초기이민자들의 문화충격속에서 성장하면서 겪은 2세가 가슴뭉클하게 탐구한 삶의 내용이 소설로 세상에 비춰지다.

오래전에 "김씨네 가계"라는 제목의 우리 한인들의 초기 이민정착기를 중심으로 그와중에서 태어났거나, 학교생활을 하면서, 십대로서의 정신적,문화적 갈등과, 이민 초창기의 한인부모들이 쉬는날도 없이 아침 새벽부터 저녁 늦게 별을 보고 하루의 일과를 마쳤던 내용을 소재로 한 영화를 만든다는 얘기를 한인 언론을 통해서 본 기억이 있다.

이와 비슷하지만, 어린 십대 소녀로써, 부모님이 새벽부터 가게에 매달려, 생업인 Variety장사를 하고, 이민자로서의 터전을 닦으면서, 아이들 교육을 시키고,  그삶의 중심에서 소녀기와 십대의 사춘기를 보내면서 느끼고, 그후 성장해서는 학교선생님으로 직업을 갖고, 틈틈히 부모님의 희생에 감사해 하는 내용의 Non Fiction Novel을 써서 캐나다 주류사회에서 언론의 주목을 받았던, 비한인들에게 한인들의 이미 초창기 어려웠던 정착기에 대한 삶의 내용을 알려준,가슴 뭉클한 기사를 보면서, 지금은 생업의 현장에서 은퇴하여 황혼의 삶을 살아가는, 초기 한인사회의 이민선배들의 모습을 담담히 그려낸 장한 딸이 있음을 보았다.

그녀의 부모님은, 요즘 젊은이들은 마치 우리가 하루 3끼 밥을 먹는것처럼 옆에 끼고 살아가는 SNS도 잘 모르는, 그래서 카톡을 해도 답장은 고사하고 연결도 잘 할줄 모르는, 그들의 2세 딸이 언론의 주목을 받은것도 한참후에야 알았을 정도로 이민자로서의 삶을, 오직 이민자로서의 터전을 잡고,  후세아이들 교육에 all in 하면서, 열심으로 살았던, 동료 친지의 인생 스토리는, 어쩌면 나의 이민 초창기를 재조명하는것 같다는 느낌이 들게도 했다.

아래의 기사들은 2세 따님의 소설에 대한 이곳 언론의 보도 내용을 요약한 것이다.

Heartfelt debut explores Korean teen's cultural struggle: review

Ann Y.K. Choi's novel, Kay's Lucky Coin Variety, follows a Korean family living in 1980s Toronto.

Ann Y.K. Choi’s dramatic debut novel, Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety, flings open a window onto a family — an entire world — largely unknown to non-Koreans. Ushering us inside the lives of Mary (Yu-Rhee) and Josh (Chun-Ha), Korean-born, Canadianized teens living above their parents’ store at Queen and Bathurst Sts., Choi shines a spotlight not only on one immigrant family, but also on 1980s Toronto. Life was grittier back then.

Although Mary, the family rebel, chafes against her mother’s edicts about marriage and education, the 16-year-old is sensitive rather than brave. Struggling “to stay composed,” she cowers in the first scenes, shocked when she recognizes one of the prostitutes working the corner.

Whereas brother Josh coolly observes and bestows names on the girls — “Trixie, Babe, Suzie X” — along with their purchases (“fave gum, Wrigley’s Big Red”), Mary hides from the customer with the torn fishnet stockings and dyed black hair.

“You’re ashamed of our culture,” her mother accuses her, noting she has made no Korean girlfriends. Mary acknowledges her private belief that life would be easier if “we were white, ate white food and took vacations at places like Myrtle Beach or Cape Cod.” She’d also prefer a white last name. No chance of that.

Alongside the claustrophobia of Hwang family life — long hours spent behind counter and cash register, quirky but loyal regulars, her mother’s enormous home-cooked breakfasts (“rice, soup, kimchi . . . vegetable and meat dishes”), almost as vast as her drive for success — real dangers lurk. Robberies? Attempted rape? Tell no one is the community credo. Korean shopkeepers agree that “bad publicity” must be avoided, lest business values decline.

When a “creepy” man with “lizard eyes” and a taste for porn — “sexy, subservient” Asian girls — attacks Mary, she remembers a story her mother told her about a child who survived a bear attack. Just like the child, Mary plays dead and survives, albeit battered.

As Mary lies in bed, resenting her mother’s public explanation that she fell down the stairs to explain away the bruises, simmering at her parents’ inability to say “I love you” (no Korean word exists for parental love), the laugh track to the TV show Three’s Company plays in the background. Amid this exquisite irony, she is whisked off to Korea to attend her grandmother’s funeral.

Intrigued by “magical” mountainside rites at the family temple, the revelation that a missing aunt married an American against her mother’s wishes, the exposure of gouging relatives who’ve exploited her parents’ generosity and the unexpected kindness of strangers, Mary learns much about the place where she was born. Connections made here follow mother and daughter back to Toronto — not all of them lucky.

Torn between cultures, Mary grows up, defiant about choosing her future — and her men. The handsome English teacher who encouraged her writing or the engineering student who knows her Korean name and gives her a delicate origami swan? “Don’t worry, be happy,” went the infectious ’80s hit, a line that both mocks and honours the world so finely rendered in this explosive and heartfelt debut.

Nancy Wigston is a freelance writer and critic in Toronto

Sometimes it takes a little push from an unlikely place to fulfil a personal dream. For Ann Choi, a guidance counsellor at a Toronto high school, it came in 2007 when she asked a struggling student what he wanted to do with his life. He responded by asking her the same question right back. Not wanting to be a hypocrite, Choi answered quickly. After all, she knew exactly what she wanted: to write a book.

“That night I went home and did a lot of soul searching and from that moment on, I committed to writing,” she says.

Choi also knew exactly what she wanted to write. Since the early 1990s, she had been holding onto story ideas about the Korean immigrant experience, specifically those of young women who felt torn between the demands of their parents and the desire to be a “typical” Canadian teenager. As a sociology major at the University of Toronto, she had worked on a project interviewing Korean-Canadian women and discovered many shared a similar narrative. “There was a lot of frustration with cultural expectations and the immigrant dream,” Choi says. “And a lot of frustration with our mothers. We felt a sense of burden because 90 per cent or more of our parents were variety-store owners.”

A composite of those women, and her own life, became the inspiration for Mary — or Yu-Rhee — the protagonist of Choi’s debut novel Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety, published by Simon & Schuster Canada. Mary, who lives above her parents’ convenience store, struggles with hormonally charged teenage emotions and experiences, but still must act like an adult, knowing very well that her first priority is always to her family’s business and livelihood — as her traditional mother never lets her forget.

“When other kids got to hang out at the mall after school, most of us were stamping packages of instant soup or working the cash register,” Choi says.

For those in the community, Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety will resonate in its accuracy and details, but for those who only head into their local convenience stores for milk and newspapers, the book is a revealing look into private lives. “While most everyone knows a Korean shopkeeper, most people won’t know about the story behind the counter,” says Choi.

For Mary’s family — and Choi’s, who owned a store on Toronto’s Queen West — that meant a life where families could never eat meals together and community get-togethers happened late at night. While growing up, Choi loved the cross-section of people who came into the store, but it could also be a very scary place, as her character Mary horrifyingly learns.

Choi was also motivated to tell Mary’s story to document the shrinking generation of Korean variety-store owners, as a way to both educate her own 16-year-old daughter and to draw attention to the culture for which she has such pride.

“I wanted to capture all this,” she says. “The Korean variety-store generation is now dying off. Our parents sacrificed and put us through school and now, my brothers and I, we don’t work in variety stores anymore. Unless we write these stories down my daughter will never know what my parents did, and I did, and what our lives were like.”

Sue Carter is the editor of Quill & Quire.

https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2016/05/07/ann-choi-preserves-a-way-of-life-in-kays-lucky-coin-variety.html

https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2016/05/01/heartfelt-debut-explores-korean-teens-cultural-struggle-review.html