Song of Myself: A Korean-American Life by Yearn Hong Choi

Song of Myself: A Korean-American Life by Yearn Hong Choi, Poetic Matrix Press, 2010

By Ame Ai

 

Yearn Hong Choi’s autobiography Song of Myself: A Korean-American Life is a memoir that details an inscrutable Korean-American immigrant life. In 1968, Mr. Choi immigrated to the United States of America, specifically to Seattle, Washington to taste adventure. In 2010, Mr. Choi is retired after a long teaching and government careers in the United States of America and Korea. He is a resident of Fairfax Station in Virginia and now has the optional title of Dr. Choi since he has earned his PhD from Indiana University.

 

When he first arrived, he observed and breathed the time of the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Movement, Sexual Revolution, and Beatlemania with $70 in his pocket. He was lucky to receive support from a young couple to whom he felt indebted to for life. He worked several odd jobs, with each new job increasing his prestige. Eventually, he found himself working for the government with a secret clearance and a lot of knowledge about nuclear waste. Ellen Olmstead of Montgomery University had this to say about Dr. Choi: "Choi lived, studied, and worked in the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, the Deep South, and the nation's capital over four decades, while the U.S. was in the throes of the civil rights, anti-war, anti-nuclear, and environmental movements. As activist poet and political scientist, he problematizes the simple binaries of black and white and of American and Asian."

 

As an immigrant, he traveled back and from between South Korea and America, spending the last ten years of his teaching career in South Korea when his mother was aging in Parkinson’s disease. It is this back-and-forth movement that many American immigrants can relate to, whether they are Hispanic, Black, or White. No matter where immigrants come from, they all have a lifetime feeling of intransigency and being between worlds with one foot in each.

 

Dr. Choi was lucky to come from a family that encouraged artistic expression, such as poetry. Throughout his travels as a poet he has come across the famous Allen Ginsberg, Andrei Voznesensky (Russian poet), and Reed Whittemore, as well as African-American poets Gwendolyn Brooks and E. Ethelbert Miller. He also met Eudora Welty. He read his poems at the US Library of Congress Library in April 1994 as the first Korean poet and in January 2003 for the centennial commemoration of the Korean immigration to the Hawaii sugar plantation. 

 

Dr. Choi has written Moon of New York (2008). He also helped compile Surfacing Sadness: A Centennial Korean-American Literature 1903-2003 (2003), Fragrance of Poetry: Korean-American Literature (2005), and An Empty House: Korean-American Poetry (2008). He has always cared much about the Korean-American community and supported compilations by Korean-American poets in order to give them a chance to publish their poetry and get their voices into the world. 

 

His life is a life that illustrates that one reaps what he sows. If there is such a thing as good karma, Dr. Choi certainly has it. One might also think of the movie Pay It Forward (2001) with Helen Hunt, Kevin Spacey, and Haley Joel Osment. He kept the memories of the young couple he met in Seattle and has since lived a giving life where he has helped other writers get on their feet. It should come as no surprise that he has much support.

 

Even though he is already a prolific writer, this is his masterpiece book, the one to top all others. I imagine that writing this book has been scratched off of Mr. Choi’s bucket list of things to do before dying, with a sense of accomplishment. To anyone who reads his book, I also imagine that the readers hope that he finds the young couple he met in Seattle before it is too late so that they can see how he “paid it forward.” We should all be blessed that Mr. Choi has brought his voice into the fold of American immigrant true life stories. His life has further enriched America’s written collection of immigrant life.

 

 

Ame Ai is a poet and writer in the Washington DC area. She has published four poetry books-- Love, Not Love( 2008).  Valley of the Mind’s Shadow (2009), Lyrics and Verses (2009), andFringe and Frivolity (2010).