Echoes upon Echoes: New Korean American Writings (Asian American Writers' Workshop)

Rating:
Summary: Contains a unique emotional core
Review: Collaboratively compiled and edited by Elaine Kim (Professor of Asian American Studies, University of California - Berkeley) and Laura Kang (Associate Professor of Women's Studies and Comparative Literature, University of California - Irvine), Echoes Upon Echoes: New Korean American Writings is an impressive and seminal anthology of the literary writings of Korean Americans. These brief stories, poems, vignettes, and insights contain a unique emotional core and offer a wide variety of perspectives upon the dual challenge of finding a personal ethnic identity while adapting to the unending press of mainstream culture. Echoes Upon Echoes is a very highly recommended contribution to Asian American Literature collections and supplemental reading lists.

Rating:
Summary: Koreans with voices
Review: This book was surprisingly worth the money spent, which is a rarity. The organization was well thought out, and the stories and poems did a good job of depicting the various phases of Korean/American existence and turmoil. The poems were better than the stories (Uys, Kim, Park), especially in dealing with the fragmentation of growing up searching for identity in a culture not really interested in giving voice to such a culturally accepted racial group. The pieces are insightful, powerful, and downright honest. A good read for not only minority Americans, but for anyone trapped under the soil of identity displacement.