Choi Eunmi debuted in 2008 by winning the Literary Award for New Writers in the Hyundae Munhak journal with her story “Cry and Go.” She is the author of the short-story collections A Dream Too Beautiful, Magnolia Story, A Person Made of Snow; the novels The Ninth Wave, Face to Face, and the novella Yesterday Was Spring. She has won many awards including, the Young Writer Award, the Daesan Literary Award, the Hyundae Literary Award, the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award, the Contemporary Buddhist Literature Prize, and the Heo Gyun Literary Award.
1. Life
Choi Eun-mi was born in 1978 in Inje, Gangwon province. She studied history at Dongguk University. She made her literary debut in 2008 when her short story “Ulgo ganda” (울고 간다 I Cry and Go) won the Hyundae Literary Award for New Writers. From her early twenties, she took undergraduate classes in novel writing and theory, and began practicing to write. After graduating university she worked for a publisher and for the Jogye Order Buddhist Studies Institute as a researcher. During her time at the Institute, Choi recounts reading banghamrok, which are records of zen meditations performed by various monks, and being fascinated by the footnotes and scribbles that gave her insight into the monks’ lives. She also interviewed eminent monks while compiling records on contemporary and modern Buddhist history. Choi stated in an interview that a dominant theme in her novels is avidya, a Buddhist term describing the conditions that restrict and agonize a person’s life, and that she wants to write about people who suffer and love because of avidya.
2. Writing
Choi Eun-mi’s novels may be seen as tragedies in the Aristotelian sense, or as depictions of hell in the Buddhist sense. Either way, what should be noted is how she portrays the world as a place of suffering. In the afterword to Choi’s first short story collection Neomu areumdaun kkum (너무 아름다운 꿈 A Dream Too Beautiful), literary critic Gwon Hui-cheol discusses tragedy: “Choi Eun-mi’s novels deserve to be hailed as superb works of tragedy. But one must not misunderstand the term ‘tragedy’ . . . Tragedy is not an art of resignation for the weak. It explores the subjects of sadness, pain, or adversity only to see if they can be repeated or made positive. By turning those subjects into something positive, can life be enriched? Can life’s treasure box finally be opened? Tragedy is an art that tests one’s will or drive to ask such questions . . . Choi Eun-mi’s novels initially seem like they were written in the belief that life is equivalent to receiving a guilty verdict. But the stories eventually lead to finding ‘a dream too beautiful’ and uncovering life’s innocence and joys, which is precisely what makes them successful tragedies. Perhaps Choi’s novels prove that reading tragedy is an attempt to turn moments of sadness and languor steeped in nihilism into joy and vigor—that is, to live life fully. We read tragedy to keep on living.” Critic Kim Hyeong-jung, who wrote the afterword to Choi’s second short story collection, points out two characteristics of her novels. First, Kim observes that she often employs old literary forms such as myths, legends, or fairy tales. Her forte, according to Kim, is to “borrow from traditional genres like folklore or fairy tales, introduce changes to them, and in doing so, make their conventions, narrative forms, ideologies, etc. feel unconventional.” Second, Kim argues that Choi’s fictional universe is hellish: “Ultimately, the hell that Choi Eun-mi has built does not seem to have any exits. It has been predetermined on several levels—structurally, biologically, and psychologically. And that world resembles Avīci, because being ‘predetermined’ entails that any other possibilities are ruled out.”
