Abstract:
The Institute for Korean Studies is pleased to host Gary Pak, for a talk based on his forthcoming novel Brothers Under a Same Sky. The talk will be held on Thursday, April 4, at 4:00 PM, in Caldwell 109. Brothers Under a Same Sky is a novel about a 2nd-generation Korean American, born and raised on a Hawaiian plantation in a strict Christian household. When he is called to serve his country in the Korean War, his deeply religious convictions are challenged, but he is redeemed when he briefly meets a devout and beautiful Christian woman with whom he falls in love. He vows to himself that he will come back after the war and bring her to Hawai‘i as his bride. But upon his return to a miasmic Korea reconstructing from war, he discovers that she, out of necessity, has fallen into an inauspicious lifestyle. With his faith given the ultimate test, he must make a decision between his belief and the growing passion of a primal soul. The talk will focus on the research the author conducted for the book, with a focus on his trips to the site of the Nogun-ri massacre, and will include a brief reading from the book itself.
Biography:
Gary Pak is a Professor of English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where he teaches creative writing and Ethnic/Asian American literatures, and is a member of UHM's Center for Korean Studies. He is the author of two novels, A Ricepaper Airplane and Children of a Fireland; and two book-length collections of short fiction, The Watcher of Waipuna and Language of the Geckos. In 2002, he received a Fulbright award to Seoul, South Korea, and since then he has returned nearly every summer to the land of his ancestors to lecture at Ewha Womans University and to conduct research. He has won grants and fellowships from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the Association for Asian American Studies, the Research Corporation of the University Hawai‘i, and the Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association, and is the recipient of the 1992 Elliot Cades Literary Prize.
