“The events of that period twenty years ago have returned to my memory like a stage being lit. I see them first as a somber, bluish-green tableau. But then, as if through a window beside the tableau, a warm light emerges. It was a period of confusion. And above all else, suffering. Because it was left unfulfilled? On the other hand, are any of life’s stages ever brought to perfection? There are periods in out past that can’t be dismissed with a flippant ‘Oh, that time.’ They may be short periods, but they work their influence throughout our lives. Nevertheless, daily life is a powerful healer. Day after day snow and rain have fallen, flowers have withered and bloomed, and that period has gradually scabbed over, like a wound grown slowly insensible.”

—from “The Gray Snowman” by Ch’oe Yun

“Now that they have attained parity with their male counterparts, what lies ahead for South Korean women writers? As the society continues to modernize and as women proceed to enlarge the spheres of their lives, women writers are likely to even more vigorously challenge traditional Korean gender boundaries and to explore the lives of women who find sustaining roles outside of the home. At the same time, the onslaught of Western influences will prompt these writers, and other young Korean intellectuals, to rediscover their nation’s venerable culture. And when the long-awaited unification of the Korean peninsula is finally achieved, women writers from both sides of the thirty-eighth parallel will give creative expression to the decades of enforced separation of millions of family members, and will embark on the difficult task of reconciling two peoples who are homogeneous in origin but very different in lifestyle, world view, and expectations. Certainly they will continue to refine their art, and as more of them are translated and published outside of the country, Korean women writers will find themselves established firmly on the global literary map.”

—from “Seeing the Invisible: Women’s
Fiction in South Korea Today” by Bruce Fulton

“On this island I move across the red
and rolling hills buttressed by sharp black
cliffs from the wash of the sea. The ancient
silence is here. Any human eye watching
this landscape can feel what those old ones
saw and painted on cave walls in darkness
what the old ones of Lanai‘i knew
in the dazzling light of the sea and cliff.”

—from “Two Poems” by Marjorie Sinclair

“It’s not fear I taste in my mouth, but something icy and metallic, like the back side of a cold mirror. I never see a bear in the wild without having this sense of presence—the feeling of witnessing not just a large, beautiful, and potentially dangerous animal, but a member of something akin to a parallel culture. I tend not to be romantic when it comes to animals, but this much is true: I feel less that I’ve just spotted a wild creature than that I’ve glimpsed the secret life of an undiscovered tribesman in an unexplored corner of the world. I understand with gut emotion why people cling to beliefs in the Yeti, the Abominable Showman, Sasquatch. There is something here that transcends reason and biology, that reaches through time and space and belief systems.”

—from “Beach Time” by Nancy Lord

Cycas rumphii, Cycad, Male Cone
Photograph by Doug Young

Red Fish
Photograph by Doug Young