I think Catherine Chung’s Forgotten City is now one of my favorite books, or she is at least one of my favorite authors. Her writing style is like none I have ever experienced. From page one she captured me with her imagery and language. She incorporates a lot of engagement of the five senses, which I hadn’t consciously been thinking about until Chico mentioned it in seminar today. I realize how important that is and I want to learn from her creative elegance.
When Chico started talking about the five senses in reference to the first page of the book, I almost immediately thought of the part where the main character describes the persimmons back in her father’s home. “They were gorgeously dark and heavy in the hand. They were so ripe that they burst at the touch and then there was the sweetness of them…” (256). When I was reading this, I could basically taste what she was describing. I longed for one of those ripe persimmons, and it also made me think about when my own dad would bring persimmons home for us to eat when I was little. That is the type of affect I want to have on my readers. To draw them in so deeply that they begin to crave sensation, and begin to relate so deeply that they are sucked into buried memories.
This book captures so much within its pages. It was incredibly emotional and difficult to get through, but I’m grateful to have read it. Not only does it give me more exposure to otherwise unknown Asian American writers, these gems overshadowed by more-known writers, but it also taught me more about Korean culture and history. Because I’m searching for more connections to my different ethnicities, it was beautiful to be exposed to anything Korean that goes beyond the stereotypes. This book basically grabbed my hand and pulled me into the deep ocean. It was dark but also blue, difficult to breathe at times, and an entire world was opened up to me.
Chung is an honest writer. She fearlessly offered the humility and complexity of what it means and feels like to be human. She wove metaphors gracefully into her messages about family, home, loss, shame and more. One of the images that shows this well and which has stuck with me throughout its entirety was the personality of hands and how this was interconnected with the imagery of roots.
When we were children, my mother had told us how trees grow: about the roots gripping the ground, the stable trunk, the branches, the separate leaves. She told us about veins we couldn’t see carrying sap to all the branches, the chemical processes that turn light into sugar, chlorophyll infusing each leaf with green as it unfurls.
She had told us that beneath the ground, where no one could see, some trees gripped each other’s roots in the ground like so many held hands. Mahogany did it. Aspen. Gnarled wood grasped gnarled wood until one tree’s roots were another tree’s roots. In times of drought they passed water, when there were fires they passed messages of danger. Burning, an aspen would send the alert root to root so that even if it died itself, the trees could bring up sap to save themselves from danger (157-158).
These passages contain so many nuances in relation to family, connection, entanglement, home. But one of the aspects about her writing that struck me the most was her ability to project these symbolic themes consistently, patiently, throughout the novel. Instead of overwhelming or overpowering the reader and the story, she dispersed flakes of gold throughout her storytelling. And then she weaved them all together into a powerful statement that is very intentional but also still up for the reader’s interpretation.
This story and her writing has been impactful. I plan to read more of her work in the future, and am, again, glad that this was part of our reading this week.
Some additional notes on this reading taken during seminar:
- Connecting themes between Chung, Chin, and Otsuka:
- family, intergenerational trauma, culture/history, loss, home, migration, shame, “Asianness” vs. “Americanness”
- Chung Themes:
- Korean Civil War = parallels family “civil war” – tension between sisters, parents, running away, breaking apart but staying close, continuous
- division – What brings them back together?
- roots, knot theory, hands
- parental figures, esp. father roles
- Where is home within migration?
- loss and acceptance
- silence and trauma, weight of shame, way to survive
- religion, Christianity vs. Buddhism
- assimilation of Western culture
- humanness, emotion, contradictory behaviors and thoughts
- sacrifice: names, folklore, intimacy, silence, homelands
- normality vs. abnormality
- hope, resolution?