I am Homeland
Twelve Korean-American Poets
Edited by Yearn Hong Choi
148 pages, retail price $18.25
ISBN 978-9860600-0-7
Description
I am Homeland, edited by Dr. Yearn Hong Choi. This is Dr. Choi's third anthology with 12 senior Korean-American poets and 120 poems. They are all first generation immigrants from Korea whose primary language is Korean even though they are medical doctors, government economist, university professors, diplomats, hospital managers, airline pilot, Buddhist monk, and small businessmen and women across the United States. Naturally, the poems in this book show their solitude, nostalgia, pathos, anger, laughter, and love. These are cross-cultural communications from Korea to America, with more themes of longing and displacement in the two cultures. Dr. Choi wrote in the Introduction, "Korean immigrants love writing poetry in which they can express the beauty of the 'dailyness of life' — small, sparkling moments that pass everyday, some paeans, some promises, and some pleas."
I am Homeland, the heart of Korean-American literature, is a metaphor that maps the terrain of humanity. J. Glenn Evans, poet and founder of PoetsWest.com in Seattle, WA, wrote his commentary after reading this book in manuscript, it appears on the back cover:
"Yearn Hong Choi has gathered here a group of Korean-American poets that reflects their diversity in both real and imagined experiences. This anthology celebrates the strengths of history and culture that add so much to American literature. These brave and sensitive poems demonstrate how compelling are the aspirations that we all share. When we feel trapped in the crevice between life and death or experience the sorrows of violence and war, we treasure the beauty of those sacred moments held dear. These poems reveal the beginnings of a new life while holding onto a spiritual kinship to the homeland of their childhood."
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