The Korean War in Color: Race, Nation and the Intimacies of Conflict

FAIN: FT-60505-13

Daniel Y. Kim
Brown University (Providence, RI 02912-9100)

This book examines US cultural representations of the Korean War in an interracial and international framework, focusing on depictions of Asians, Asian Americans, Mexican Americans and African Americans. One of my primary aims is to help remember this forgotten war by returning to the 1950s, revealing how novels, films and journalism from the period develop an integrationist narrative of race and empire. A second goal of this book is to evoke a multiracial and transnational archive of cultural memory. I examine recent novels about the war by Rolando Hinojosa, Chang-rae Lee, and Toni Morrison among others; I also explore the work of contemporary Korean authors like Ahn Junghyo and Hwang Sok-Yong. I contrast these literary works with official state narratives embedded in the Smithsonian, the National Mall, the Demilitarized Zone, and the War Memorial of Korea. Almost no cultural criticism on this topic exists and very few projects bridge American and East Asian Studies as this one does.

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