Century of the Tiger: One Hundred Years of Korean Culture in America, 1903-2003 (English and Korean Edition) - Hardcover

Jenny Ryun Foster is a fiction writer and librarian and has studied Korean literature, shamanism, and folklore in the U.S. and Korea. She lives and works in Honolulu. Heinz Insu Fenkl is director of creative writing at the State University of New York, New Paltz and is the author of Memories of My Ghost Brother. Frank Stewart is the author of four books and editor of six, primarily on Pacific and Asian writers and literature.

Contributors: Heinz Insu Fenkl, Ha-yun Jung, K. Connie Kang, Younghill Kang, Caroline Jeong-Mee Kim, Richard E. Kim, Chang-Rae Lee, Don Lee, Mary Paik Lee, Chris McKinney, Margaret K. Pai, Gary Pak, Morris Pang, Kim Ronyoung, Hwang Sunwon, June Unjoo Yang.

With shorter works by Korean authors Sim Hun, Ho Nansorhon, Yi Sanghwa and Kim Sowol.

Plus informative essays by Esther Kwon Arinaga, Jenny Ryun Foster, Michael Macmillan, Edward J. Shultz and others.

Undertaken by the Korean Centennial Foundation to celebrate 100 years of Korean immigration to the United States, this book of essays, poetry, fiction and photographs of art is a complex tribute to a diaspora.mixing cultural history and emotive recollection. Arranged chronologically, the works begin in a chapter named "Land of Morning Calm," with the writings of Younghill Kang, the first Korean-American novelist. Folk songs, a photograph of the last queen of Korea (1851-1995) and quotes from an oral history of women who immigrated to Hawaii follow, along with portraits, objects like quilts and fans, and wooden dragons from the Honolulu Academy of the Arts. The objects illustrate writings by scores of contributors, like Chang-Rae Lee (Native Speaker), Gary Pak (A Ricepaper Airplane) and Walter K. Lew (Treadwinds). The "War and Liberation" chapter tackles the experiences of Koreans during World War II and the Korean War, while "Manse!" explores the Korean independence movement. The final chapter ("New Arrivals in a Changed America") begins with an introduction by Jenny Ryun Foster, herself an adoptee from Korea who arrived as a child in Chicago in 1974. This book tells an intricate story with care, but is more a collection of unexpected historical encounters than an exhaustive account.
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