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Exploring “Family” in Yu Miri’s Works scrap
by Jo Kyung Ran
October 30, 2014
Author Bio 작가 소개
Yu miri
Nineteen years ago, just when I was starting my career as a fiction writer, one of the hottest topics in the Korean literary world was undoubtedly the translated works by the Japan-born author Yu Miri. Before her novel Family Cinema had won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1997, translations of her previous novellas Full House and Bean Sprout, as well as other earlier works including essays and plays, seemed to be pouring into Korea. I had spent those years of my life reading the works of Yu—like myself, a 20-something writer—but at the time Yu was already referred to as a member of the young writers of “pure” literature at the helm of the Japanese literary world. And that is why even now when I come across her name, I immediately think of her as a “writer of our time.”
The reasons Yu Miri had gained so much attention at the same time in both countries was because she was a Zainichi Korean, an ethnic Korean residing in Japan, who wrote fiction in Japanese, and perhaps also, and more importantly, because of how she portrayed the theme of family found in many of her stories. Although I have yet to meet her, Yu’s portrayal of family may also be the reason why it feels as though I have personally known her all these years as a fellow writer. I especially cannot forget the refreshing jolt I had when I first read Full House, the story about a father who goes beyond his means to build a single ramshackle home to reunite his scattered family. The characters of this story reappear in Family Cinema.
When the narrator’s younger sister insists that they should shoot a documentary, the scattered family members reunite. Once upon a time they had formed what could be called a real family, but now each plays his or her given role in front of the camera, as the mother, the father, the daughter, and the son. But events do not go as smoothly as they should since each has lived on their own longer than they did as a family. Even if it were not for the painful line, “Still, in the end, any family is all just an act,” Family Cinema is a brilliant story in how it places a family in a situation of such irony. Referring to herself as writing from the periphery between Japan and Korea, Yu seems to be aware that her role as a writer is to build literary bridges connecting the two worlds.
For a writer, the theme of their writing is not something to be created from scratch, but rather to depict what already exists, like the idea of family. Many writers, I believe, start to write precisely because they want to explore that theme, but even if that weren’t the case, what writer doesn’t want to write about the human condition? It is impossible for someone to write a work of fiction about family, especially one based on her own experiences, without a strong desire to explore what it means to be human. As far as I am aware, at least in the genre of the family story, there is no author who writes with such tenacity, reason, and poignancy as Yu. The purpose of her fiction seems to be to reveal the heart of the family story, that is, to show that there is hope in the darkest of places. 
Writer 필자 소개
Jo Kyung Ran
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More From Issue Vol.25 Autumn 2014
