for a practice of reading across an archive in which texts are actively cross-referencing each other. This approach is essential to the way we apprehend knowledge in the current economy. I define the overarching term “megatext” as a rewritable archive of information and meaning within which the processes of archiving and interpretation are taking place at the same time. I identify particular theoretical concepts leading into my formulation of megatexts and argue the political significance of this approach in terms of Asian American studies and public intellectualism. Then, I define and apply the term “Korean/American” in order to refer to the broad body of work constituting here a “Korean/American megatext.” The convergences among the various discourses referenced by megatexts demonstrate how they are useful for bridging different realms. Lastly, I identify the significant constructions of “Korea” in the media as impacting Korean/American ethnic identity formations in order to establish my focus on contemporary Korean/Americanness. I apply this focus and formulate megatexts for each chapter based on individual Korean/American authors and the texts and discourses they reference. Chapter one examines a megatext of Chang-rae Lee’s novels, authorship, and popularity. Chapter two expands on the concept of authorship and discusses Don Lee and his collection, Yellow, as evidence of the commodification of author and text. Chapter three examines Korean/American women’s bodies in Nora Okja Keller’s novels as emblematic of the gendered, neocolonial U.S.-Korea relationship. This dissertation emphasizes the importance of reading the dynamic elements of narratives as a way of contending with the shifting and relational nature of the meanings that accrue to Korean/Americanness. MEGATEXTUAL READINGS: ACCESSING AN ARCHIVE OF KOREAN/AMERICAN CONSTRUCTIONS By Tracy Chung Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2006 Advisory Committee: Professor Kandice Chuh, Chair Professor Sangeeta Ray Professor Mary Helen Washington Professor Dae Young Kim Professor Seung-Kyung Kim © Copyright by Tracy Chung 2006 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my committee for their guidance. I thank my advisor, Kandice Chuh, for her contributions to my intellectual growth throughout my many years of graduate study. Throughout those years, some more productive than others, Kandice’s availability and support was always present. The readings, emails, and conversations that Kandice shared with me have profoundly shaped and refined this project. I would also like to thank my professors in the English department, Sangeeta Ray and Mary Helen Washington, for their mentorship and contributions to my work. Their expertise guided me in research directions that challenged me and fortified the foundations of this project. My mentors and comrades in Asian American studies, Seung-Kyung Kim and Dae Young Kim, generously offered their time and advice, for which I am grateful. Also, Seung-Kyung’s feedback helped further my analyses in chapter three. Without the influence of my family, I would never have reached this level of education. I am forever grateful to my parents for their unconditional love and support. They did not pressure me to finish the dissertation, especially when I faltered, which is something that I think, in the end, helped enable me to finish. My sisters have always respected me and my choices, often with forgiveness, and for that, I cherish them. With the influence of friends, I have been able to persevere through this process. Linnea Hasegawa and Meryl Sirmans, who both earned doctoral degrees at Maryland before me, offered constant advice, feedback, and empathy throughout. ii Linnea’s knowledge of this field and Meryl’s committed coaching saw me through to completion. I know their friendship will help me through a great deal more. With the influence of community, I have been able to better understand better how I wanted to approach my inquiry into Korean/Americanness. In the many classes of Introduction to Asian American Literature that I taught, my students kept me on my toes and kept me reading, thinking, and writing about literature. Outside of the university, the management team of igoo, LLC and the Internet community of igoo.com gave me work experience and a sounding board that enriched my academic study. And without the partnership of my husband, Patrick Hahm, the completion of this pursuit, even though begun many years preceding his placement beside me in life, would be without heart. For making things happen, I am grateful to him. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements....................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents......................................................................................................... iv Introduction: Formulating Megatexts .......................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: “Personal Lore”: A Chang-rae Lee Megatext of Fiction and Authorship. 43 Chapter 2: “Doubleness”: Don Lee’s Yellow and the Literary Marketplace .............. 87 Chapter 3: “Dangerous Women”: Figures of Korean/American Womanhood in Narratives by Nora Okja Keller ................................................................................ 125 Conclusion: The Mega-making of Margaret Cho.................................................... 168 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 176 iv Introduction: Formulating Megatexts Ethnic studies scholar Elaine Kim occasionally includes in her work a personal narrative of her Korean/American identity vis-à-vis the particular project.1 For example, frustrated by criticisms on one hand from other scholars telling her to stick to Korean/American cultural study and accusations on the other of “narrow nationalism” in working towards a Korean nationalist project, Kim candidly shares the following: I became sensitive to the fact that the Asian American movement was so Japanese- and Chinese-dominated…. I’m not sure what to do. Because in a way everything I ever had, everything that’s ever happened to me, whether it’s bad or good, has had something to do with being Korean American. I can’t get away from that. I don’t want to get away from that. Still, I don’t want to be tokenized (Interview 240). These personal sentiments were printed in a 2004 double-issue volume of Amerasia Journal titled “What Does it Mean to be Korean American Today?” As a focused inquiry into Korean/Americanness, both the Amerasia volume and my project would not be complete without discussion by or about one of Asian American studies’ most important Korean/American pioneer scholars, Elaine Kim. 1 See Kim’s partial CV here: http://ethnicstudies.berkeley.edu/faculty/kim/. In particular, for Kim’s personal analyses of her Korean/American self-identity, see Appendix A of East to America, the foreword in Lim and Ling (the discussion of how she came to read Theresa Hakyung Cha’s Dictée), and the mentor piece in Nam. 1 Kim’s comments imply that everything she’s ever done has also had something to do with being Korean/American. In terms of the scholarly discourse and related projects in which Kim has engaged, we can surmise both that her identity has caused her to participate in those particular projects and that the people leading them have sought her expertise as an effect of her identity. In other words, ethnic specificity continues to be important in Asian American studies. Kim, for instance, has worked on numerous “high profile” Korean/American projects.2 Kim’s personal narrative, then, can be read intertextually with the narratives of the various Korean/American projects to which she contributes. Given that her personal narrative is continually being written anew and that she continues to take on new projects, this method of reading must be considered as dynamic. Over time, as narratives become archived in ethnic studies discourse, several processes are set into motion: the interpretation of those narratives resulting in knowledge production; the introduction of new texts; followed by interpretation of new texts together with prior texts; and so on. All of these processes together rewrite the archive in composition and meaning. For example, while serving as Chair of Comparative Ethnic Studies at University of California Berkeley, Kim published an analysis of the 1992 Los Angeles riots in the form of an op-ed piece submitted to Newsweek’s “My Turn” section (18 May 1992). Kim’s viewpoint in the essay was personal and