Poet Whon Jaeheoun interviewed novelist Jo Kyung-ran, whose novel Tongue has been translated and published in eight countries, broadening her international readership.

One day in October 2009, I found myself talking to Jo Kyungran’s mother on the phone. Her mother told me that her daughter would return from her writing studio around one p.m. and cheerfully asked me to call back then. I pictured her the way she looked at last year’s Dong-in Literary Award ceremony. Jo writes in her studio all night long and returns home at one in the afternoon. Several days later, I bumped into her in a small bakery near Hongik University. I was happy to see her. I debated what to ask her, and in the end, I asked her which questions she hates hearing.

One question Jo hates to receive is, “What has your life been like as a female writer?” The question itself is too abstract, making it difficult to answer, but what particularly troubles her is the term “female writer.” That is because it is not simply a term used to distinguish between male and female writers but reveals the sexism behind the implication that there is something especially commendable about a woman trying to write.

During the Joseon dynasty in Korea, women were forbidden from writing. Women did not need to learn how to write, and even if they did, they had no use for it. Nevertheless, there were “female writers” during the Joseon dynasty, such as Heo Nanseolheon, Yi Okbong, and Hwang Jini. The fruits of literature were off-limits for women; therefore, it was fitting to call them “female writers.” However, just as we would never say “male writer,” it is no longer appropriate to say “female writer.”

Writers simply happen to be male or female by virtue of birth. Likewise, Jo was born female but writes as a “person.” She spoke to me on the subject of her gender. “I met a geomancer once who asked me, ‘Do you think of yourself as a woman?’ I said no. When I am writing, I never think of myself as a woman.”

Nevertheless, the reason interviewers sometimes go on and on about Jo Kyung-ran as a woman writer may not be due to some particular ill will, but rather because she does come off as feminine. Like the essayist Charles Lamb, I also believe that men like womanly people, and women too, even more, like womanly women. Perhaps that is why I wanted to meet Jo Kyung-ran, who is an especially feminine woman. I met Jo Kyung-ran under more formal circumstances after reading her novel Tongue. It was already the subject of conversation in the literary world, and this much-loved work is now expanding the realm of Korean literature as it has been translated and published in eight countries. I particularly enjoyed this work for its fresh impact on Korean literature.

Ever since the publication of her debut novel Time for Baking Bread, Jo had been planning to write Tongue, which is also based on the theme of food. But instead of beginning right away, she carried the idea with her for a while, crafting the plot line and writing a sentence only to stop again. The reason she had kept picking up and abandoning the idea was because there were a lot of movies out at the time that dealt with food. As a creative writer, she did not want to be accused of copying any trends.

Jo’s attitude towards her work is one of caution and meticulousness. That is why it took her 10 years to complete her novel. Meanwhile, she published the short story collections The French Optician, My Purple Sofa, and Story of Gukja, and the essay collection Jo Kyung-ran’s Crocodile Story. After Tongue, she published another short story collection, I Bought a Balloon, which won the prestigious Dong-in Literary Award. 

I Bought a Balloon not only gifted her with a major literary award but also helped to pull her out of one of her intermittent periods of writer’s block. After publishing The Story of Gukja, a period of gloom had descended upon her like an unexpected guest.

“I traveled a lot during that time. Maybe because my body was freed from my desk, I found it hard to sit down and work. A desk is like an extension of the writer’s body, so that sense of detachment was very difficult for me. Likewise, the characters in my stories suffer because they are out of step with the world and can’t interiorize anything. The task of overcoming that and getting in touch with your interior self was the subject of my collection, I Bought a Balloon. I felt like I was finally emerging from a long tunnel.”

The darkness and depression that sought her was very much like the nights in which she works on her stories. Jo writes all of her stories in the middle of the night. It is a dramatically different lifestyle than those who work in an office every day. Even when she is not writing, she reads and thinks about things to write about, not turning in until six in the morning.

Jo spends the night in her studio, working on her fiction or reading, and returns home around one in the afternoon. When she gets home, her mother is there. Jo sits down to a meal prepared by her mother and begins another day. One could say that the depression and writer’s block that plagues her is the night, and the stars that appear against that dark backdrop are her stories. Her suffering and her creative work are a natural result, just as dawn comes when the night grows deepest, or how the stars shine brighter the darker it gets. Readers enjoy her books in exchange for her suffering, and they respond with sympathy. Jo has a particular ability to touch a nerve in her readers.

While in the United States, Jo Kyung-ran was asked the following question: “Who are you?” She was there to submit her first book when the publisher from Bloomsbury asked who she was. Jo was taken aback. Who am I? I am a writer, she thought.

But since she was in the U.S. and not Korea, and because her work was not yet translated, American readers would not know who “Jo Kyung-ran” was. The publisher was not asking about her identity but rather where she fit within the U.S. Meaning, where did she fit within the American literary community?

Of course, it could have been a general question about her birthdate or hometown, nationality, work history, or literary activity. But she responded in a more sensitive way. Where do I fit within world literature? This question has become all the more real as her works are being translated and introduced around the world.

Writer Jo Kyung-ran and poet Whon Jaeheoun

A forum on “Beyond Borders: Translating and Publishing Korean Literature in the U.S.” was held in New York this fall, where Jo Kyung-ran spoke. Novelist Hwang Sok-yong and poet Kim Hyesoon were also there. Jo had planned to give a presentation on “Why do Korean writers need to be translated in America?” Perhaps it was her response to the American publisher’s question, “who are you?” the first time she visited the U.S., as well as a statement about her identity as a writer.

Before her debut, Jo endured a very difficult time as a writer. She spent five years in a tiny room, reading and not going out. Like all people who have a lot of passion, Jo also underwent the agony of living with this kind of dreadful love. She attended college at a late age because she wanted to write poetry, and the more she wrote poetry, the more she realized that her true talents lay in fiction writing. Though she had dreamt of being a poet, she debuted as a novelist in keeping with her father’s wishes. Then, while publishing a book a year, she came to know and love her readers.

Jo Kyung-ran gives off a youthful, vibrant energy. Her mind is always buzzing with stories of humanity and love, despair and suffering, and life and death. Yet loneliness lies at her core. In her next novel, that loneliness embraces the theme of death. She plans to set this next novel in Tokyo and Seoul. Publication is anticipated for May 2010.

“Even when I don’t plan to, unexpected circumstances always push me to my limits,” she said. “Isn’t happiness what you feel when nothing bad has happened? Really good things cannot last forever. I think when something good happens, 11 minutes is all you need.”

“I get nervous and start worrying about what will happen next. That’s what writing is.”

“When I turned 40 on December 31, 2008, I decided, ‘I had better choose not to get married.’”

In Search of an Elephant(published in Spanish) / Tongue(published in English) / Tongue(published in Dutch) / Tongue(published in Korean, 2007)

Simple answers to the questions of literature, experience, happiness, writing, and marriage. Jo is both a caterpillar in a cocoon and a glorious butterfly. Perhaps even now she is tucked away in the perfect darkness of her studio with the blackout curtains drawn, reading a book at her desk or writing. No one is allowed to enter her room. Instead they await her well-sculpted creations. This is the message I wish to send to her. “Be well. Keep writing.”

by Whon Jaeheoun