(no subject)

[skygiants]

So a certain household in Boston and I seem to have created a kind of unofficial mutual lending library; most recently, genarti lent me Mary Paik Lee's autobiography, Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America.

Mary Paik Lee and her family were part of a relatively small group of Koreans who came to America answering a call for farm laborers in Hawaii in 1905, before the anti-Asian immigration laws that shut that option down; her family spent the next several years wandering from place to place trying to make a living and support themselves through various depressions and in spite of the fact that they were very often made unwelcome. The most incredible thing about her autobiography is just how much history it spans - it was published in 1990 when Lee was ninety years old, and, uh, not to belabor the obvious, but eighty-five years covers a LOT of time and changes in society. As always, even if you know about the history abstractly, it is very different reading a first-person account of it. (I have a vague memory of schiarire reading this book a while ago and remarking that Mary Paik Lee was extremely nice about everyone she encountered. This is true! However, every once in a while she does write about standing up and spitting a piece of injustice in somebody's face, and every time she did I wanted to cheer.)

I will say, I felt sort of uncomfortable reading the appendix in the back where the editor, scholar Sucheng Chan, carefully recounts every change she made to the manuscript. I don't know the conventions of scholarly historiography; maybe every editor of an autobiography that is meant to be used as a historical record goes through afterwards and takes out all mentions of things that seem to be incompatible with recorded facts. I'm an English major, not a historian, and I kept having this instinctive cringe reaction: "Stop altering the text! THAT IS WHAT FOOTNOTES ARE FOR!"

Comments

[gramarye1971]

I don't know the conventions of scholarly historiography; maybe every editor of an autobiography that is meant to be used as a historical record goes through afterwards and takes out all mentions of things that seem to be incompatible with recorded facts.

Can you give me a specific example? Editing autobiographies and memoirs is a very tricky thing -- in the name of clarity and readability, editors have to make some hard decisions -- but I might be able to tell you whether the edits sound like a reasonable decision or a OMG WHUT NO choice.

(The fact that the editor provided an appendix with the changes is a good thing, though -- an indication that she understands the usefulness of the autobiography as a research tool. A lot of editors won't even do that.)

[skygiants]

I don't have the book at my fingertips, and I could be misquoting, but there's one I remember where Mary Paik Lee talks about her husband having mentioned learning English from the son of a relatively well-known American personage in Korea, and the editor went back and proved that such-and-such-a-person had no son at that point. She went back and asked Mary Paik Lee, Mary Paik Lee said her husband definitely said he learned English from the son and could shed no more light on the matter, and the editor went back into the document and either took out the line or altered it to say something different/more ambiguous, I forget which. There were a few of those kinds of changes. (I do appreciate that she tracked them!)

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

I definitely prefer footnotes. So much neater - if you're concerned about the accuracy of statements, you can read them, but otherwise you just have the thoughts of the writer to take or leave as they are.

[skygiants]

Yeah, give me footnotes over endnotes/end-commentary every time! I always want to know the extra bit of info, but I hate having to flip to the back of the book to figure out whatever it is I'm missing.

[gramarye1971]

Hm. With my historian hat on, I can see why she did that. If you're cross-checking hearsay (in this case, something that Mary Paik Lee's husband told her), then amending a statement like that is acceptable as long as you clearly document that you made the change and why you made it. However, I would certainly prefer a footnote for something like this.

[skygiants]

*nods*

Yeah, from a historian's perspective, I can see the reasoning. I think mostly it jarred me because I wanted to read Mary Paik Lee's experience as she remembered it - not her experience as 'fixed' by an intermediary, however reasonable the intercession.

I love footnotes! They are such useful tools and I wish more works would utilize them.

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

Yep, I did mention that! The 85 years are ... stunning.

I think her depiction of Syngman Rhee's position in the Korean-American community is very interesting. Sincehewasafascist.

[skygiants]

. . . aheh oh dear. I, um, also think it is interesting that the editor did not choose to mention that in her Brief Overview of Important Persons And Events at the beginning, because I am ignorant and did not know that!

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

Well, although hundreds of thousands of Koreans were killed by his administration, which you'd think would point directly to a "do not approve" position, he is still thought well of by conservative South Koreans and many Korean-Americans.* I also think he's a fascinating testament to the extent of the involvement of (1) America and (2) Korean Americans in the history of South Korea.

* I think. Please correct me if I'm wrong, someone who knows better.

[skygiants]

Yeah . . . I thought it was sort of significant that Mary Paik Lee does not talk about the Korean War or the division of Korea pretty much at all, except very very briefly inasmuch as her son was there in a US-government capacity after the war.

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

Yes. Relatedly (?), I just found this book (http://books.google.com/books?id=wdZo5DG3ZvcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=daughters+bear+korea+diez&source=bl&ots=wXSh6UYAVX&sig=fy7Ha74G1PBDnhIXs2fIqZMAAgQ&hl=en&ei=D1JiS4zzBIuWtgf9xv3YDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false) and it is God-damned magnificent as Kate Beaton would say!

[skygiants]

aaah library fail

D: D: D:

NYPL why do you torment me ;_;