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Great Lives from History: The Twenty-First Century (2000-2017)

Suji Kwock Kim

by Jocelyn A. Brown

Born: 1969; South Korea

Area(s) of significance: Literature, poetry

Early Life

Poet and playwright Suji Kwock Kim was born in 1969 in South Korea. Her father was a doctor who came to the United States shortly after Kim's birth to seek a better life for his family. Kim and the rest of the family stayed in South Korea until her father settled in Poughkeepsie, New York, in the 1970s and sent for them. Few Koreans or other Asian Americans lived in the area where the Kim family settled. The nursery school teacher suggested to Kim's mother that more English should be spoken at home to help Kim with her language acquisition. Kim learned English well, but over time she discovered that she had lost her Korean-language skills. Kim did not re-gain those abilities until her college years. Although she had not mastered the Korean language as a child, her life was rich with Korean heritage. Due to the fact that the Kim family was culturally isolated in Poughkeepsie, her parents made extra efforts to pass on stories of the old country and their life in Korea.

Kim began writing at the age of twenty-one when she took a college poetry workshop and decided to take up poetry writing. She attended Yale University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1995. In 1997, Kim earned a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in Iowa City, Iowa.

Kim's next two years were spent in South Korea, her place of birth, where she attended Yonsei University and Seoul National University on a Fulbright Scholarship. There, in 1998 and 1999, Kim studied and relearned the Korean language skills that she had forgotten in her early childhood.

Life’s Work

Kim's poetry has been described as being simultaneously elegant and horrific. She illustrates with graphic detail the terror of war and oppression, the rhythms of family life, heritage, and the anguish of forging an identity. Kim was first taken in by the musicality and cadence of poetry and found that she enjoyed the process of writing. In the years since her first foray into poetry, she has found that she often experiences deep emotions when writing.

The Academy of American Poets presented Kim with the Walt Whitman Award for her first book of poems, Notes from the Divided Country (2003); she is the first Asian American to receive the award. The book also won the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Whiting Writers’ Award for rising scholars, the Nation/Discovery Award, and the Bay Area Book Reviewers award. Over the years, she has won a number of other awards, grants, and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts grant.

Suji Kwock Kim’s Notes from the Divided Country

In Notes from the Divided Country (2003), Suji Kwock Kim offers her readers a powerful first book of poems. Her poetry, deeply personal, combines Western and Eastern poetic traditions and intensely reflects on crucial aspects of the Asian American experience. The poet’s voice is detailed and observant. The poems focus on concrete objects as well as abstract emotions and offer a view of the terrifying swings of recent Korean history. In Kim’s poetry, the reader is as likely to encounter a Korean American mother chopping food for her children in New Jersey as to read about Korean nationalists being skinned alive by Japanese soldiers in World War II.

The collection’s title reflects Korea, a country divided into a Communist North and a democratic South. It also reflects the divided souls of recent immigrants, who are split by the memories of their native land and their daily encounters with American culture. On a third level, the title can be read as a subtle allusion to the author’s view of American society as being divided among different ethnic and economic groups of people. Notes from the Divided Country won Kim the 2002 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. The poems’ juxtaposition of the horrors of war with the challenges, the disappointments, and the comforts of family life—as well as the narrator’s intense observations about natural and human life around her—make the volume a valuable work.

Kim's poetry is widely read and critiqued in academic and literary circles. Throughout her writing is the clear influence of her cultural background. Much of her poetry is about Korea and its state of division. “Notes from the Divided Country,” a poem that shares the book's title, speaks about the division between North and South Korea since the end of World War II. Another popular piece, “Borderlands,” is a poem about the Japanese invasion and control of Korea (1910-45) and is dedicated to her grandmother.

In addition to poetry, Kim has also penned several texts for choral arrangement. In 2007, Kim's poetry was arranged by composer Mayako Kubo and presented at Pablo Casals Hall in Tokyo in December. Composer Jérôme Blais's composition of Kim's poetry opened at Dalhousie in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in March 2007. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also recorded and aired the concert.

Kim collaborated on an opera with composer Mark Grey for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. She also cowrote the drama Private Property, a multimedia play for Play wrights Horizons in New York City.

Kim is an educator as well as a poet. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Drew University, and Stanford University, where she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. Kim has also found time to teach at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Wesleyan Writers’ Conference. Her work, including excerpts from her forthcoming second book, Disorient, has been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, among other national publications. Her poems have been reprinted in twenty-four anthologies.

Numerous video recordings of readings of Kim's poetry have been posted to the Internet. Her readings are well liked due to her strong presentation style. Kim attributes this to her early experiences with theater even before she began writing. Kim lives and works in New York City and California.

Significance

Kim's work has contributed to and influenced the literary world's exposure to Asian American creative writing. Directly engaging such political issues as the Korean War, emigration, and colonialism, her poetry challenges and adds to popular conceptions of Korean culture. Her work has appeared in such esteemed journals as the New Republic, Paris Review, and Plough shares, among others. Writing for the Poetry Foundation, Aimee Nezhukumatathil described Kim's work as having “a brutal musicality and prophecy I can’t stop hearing.”

Further Reading

1 

Kim, Suji Kwock. “Fugue for Eye and Vanishing Point.” Slate. Slate Group, 23 Sept. 2003. Web. 24 Jan.2012. A recording of Kim reading one of her poems, demonstrating her unique performance style.

2 

_______, Interview by Robert Siegel. All Things Considered . Natl. Public Radio, 13 Oct. 2003. Web. 24 Jan. 2012. A conversation in which Kim discusses aspects of her childhood and cultural background and explains how they are incorporated into her work and life. Offers insight into her strong connection with the Korean language.

3 

Schroeder, Amy. “Review of Notes from the Divided Country.” Georgia Review 58.1 (Spring 2004): 198-99. Print. A review of the collection and a brief analysis of how Kim addresses sorrow in her work.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Brown, Jocelyn A. "Suji Kwock Kim." Great Lives from History: The Twenty-First Century (2000-2017),Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GL21A_0183.
APA 7th
Brown, J. A. (2017). Suji Kwock Kim. Great Lives from History: The Twenty-First Century (2000-2017). Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Brown, Jocelyn A. "Suji Kwock Kim." Great Lives from History: The Twenty-First Century (2000-2017). Hackensack: Salem Press, 2017. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.