Han Kut: Critical Art and Writing by Korean Canadian Women

Jenny J. H. Ahn is currently working in the Education Department as a National Representative with the Canadian Auto Workers Union (caw). She was also elected President of caw Local 40 and Vice-President of the caw National Executive Board (neb)—the first women of colour and the youngest member ever elected. She has been involved in a number of social justice issues and is committed to fighting ableism and racism. She is a founding member and Co-President of the Asian Canadian Labour Alliance (acla), a community based organization of progressive trade unionists of Asian descent and their allies. In 2003, Jenny received the Social Activist Award from the Metro Network for Social Justice. She continues her work with her union as well as with acla, the Our Times magazine Advisory Board, and as a Toronto and York Region Labour Council Executive Board Member ([email protected]).

Elaine K. Chang was born in Vancouver, and received her ba (Hon.) in English at the University of British Columbia and her MA and Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University. Her experimental film work premiered at the Tenth Annual Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival in November, 2006, and she is currently editing a book on independent Asian Canadian film and video, Reel Asian: Asian Canada on Screen (forthcoming 2007). She has published essays in the areas of feminist and postcolonial theory, Asian North American fiction and autobiography, film and popular culture, and critical studies of race and ethnicity, as well as poetic and dramatic work. She has been awarded fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture, and also the 2004 Central Student Association Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Guelph, where she currently teaches contemporary literary and cultural studies.

Michelle Cho is a 29-year-old Korean-Canadian woman. She is an organizer and researcher with the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, where she organized the Toronto Coalition for Equity in Education, working to address systemic racism in public education. She has also organized political leadership training for youth and women of colour interested in electoral politics. She is a member of Han K?t, a Korean women’s collective committed to anti-racist, feminist and queer organizing. She has extensive anti-racist organizing, public education, research, and community development experience.

Julianna Choi: I became a reader first: as a child, I would hide in my closet reading Nancy Drew mysteries by flashlight. As an adolescent, I believed my pen was my voice and so I woke up in the middle of the night to write about snowstorms and angels. Today, I practice both fiction and poetry, prodded on by my fellow writers in our group, Inconceivable Writings. Currently, Kazuo Ishiguro and Miriam Toews keep me up at night. For the last decade, I’ve been a teacher helping reluctant teenagers enjoy books and the sounds of their voices on paper. And in order to recuperate from that effort, I occasionally paint abstract images but most often, you’ll find me in the kitchen, cooking with voluminous amounts of garlic and wine for my loved ones.

Far-San (far mountain) likes storytelling, visualizing, humming and improvisational piano playing. She has a good memory of context, especially scent, background sound, image of people, emotive signs and ambience, whereas she has a terrible memory of numbers, such as birthday of her best friends or memorial day of her father, and verbatim titles of songs and books. She studies, thinks, interprets, analyzes, critiques of power dynamics in micro and macro human-social relationships in mostly academic space at the risk of losing her capacity of feeling and intuition.

Young-Hwa Hong is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Her research looks at how skilled immigrant women are racialized and gendered in the Canadian labour market. She has also been involved in community work serving as a cultural interpreter, Korean seniors’ program facilitator, and hiv/aids outreach worker for Korean youth.

Jin Huh (Collective Member) was born in Seoul, South Korea and grew up in northwest Toronto near Jane and Finch and then later in suburban Scarborough, Ontario. She is an educator, community worker, writer, ex-grad student, and closet karaoke superstar who has been involved in political struggles related to anti-racist feminism, anti-imperialism, the environment, and sexual health.

Merose Hwang is a Ph.D. candidate and lecturer of Modern Korean History at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto. She wrote her ba thesis in Native American Shamanism through the Religious Studies Department at the University of Colorado, Boulder and attended the ma program on Korean Indigenous Religions at Yonsei University. She has held positions as a research fellow at the Institute for Korean Studies (iks), Yonsei University in Seoul and as a visiting scholar in Seoul for Korea Foundation. She has worked as a freelance translator for the Academy of Korean Studies at Seoul National University and iks. Merose continually aspires to learn and teach in ways that can help Korean diasporic women combat the daily violence we face through our shared histories of colonial racism, classism, and sexism.

Helen H. Kang was born in Korea and moved to Toronto 20 years ago. She is fluent in both Korean and English. She is currently pursuing a doctorate degree in Sociology at Simon Fraser University, focusing on cultural studies and hiv/aids.

Julie Kang was raised in a variety of communities in Ontario, and now resides in Toronto. In sharing stories from her life and in gathering and sketching stories drawn from the lives of people around her, she hopes to spark recognition of what is common and contribute to understanding of what is different, between people. She enjoys unearthing truth and beauty in the details of life in her writing, and is a student hoping to work in advocacy for equity in community health and literacy in the future.

Gloria U. Y. Kim is a Toronto-based filmmaker, writer and photographer. Her writing has appeared in Maclean’s, FilmPrint, Canadian Business and Fireweed. Her series of six Polaroids, Madwoman, appeared at the Christmas Group Show at Engine Gallery in 2004. Her films have screened at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, the Women of Colour Film Festival, Inside Out Film Festival, POW! Film Fest, and most recently at the 2006 Female Eye National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. Her experimental documentary, Partial Selves (9 min., 2000), won runner up for the Best Experimental Film at the 2003 International Festival of Cinema and Technology. Gloria is currently working on her newest short film, Rock Garden: A Love Story, for which she has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, as well as the wift/ cbc Canadian Reflections Award, Bravo! fact and nfb fap. Born in Seoul, Korea, Gloria emigrated to Canada when she was three years old. Gloria works as a reporter for Maclean’s magazine and spends her free time writing.

Hana Kim is presently the Korea Studies Librarian at the Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library of the University of Toronto. She is responsible for collection management and development and services relating to Korean Studies. She holds a B.Ed. in Education (German Language and English Language) from the Korea National University of Education, South Korea and an mlis from McGill University, Canada. Previous to this, she obtained National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (naati) from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (rmit) in Melbourne, Australia. She is also an active translator and won The First Annual Min Chapbook Competition for her translation of poems by Cheonhak Kwon. The translations were published in a book entitled 2H2 + O2 = 2H2O.

Isabelle Kim: Isabelle/Kyong-Hee is an avid letter-writer and aspiring videomaker. She recently defended her Ph.D. thesis, “Youth Videomaking Projects: A Spoken Word Study” at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (oise/ut). Isabelle has been working in community arts and education over the last several years. She currently lives in Toronto with her son and husband.

Jane G. Kim graduated from York University, receiving Honours in her double Bachelor of Arts degrees in English and Communications. Always harboring the love to write poetry and prose inspired Jane to take her work out of the classroom and into the literary world. Upon graduating from university, Jane held various support positions in the entertainment industry. Her ultimate goals are to write and produce screenplays in addition to penning short stories and young adult novels. “The Funny Looking Dress,” her first short story to be published, represents her attraction to the combination of autobiographical pieces with fictive anecdotes. She is thrilled to contribute to this anthology, and she looks forward to sharing her work with readers who can appreciate a light-hearted, hopeful coming-of-age story. Jane currently resides in Toronto.

Nuri Kim was born and lived in Busan and Seoul Korea until 1998 when, at thge age of 26, she moved to Toronto for a break and change. She went to graduate school and worked for a women’s non-profit ngo against violence and discrimination. She was also part of community initiatives for peace, justice, and community art. Feeling that it was time to live in Korea for a while, she returned to Korea to participate in the 2005 Women’s World Congress held in Seoul and stayed. Since then, she divides her time between Toronto and Seoul, often crossing the fourteen-hour time difference.

Melissa Min Seon Kim is completing her double major in Criminology and Sociology at the University of Toronto. Planning to attend law school next year, she aims to focus on immigration and refugee law in order to address the numerous barriers that immigrants and refugees face in the Canadian legal system. After a few years of practicing, she hopes to work in policy, feeling that this is the most effective way to implement change within society.

Helen Lee is an independent filmmaker whose films include: The Art of Woo; Subrosa; Prey; My Niagara; and Sally’s Beauty Spot. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto, New York University, Whitney Independent Study Program, and the Canadian Film Centre. Helen was a recipient of a 2002 daad Artist Fellowship, 2004 Chalmers Award and Korea Foundation Fellowship (2004/05). She serves on the advisory boards of the Toronto Reel Asian Festival and Cinematheque Ontario. Helen was born in Seoul, Korea, where she currently makes her home, with frequent trips to her other home in Toronto. And she wants you to know that she’s the eldest of three siblings—because birth order is everything.

Min Sook Lee is an award-winning documentary director/producer. Her documentary, El Contrato, which examines at the lives of migrant farm workers in Canada was nominated for a Gemini Award for Best Social/Political Documentary in 2005. Hogtown, which looked at the politics of policing in the city of Toronto garnered the Best Feature-Length Canadian Documentary prize at the 2005 Hot Docs film festival. In 2006 she completed Borderless, a docu-poem on the lives of undocumented workers in Canada, which has screened in festivals across Canada and internationally. She is currently working on a documentary, Tiger Spirit, which focuses on the reunification of the two Koreas.

Patricia Lee (Collective Member) is a second generation Korean-Canadian writer and media artist working in the fields of film, video and interactive design. She has worked as an Educator and Manager in various social justice, community arts, and violence against women organizations in Toronto.

Ruthann Lee (Collective Member) was born and raised in Toronto. She completed her Master’s thesis on “coming out” narratives in 2003 and is currently a doctoral student at York University in the Graduate Programme in Sociology. She has published in Women & Environments and guest edited a special journal issue on “Lesbian, Bisexual, Queer, Transgender and Transsexual Sexualities” for Canadian Woman Studies/les cahiers de la femme. Her more recent work examines representations of Asian North American masculinities in popular culture. Among other things, she identifies as a radical queer Korean Canadian writer, theorist, artist and activist.

Una Lee’s writing has appeared in the Toronto Star, Fireweed, and Rice Paper. She founded and edited big boots, an internationally distributed zine about the experiences of women and trans people of colour. As a graphic designer, she has helped craft social movement campaigns at local and national levels. Her design work has been recognized by Applied Arts Magazine and the Advertising and Design Club of Canada. Una lives in Toronto ([email protected]).

Jane Park grew up in Edmonton and Vancouver, Canada. She studied English Literature at Queen’s University. Currently, she lives in New York. She has been previously published in Echoes Upon Echoes: New Korean American Writings, and The Queen’s Undergraduate Journal.

Hijin Park (Collective Member) was born in Korea and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. She is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education and an Instructor in the Equity Studies Program at the University of Toronto. She has published articles on racialized sexual violence, Canadian immigration and refugee policy and the Los Angeles “riots.” Her current work examines how discourses of multiculturalism and globalization operate to erase Canadian imperialism.

Ann Shin’s writing has been published in anthologies and magazines in Canada and the U.S., including On a Bed of Rice (Anchor Books) and Geography of Encounters (Rowman and Little Press). Her latest book of poetry is The Last Thing Standing (Mansfield Press). Her award-winning documentaries have screened at festivals around the world. Titles include: Westerneyes; Four Seasons: A Mosaic; Incident at Roswell; Almost Real. She lives in Toronto, currently working as a television producer and writing a novel.

Suzy Yim, a.k.a “Titty-Titty Bang-Bang,” is a gender-performing, sex-positive, queer activist, advocate, and ally. In her academic life, Suzy is researching the social epidemiology of hiv and is managing a project in Thailand looking at hiv vaccine acceptability by commercial sex workers, men who have sex with men, and injection drug users. Suzy is currently doing her Masters of Social Work at the University of Toronto, specializing in mental health.

Jean Yoon is an actor, writer, and theatre artist. Born in Illinois and raised in Toronto, Jean has lived and worked in Vancouver, Edmonton, Harbin City and Yanji City in North Eastern China, and makes Toronto her home. Jean has published poetry, short fiction, essays and articles in a number of journals, magazines and anthologies. A pioneer in the Asian Canadian theatre community, Jean is best known as the writer/creator of The Yoko Ono Project, a multimedia performance art comedy, produced by Loud Mouth Asian Babes/Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto 2000, by the Firehall Arts Centre in Vancouver 2001 and published by Broken Jaw Press in 2002. Her comical adaptation of a classic Korean folktale Hongbu and Nolbu: The Tale of the Magic Pumpkins premiered at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People to great response in spring 2005.

Sylvia Yu is a journalist based in Beijing, China. She has worked in Victoria and Vancouver as news reporter for Global tv and cbc radio, and as a tv producer for a national current affairs show in Toronto. She is the author of a biography published in 2002, Heart and Soul: The Life Story of Pastor Augustus Chao. Her work has appeared in The Toronto Sun, The Globe and Mail, Elle Magazine, Vancouver Magazine and The Halifax Herald. Currently she is writing her second book, which focuses on the stories of the survivors of Japanese Military sexual slavery.