The Right to Write
Barrack Obama isn’t black enough. You’ve heard that, right? Amy Tan isn’t Chinese enough. Maxine Hong Kingston ditto. Chang-rae Lee isn’t Korean enough. Picture me, a writer exploring Korean characters and culture, biting my nails. I can trace four ancestral lines. No doubt my lineage contains the requisite number of horse thieves, courtesans, peasants, warriors and whiners. One line snakes back as far as 1000 CE (thanks for your research, Carolyn and Randy). I am that nondescript blend of Scottish,…