Constructing Identity Through English Written Memoirs of Diasporic North Korean Women Writers
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Abstract
This article studies the English-written memoirs of two North Korean exile writers, Yeonmi Park’s In Order to Live (2015) and Hyunseo Lee’s The Girl with Seven Names (2015), with the aim of analyzing the presentation of North Korean defector identities in the literary form of memoirs. The study finds that memoirs present the narrator’s identity through the process of connecting the narrator’s past identity with the narrator’s present identity. The narrator’s storytelling allows the narrator to revisit the past and display a developed identity in the present through three processes: affirming the narrator’s existence (being), engaging with the host society (belonging), and presenting the desired future identity (becoming). This process allows the narrator’s traumatic experiences and diasporic trauma to be healed. This research also reveals that the two exile writers present the United States as a land of freedom that allows the construction of identity and self-definition of North Korean defectors to move away from ethnocentric and nationalist ideologies and instead define themselves as global citizens.
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References
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