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Feminists Around the World: Han Kang · Stuff Mom Never Told You

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  Speaker 1: Okay, this is Anny and Samantha and welcome STEFFI never
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  Speaker 1: told you production of iHeartRadio.
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  Speaker 2: And we have entered My month. Yeah I called it
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  Speaker 2: my month. So first celebrate me AAPI month. Just kidding,
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  Speaker 2: but for real, it is Asian, American and Pacific Islander
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  Speaker 2: Heritage Month. And as a Korean woman, I wanted to
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  Speaker 2: jump in celebrating the works and accomplishments of a fellow Korean.
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  Speaker 2: Han King, the Nobel Peace Prize winner for Literature of
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  Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. King is a South Korean author who
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  Speaker 2: has published quite a lot of books and poetry and
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  Speaker 2: short stories. And in October of twenty twenty four, she
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  Speaker 2: made history as the first Korean author to become a
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  Speaker 2: Nobel Laureate and with that the eighteenth woman to be
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  Speaker 2: awarded in this specific category. And yeah, it's for a
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  Speaker 2: kind of a perspective. That's eighteen people out of one
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  Speaker 2: hundred and twenty one people since nineteen oh one, so
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  Speaker 2: it's great, but why anyway? Moving on? And but on
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  Speaker 2: top of that, most of the winners, award winners, or
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  Speaker 2: the most of the laureates for the last twenty years
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  Speaker 2: have been white authors as well. So from an NPR
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  Speaker 2: article written about her accomplishments they write. For the past
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  Speaker 2: few decades, the Nobel Literature category has been dominated by
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  Speaker 2: white authors. Between twenty and twenty twenty three, only seven
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  Speaker 2: people of color have won. That's a significant change from
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  Speaker 2: the Nobel Literature Awards of the nineteen eighties and early
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  Speaker 2: nineteen nineties, when the authors of color from Egypt, Nigeria, Mexican, Japan,
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  Speaker 2: Saint Lucia, and the US all won within the same decade. Again,
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  Speaker 2: feels like we're backtracking, Yeah, anyway, but that's okay. We
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  Speaker 2: were celebrating King and she has been a writer for
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  Speaker 2: years and began with poetry in the early nineties, and
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  Speaker 2: her first novel, Love Anyway Sue was written thirty years ago,
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  Speaker 2: and I think she has written like eleven more novels
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  Speaker 2: since then. I'm gonna have to go back in a look,
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  Speaker 2: but around that number. She immediately jumped into her writing
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  Speaker 2: career after graduating from the university as a reporter for
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  Speaker 2: a monthly magazine, and soon published her first works again
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  Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety three, the Poems, which included Winter in Seoul,
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  Speaker 2: and soon after that published her first short story, The
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  Speaker 2: Scarlet Anchor, which won the New Year's Literature Contest, so
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  Speaker 2: she came out with a bang, Like all of her
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  Speaker 2: writing apparently were just hits. We're gonna have to check
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  Speaker 2: him out. And as she began her writing career, she
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  Speaker 2: would even experiment with publishing a book with an accompaniment
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  Speaker 2: music album which features her singing on it as well.
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  Speaker 2: So multi talented, gotta love it. The book was titled
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  Speaker 2: A Song to Sing Calmly. I really like that. Her
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  Speaker 2: love of books and writing was a part of her
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  Speaker 2: childhood and upbringing. Her own father quit his teaching job
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  Speaker 2: to become a full time writer and novelist, and according
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  Speaker 2: to her Wikipedia page, they use one of her quotes
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  Speaker 2: about her childhood quote. Han later describes her childhood as
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  Speaker 2: quote too much for a little child. However, being surrounded
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  Speaker 2: by books gave her comfort, Like she talks about all
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  Speaker 2: of that, and we'll talk a little bit about that
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  Speaker 2: history in a minute, but she's talked a lot about
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  Speaker 2: her experience during that time and how it has influenced
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  Speaker 2: her writing quite a bit. From Guardian dot Com, they
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  Speaker 2: write her childhood was overshadowed first by the loss of
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  Speaker 2: her elder sister, born prematurely on the kitchen floor. I'd
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  Speaker 2: been born and grown up in the place of that death,
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  Speaker 2: she writes in the White Book, and ten years later,
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  Speaker 2: by the public tragedy of the Guangju massacre in January
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  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty, when Han was nine, four months before the protests,
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  Speaker 2: her father gave up his teaching job and the family
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  Speaker 2: moved to Seoul, and when she was twelve, she discovered
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  Speaker 2: an album of photograph of the massacre taken by foreign
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  Speaker 2: journalists on bookshelves, with the spine turned the wrong way.
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  Speaker 2: My parents wanted to protect me, but I was curious,
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  Speaker 2: she says, How could humans do this? And they go on.
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  Speaker 2: It seems almost impossible that the softly spoken writer should
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  Speaker 2: be the author of such deeply disturbing body of work.
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  Speaker 2: All my novels are variations on the theme of human violence,
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  Speaker 2: she says. As the foremost chronicler of South Korea's bloody
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  Speaker 2: twentieth century, she has come to be regarded as her
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  Speaker 2: country's spokesperson and conscience, shedding light on some of its
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  Speaker 2: darkest periods in its struggle for democracy. Her twenty sixteen
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  Speaker 2: novel Human Acts is a harrowing account of the brutally
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  Speaker 2: suppressed student protests against the authoritarian government in May nineteen
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  Speaker 2: eighty in the city of Guangxu, where Han grew up.
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  Speaker 2: After ten days of demonstrations and estimated two thousand people,
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  Speaker 2: mainly civilians, were shot, beaten, and tortured by the military forces.
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  Speaker 2: Her new novel We Do Not Part looks back to
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  Speaker 2: an earlier uprising against newly imposed martial law, this time
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  Speaker 2: on Jju Island in the aftermath of the Second World War.
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  Speaker 2: As many as thirty thousand inhabitants were murdered. Both massacres
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  Speaker 2: were denied or downplayed by the government and right wing
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  Speaker 2: groups for years, and they continue. Hans works gives voice
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  Speaker 2: to those national traumas, but it's reached as universal. What
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  Speaker 2: is humanity? She asks in Human Acts? What do we
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  Speaker 2: have to do to keep humanity as one thing and
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  Speaker 2: not another? Her novels are not just the literature of witness,
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  Speaker 2: but acts of radical empathy. So it isn't surprising to
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  Speaker 2: understand how her work has influenced so many and is
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  Speaker 2: able to reach so many others. One of her more
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  Speaker 2: famous works, her first book to be translated into English
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  Speaker 2: as in Fact, The Vegetarian, was a catalyst to her
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  Speaker 2: being recognized internationally and Yeah. She's been celebrated for her honesty, empathy,
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  Speaker 2: and works of love and pain, so from a Nobelprize
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  Speaker 2: dot Org. In her ouvra, she confronts historical traumas and
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  Speaker 2: invisible sets of rules, and in each of her works
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  Speaker 2: exposes the fragility of human life. She has a unique
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  Speaker 2: awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living
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  Speaker 2: and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style,
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  Speaker 2: has become an innovator in contemporary pros. Among her works
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  Speaker 2: are The Vegetarian Human Acts and We Do Not Part.
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  Speaker 2: And in an interview with NPR, she said, I always
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  Speaker 2: feel I am questioning when I write novels, and I
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  Speaker 2: wanted to deal with my long lasting question about human
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  Speaker 2: violence and the possibility or impossibility of refusing it, she said,
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  Speaker 2: And I will be happy if the readers could share
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  Speaker 2: my questions. I think she's done a great job, and
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  Speaker 2: I know, like with everything that has happened in South Korea,
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  Speaker 2: she has been kind of a vital point and seeing
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  Speaker 2: what's happening. But she has been very calm and I
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  Speaker 2: think reserved to wait and see what's happening before she
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  Speaker 2: actually speaks out, which is smart, honestly, but yeah, really
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  Speaker 2: excited to get into her works, but at the same
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  Speaker 2: time scared because it seems really intense.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we should definitely check it out, check some
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  Speaker 1: of them out. Yes, I'm into it. You know. We
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  Speaker 1: love good works of poetry and writing over here. As always, listeners,
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  Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions for this segment, please let
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  Speaker 1: us know. You can email us at Hello at stuff
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  Speaker 1: a tea public store, and we have a book you
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  Speaker 1: can get wherever you get your books. Thanks as always
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  Speaker 1: to our super producer, Christina Executi, producer my Inder Trip.
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  Speaker 2: For Joey, Thank you and I'm Savvy, and.
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  Speaker 1: Thanks to you for listening. Steff one Ever told you
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