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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 May 2015
Don Lee reworked his eight magazine stories to varying degrees, arranged the sequence of the stories in a specific order, and published a short-story cycle in 2001. Significantly, the writer changed the ethnic identity of some characters from white American to Asian American. He also added and highlighted Asian American themes and issues. In short, Lee made an “Asian American” short-story cycle par excellence by coloring his stories yellow. This essay examines Lee's rewriting and arrangement of his magazine stories for an Asian American short-story cycle. It first compares the differences between the magazine and cycle versions of the stories. It goes on to examine totalizing devices such as the common setting, recurrent places, connective characters, and unifying themes. Lastly, it elucidates the arrangement of the eight stories and significance of the title story in the cycle. It ultimately argues that Don Lee retrofitted his magazine stories extensively and meticulously for a short-story cycle in order to portray the diverse aspects of post-immigrant Asian America at the turn of the century from his positionality as a third-generation Korean American.
1 See Jean Charbonneau, “Editor Tries on Short Stories: Collection Probes Experiences of Asian-Americans,” Denver Post, 20 May 2001, I.03, available at http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=73189052&sid=3&Fmt=3&clientld=40479&RQT=309&VName=PQD, accessed 21 July 2014; and Robert Birnbaum, “Interview with Ploughshares Editor Don Lee,” identitytheory.com, 2 Jan. 2003, available at www.identitytheory.com/don-lee, accessed 28 July 2014.
2 Sato, Gayle K., review of Yellow, Asian American Literature Association Journal, 7 (2001), 73–75Google Scholar, 73.
3 Joyce, James, Dubliners (New York: Norton, 2006), 26–32Google Scholar.
4 Anderson, Sherwood, Winesburg, Ohio (New York: Norton, 1996), 34, 23–24Google Scholar.
5 Mori, Toshio, Yokohama, California (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1949)Google Scholar.
6 Lee, Don, Yellow: Stories (New York: Norton, 2001)Google Scholar.
7 Norton marketed Yellow as an “Asian American” book, best represented in its yellow jacket recalling the orange jacket of Yokohama, California, and Lee agreed to the publisher's marketing strategy. See “Asian American Heritage Month: ‘Yellow: Stories,’” transcript of live online discussion with Don Lee, Washingtonpost.com: Live Online, 18 May 2001, available at http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/01/authors_lee0518.htm, accessed 12 March 2009. For the only intertextual study of Yokohama, California and Yellow, see Sato, review of Yellow, 73–75.
8 There is no intertextual study between Dubliners and Yellow in Lee criticism. For intertextual studies of Winesburg, Ohio and Yellow see Tracy Chung, “Megatextual Readings: Accessing an Archive of Korean/American Constructions,” dissertation, University of Maryland, 2006, 95–98; and Lee, Su Mee, “‘Tanpyeon soseol saikl’-roseo Don Lee-eui Yellow yeonku” (Reading Don Lee's Yellow as a Short-Story Cycle), Yeongeoh yeongmumhak (Journal of English Language & Literature), 57, 5 (Winter 2011), 731–43Google Scholar.
9 For a good study of Asian American short-story cycles see Davis, Rocío G., Transcultural Reinventions: Asian American and Asian Canadian Short-Story Cycles (Toronto: Tsar Publications, 2001)Google Scholar.
10 Lee, Don, “El Niño,” GQ: Gentlemen's Quarterly, 59, 10 (1989)Google Scholar, 224, 226, 228, 231–32, 234, 236, esp. 236.
11 For book-length studies in short-story cycles see Ingram, Forrest L., Representative Short Story Cycles of the Twentieth Century: Studies in a Literary Genre (The Hague: Mouton, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mann, Susan Garland, The Short Story Cycle: A Genre Companion and Reference Guide (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Dunn, Maggie and Morris, Ann, The Composite Novel: The Short Story Cycle in Transition (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995)Google Scholar; Kennedy, J. Gerald, ed., Modern American Short Story Sequences: Composite Fictions and Fictive Communities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lundén, Rolf, The United Stories of America: Studies in the Short Story Composite (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999)Google Scholar; Nagel, James, The Contemporary American Short-Story Cycle: The Ethnic Resonance of Genre (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Davis; and Pacht, Michelle, The Subversive Storyteller: The Short Story Cycle and the Politics of Identity in America (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009)Google Scholar.
12 “Imperialistas” seems to have been left out of Lee's collection because it has no direct connection with the other stories except that the protagonist was born in Rosarita Bay. It is a story about a Korean American college girl's vacation with a wealthy Englishman in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Originally attracted by her apparent passivity and submissiveness, the Englishman cuts short their vacation when she challenges his orientalist fantasy and male authority. Ten years later, the Korean American woman recalls the experience when she witnesses the official ending of the British colonial rule of Hong Kong “based on a fundamental principle: the pure and brutal assertion of superiority.” And she remembers the Englishman's enigmatic statement prior to his decision to shorten their vacation: “I guess the natives are getting restless.” Lee, “Imperialistas,” North American Review, 284, 3–4 (1999), 64–71Google Scholar, 71.
13 Lee, “Question-and-Answer with Don Lee,” in Lee, Yellow, page unnumbered.
14 Working as editor of Ploughshares, Lee knew well that a collection of interlinked stories read better than a collection of unconnected stories, as can be seen from his profiles of writers and book reviews. He also believed that the short-story cycle was a genre suitable for portraying a composite picture of an ethnic community. See his profile of Stuart Dybek, in which he refers to the second-generation Polish American writer's two short-story cycles Childhood and Other Neighborhoods: Stories (1980) and The Coast of Chicago: Stories (1990), about the life in Chicago's East European American ethnic enclaves. Lee, “About Stuart Dybek,” Ploughshares, 24, 1 (1998), 192–98Google Scholar, 196.
15 Su Mee Lee, 735–36.
16 Lee, Don, “The Possible Husband,” Bamboo Ridge, 79 (2001), 56–71Google Scholar, 68; and Lee, “The Possible Husband,” in Lee, Yellow, 151–74, 168.
17 Chung, 104. But Chung's “Kim trilogy” is not a strictly correct term, since not Lily but Duncan is the protagonist of “The Possible Husband.”
18 Lee, “The Lone Night Cantina,” Ploughshares, 13, 2–3 (1987), 190–212Google Scholar, 190.
19 Lee, “Question-and-Answer with Don Lee.”
20 Lee, “The Price of Eggs in China,” Gettysburg Review, 13, 1 (2000), 97–116Google Scholar.
21 Lee, “The Price of Eggs in China,” in Lee, Yellow, 16.
22 For a reprint of Toksvig's map, see Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio, 2.
23 Lee, “Domo Arigato,” New England Review, 22, 1 (2001), 90–100Google Scholar, 91.
24 Lee, “Domo Arigato,” in Lee, Yellow, 175–95, 177.
25 Lee, “Yellow,” American Short Fiction, 4, 13 (1994), 27–72Google Scholar, 71–72.
26 Lee, “Yellow,” in Lee, Yellow, 253–55.
27 Lee, “Domo Arigato,” in Lee, Yellow, 195.
28 For details on the widely publicized five-day confrontation see “Korean Holds Police at Bay with Hostages,” Japan Times, 22 Feb. 1968, 4; “Korean Continues Defiance at Police,” Japan Times, 23 Feb. 1968, 4; “Gunman Holds Out Despite Mindan Pleas,” Japan Times, 24 Feb. 1968, 1; and “Korean Gunman Captured; All Hostages Safe,” Japan Times, 25 Feb. 1968, 1.
29 Lee, “Domo Arigato,” in Lee, Yellow, 193.
30 With the Hi Ro Kim incident, Lee not only hints at the interethnic conflicts between Korean Americans and Japanese Americans that can be traced back to the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea. He also criticizes the US government's – or its mainstream group's – management of Asian countries and Asian American communities by pitting one against another: it is the CIA agent, Brady, stationed in Tokyo, who cunningly asks the US-born Korean American Eugene whether his immigrant father has not “related his feelings about the Japanese” to him. Lee, “Domo Arigato,” in Lee, Yellow, 189
31 Ibid., 195.
32 Ibid., 190.
33 Chung, “Megatextual Readings,” 104.
34 Houston, Velina Hasu and Williams, Teresa Kay, “No Passing Zone: The Artistic and Discursive Voices of Asian-Descent Multiracials,” Amerasia Journal, 23, 1 (1997), vii–xiiGoogle Scholar, vii.
35 Zagarell, Sandra A., “Narrative of Community: The Identification of a Genre,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 13, 3 (1988), 498–527CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 520.
36 Danny's earlier rejection of his Korean/Asian American identity is best represented in the changed description of his sexual experience. The Yellow version of the novella begins with a new description of his sexual encounter with a woman from North Carolina. Danny identifies manhood with sexual prowess in the new introductory episode. His association of sexuality with manhood can be traced back to his first sexual experience with Nancy, which, originally described in just two sentences, is expanded to two pages. A nervous virgin, Danny is confused about his first experience, for he has not come while having sex. He continues to have the same frustrating experience, simply because he is “too mindful of his performance to enjoy the sex.” Lee added the episodes to point out that Danny's sense of insecurity in sexual encounters with white women is rooted in his lack of self-confidence: the frustrating sexual experiences are inevitable for the Korean American who, “filled with self-loathing and doubt,” relies heavily on the opinion of others even for the justification of his own identity. Lee, “Yellow,” in Lee, Yellow, 224, 217.
37 For a good summary of the Vincent Chin case, see Zia, Helen, Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 55–81Google Scholar.
38 Espiritu, Yen Le, Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 153Google Scholar.
39 Lee, “Casual Water,” New England Review, 17, 2 (1995), 110–19Google Scholar.
40 Fenkl, Heinz Insu, Memories of My Ghost Brother (New York: Dutton, 1996), 109Google Scholar.
41 Lee, “Casual Water,” in Lee, Yellow, 123–50, 129.
42 Ibid., 137, 138
43 “El Niño,” published in GQ: Gentlemen's Quarterly, is retitled “Widowers” in Yellow. The change of the implied readership entailed interesting reworking of the story: Lee shortened the age gap of the two protagonists, changed a divorcee's indirect seduction to a widow's confident proposal, and omitted the description of the protagonists’ sexual intercourse. In short, with the general readership in mind, Lee changed and deleted the titillating passages which might have satisfied the GQ readers’ male fantasy and voyeuristic pleasure. See Lee, “El Niño,” 226, 231, and “Widowers,” in Lee, Yellow, 83.
44 Lee, “Widowers,” 79.
45 The experiences of the more than 100,000 Korean (Amerasian) adoptees who have come to the USA since the 1950s started to be narrativized only from the late 1990s. Before the publication of Yellow, Korean adoptees’ voices were heard mostly in such anthologies as Tonya Bishoff and Jo Rankin's Seeds from a Silent Tree: An Anthology by Korean Adoptees (1997); and Susan Soon-Keum Cox's Voices from Another Place: A Collection of Works from a Generation Born in Korea and Adopted to Other Countries (1999). Korean Amerasians’ lives were portrayed in detail in two memoirs – Thomas Park Clement's The Unforgotten War (Dust of the Streets) (1998) and Elizabeth Kim's Ten Thousand Sorrows (2000) – and Chang-rae Lee's fiction A Gesture Life (1999). After the publication of Yellow, the transnational and transracial adoptees’ Korean and US lives have continued to be portrayed in Kathy Robinson's A Single Square Picture (2002), Jane Jeong Trenka's The Language of Blood (2003) and Fugitive Visions (2009), and Marie Myung-Ok Lee's Somebody's Daughter (2005). For recent book-length critical studies on transracial adoption of Korean children see Volkman, Alice, ed., Cultures of Transnational Adoption (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Hübinette, Tobias, Comforting an Orphaned Nation: Representations of International Adoption and Adopted Koreans in Korean Popular Culture (Seoul: Jimoondang, 2006)Google Scholar; Trenka, Jane Jeong, Oparah, Julia Chinyere, and Shin, Sun Yung, eds., Outsiders Within: Writings on Transracial Adoption (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Bergquist, Kathleen Ja Sook, Vonk, M. Elizabeth, Kim, Dong Soo, and Feit, Marvin D., eds., International Korean Adoption: A Fifty-Year History of Policy and Practice (New York: The Haworth Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Kim, Jodi, Ends of Empire: Asian American Critique and the Cold War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kim, Eleana J., Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jerng, Mark C., Claiming Others: Transracial Adoption and National Belonging (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Palmer, John D., The Dance of Identities: Korean Adoptees and Their Journey toward Empowerment (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Tuan, Mia and Shiao, Jiannbin Lee, Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race: Korean Adoptees in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011)Google Scholar; Brian, Kristi, Reframing Transracial Adoption: Adopted Koreans, White Parents, and the Politics of Kinship (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Prébin, Elise M., Meeting Once More: The Korean Side of Transnational Adoption (New York: New York University Press, 2013)Google Scholar; and Pate, SooJin, From Orphan to Adoptee: U. S. Empire and Genealogies of Korean Adoption (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
46 Lee, “El Niño,” 224.
47 Quoted in Tim Rutten, “Don Lee's Revealing Visit to Rosarita Bay,” Los Angeles Times, 1 May 2001, E4.
48 Lee, “Widowers,” 82; emphasis added.
49 Lee, “The Lone Night Cantina,” in Lee, Yellow, 101–21, 111.
50 Ibid., 120.
51 Ibid., 114. For Annie's bad dates with white men enamored with the colonial fetish for Asian women, Lee borrows heavily from the uncollected “Imperialistas.” In particular, Annie's portrayal of “Juan Pablo Sevilla from Chile” is composed of an almost verbatim repetition of Renee Kim's memory of a Chilean diplomat in “Imperialistas” and an addition of his incestuous relationship with his sister. Compare ibid., 114–15; and Lee, “Imperialistas,” 64.
52 For a good study of Philip Ahn see Chung, Hye Seung, Hollywood Asian and the Politics of Cross-ethnic Performance (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.
53 Lee, “Voir Dire,” Glimmer Train Stories, 24 (1997), 107–28Google Scholar, 116.
54 Lee, “Voir Dire,” in Lee, Yellow, 49–77, 70.
55 Nagel, The Contemporary American Short-Story Cycle, 17.
56 Lee, Yellow, 23.
57 Ibid.
58 These are Highway 1, Highway 71, Skyview Ridge Road, the Lone Night Cantina, Main Street, Beryl's Bookstore & Café, the Moonside Trading Post, Safeway, the Banzai Pipeline, Clothilde's Bistro, Rae's Diner, the Goose Inn, the YMCA, the Rosarita Bay Library, Longfellow Elementary School, Rosarita Bay harbor, and the marsh.
59 The stories are connected also by other cities such as San Vicente, San Francisco, Monterey, New York, Oahu, and Seoul.
60 Lee, Yellow, 26.
61 Ibid., 187.
62 Snodgrass, Kathleen, “Knit One, Purl Two,” Georgia Review, 56, 2 (2002), 623–37Google Scholar, 626.
63 Nguyen, Viet, review of Yellow in Amerasia Journal, 31, 2 (2005), 190–93Google Scholar, 191.
64 Lee, Yellow, 165.
65 Ibid., 129.
66 Korean sex workers/military brides and their Amerasian children have been portrayed in Korean (American) narratives from the late 1940s. But Korean (American) narratives have rarely depicted the migrant sex workers from the Philippines and former Soviet countries, who began to replace Korean women from the mid-1990s, and their mixed-blood children. See Lee, Kun Jong, “The Black Amerasian Experience in Korea: Representations of Black Amerasians in Korean and Korean American Narratives,” Korea Journal, 55, 1 (2015), 7–30Google Scholar, 9.
67 Of course, there is a signal difference between the two Asian military brides. The Korean woman was disowned by her family over her marriage with an African American sergeant, but the Filipina woman seems to have maintained a good relationship with her family in the Philippines. Hence, whereas Janet's mother lived in Mississippi without looking back to her native country, Lita returned to her home country when she found no life for her in the USA.
68 Lee, Yellow, 195.
69 See Fenkl, Memories of My Ghost Brother, 96 and 212, for white racism against black Amerasians at the US military base and its affiliated elementary school.
70 Lee, Yellow, 195.
71 One wonders why Lee did not further develop Janet in a new story, since the black Amerasian woman with her diverse experience in Korea, Mississippi, and Rosarita Bay could have been the protagonist of an independent story in the cycle. This lost opportunity is acutely felt mainly because black Amerasian experience in both Korea and the USA has not been properly portrayed in Korean and American narratives. Black Amerasian lives in Korea were depicted in Korean narratives from the late 1950s to the mid-1990s: Yu Juhyeon's “Taeyang-eui yusan” (A Legacy of the Sun) (1957); Kim Sundeok's Eomma, naman wae keomeoyo? (Mom, Why Am I Alone Black?) (1965); Cho Cheongrae's “Miun ori saekki” (The Ugly Ducklings) (1978); Mun Suntae's “Munsin-eui ttang” (The Land of Tattoos) (1987); Yun Ina's “3 dae” (3 Generations) (1992); and Ahn Ilsun's Ppaetbeol (The Quagmire) (1995). Korean American narratives have also portrayed black Amerasian experience in Korea from the mid-1990s: Heinz Insu Fenkl's Memories of My Ghost Brother (1996) and Nora Okja Keller's Fox Girl (2002). On the other hand, black Amerasian experience in the USA has been portrayed in Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle (1996), Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life (1999), Don Lee's Country of Origin (2004), Mia Yun's Translations of Beauty (2004), and Leonard Chang's Crossings (2009). Of them, Beatty's novel is the only African American narrative. And Don Lee's narrative is an interesting twist of the black Amerasian issue since it is about a black Amerasian born to a Korean woman and an African American GI in Japan. For a critical overview of the representations of black Amerasians in Korea see Kun Jong Lee, 71.
72 See Paul Wiseman, “Ward Spins Biracial Roots into Blessing,” USA Today, 10 April 2006, C3.
73 Lundén, The United Stories of America, 63.
74 Chung, “Megatextual Readings,” 105.
75 Lee, Don, “Uncle Tong: Or, How I Learned to Speak for All Asian Americans,” in Kim-Renaud, Young-Key, Grinker, R. Richard, and Larsen, Kirk W. eds., The Sigur Center Asia Papers #20: Korean American Literature (Washington, DC: The Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, 2004), 33–35Google Scholar, 33.
76 Lee, Yellow, 195.
77 Lundén, 124.
78 Elaine H. Kim, “Root and Wings: An Overview of Korean American Literature 1934–2003,” in Kim-Renaud, Grinker, and Larsen, Korean American Literature, 1–18, 16.
