Korean-American author bridges cultural gaps

By Chung Ah-young

From “Seesaw Girl,” “The Kite Fighters” to “A Single Shard,” Korean-American author Linda Sue Park, 51, has imbued her literary works with traditional Korean culture, which have been widely published in the global market.

Park, winner of the Newbery Medal in 2002 for “A Single Shard,” started writing stories about Korea as she wanted to tell her children about her mother country. When she was a child, her family was the only Korean family in her town in the United States, until she was more than 8-years-old. Her parents raised her without speaking Korean at home to make English her first language. She didn’t have many opportunities to learn about her native land.

But after she married an Irishman and had two children, she began wondering how well she knew her mother country to tell their children about it. “I began to read as many things about Korea as I could, because I wanted to prepare myself to answer my children’s questions and talk to them about Korea. I learned many wonderful things. That was the beginning,” Park said in an interview with The Korea Times. She is visiting for the third time to give lectures on her books and promote her latest novel “Storm Warning,” as part of “The 39 Clues” series published by Scholastic Asia.

In early 2000 when her book was first published, there were only a few literary sources about Korea in the U.S. “I hope many books about Korea are published, and that they (American readers)will have a much wider and truer impression of Korea,” she said.

Despite her exotic, unfamiliar themes and Korean setting, she thinks her fiction can connect time and space to Western readers. In “A Single Shard,” a boy living in a 12th-century pottery village in Korea might be alien to Americans. But they can wonder why they are different and develop an interest in Korea and want to visit some day. Although a character in the novel lives in a different way and tradition, he has the same feelings and emotions. “He gets afraid, feels joy and angry. These are things that every person knows. You try to use the specifics to illuminate the universal and you use the details to make those characters very real and the readers say, ‘He is different but he is like me.’ This is the bridge,” she said.

Her talent in writing began at a very early age. She was the only girl who could already read among the 30 children on the first day of her kindergarten. She wrote poems and stories when she was 4-years-old. Behind her prolific early writings lies the enormous amount of books she read in her childhood with the support from her parents to foster her imagination and eventually produce such high-profile works as “A Single Shard.”

“My father came to the United States as a university student. He was amazed by the American libraries. America has the most wonderful library system in the world. Most countries have good university libraries. But the U.S. has public libraries and school libraries. It’s wonderful because my parents didn’t have much money, but I could read hundreds of books,” she said.

The writer emphasized the importance of reading many books from an early age, quoting Albert Einstein’s famous saying “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

“All parents, especially all Korean parents and my parents, are concerned about schooling and education. I think Korean parents are the best in the world in supporting students’ education. Schooling or education is knowledge, but imagination is just as important as, or maybe more important, than knowledge. Reading for pleasure and fun or entertainment not for school helps develop an imagination,” she said.

She advised Korean parents to encourage their children to read more books for pleasure in the same way as playing video games. “You have Nintendo and you have a computer and a DVD. You must make reading one of those choices because Korean children have plenty of time to play video games. Parents read themselves and children see their parents reading for pleasure. They grow up with that idea. So electronics are not automatically always firsts,” she said.

“If you let them read for fun, this will help them academically more than anything else. If you let them read for pleasure or fun, you are doing one of the best things you can to help the academic side later.”

The writer firmly believes in the power of literature, which can make the world a better place. Good literature leads readers to think positively about the world.

“Life is unfair. So what will you do about the unfairness of the world? You can say the world is unfair and you can become angry and bitter and then care about only your family and yourself. Or you can say ‘How can I help make the world a better place?’ For many young people, reading good books is practice for life. You are experiencing the things you haven’t experienced yet,” said Park.

Born in Urbana, Ill. in 1960, Park released her first novel “Seesaw Girl” in 1999 and “The Kite Fighters” in 2000, and “A Single Shard” in 2001 which won the 2002 Newbery Medal. Since then, she has published several works of fiction, picture books and short stories along with poems.