Breaking Boundaries in Literature : The Nobel Prize and Korea’s Untold Stories

Breaking Boundaries in Literature : The Nobel Prize and Korea’s Untold Stories
Author: Yeong Hwan Choi
Publisher: 최영환
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2024-10-21
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

"Breaking Boundaries in Literature: The Nobel Prize and Korea's Untold Stories" is a journey that transcends the familiar boundaries of literary critique. In this bold narrative, I delve into the heart of a question that has long troubled me: why does a prestigious award like the Nobel Prize often recognize works that fail to capture the full spectrum of the human experience, let alone the complex cultural sentiments of nations like Korea? At first glance, it may seem as though this is a book about literary criticism—a questioning of how one-sided perspectives come to dominate global recognition. But at its core, this work is much more than a critique of literary bias. It is an exploration of the multiverse itself, a challenge to the idea that the Nobel Prize, or any human-made institution, can truly grasp the depth of experience that exists beyond anthropocentric narratives. In a world defined by quantum uncertainty and the principles of relativity, why do we still cling to the notion that a singular "truth" or "universal" story can represent all of us? I ask this as someone who has spent years observing the increasing polarization in literature—where binary thinking, political ideologies, and human-centered concerns dominate. But the natural world, the cosmos in which we exist, operates on principles far beyond our limited comprehension. Could it be that in seeking to capture a singular "universal human experience," we are ignoring the more profound and chaotic truths that surround us? As you read this book, I invite you to consider a new perspective: one where the significance of a literary work is not measured by its political or social resonance, but by its ability to reflect the chaos, the order, and the vastness of the natural world. The Nobel Prize, once a symbol of human accomplishment, may have lost its way by focusing too narrowly on human ideologies. In doing so, it misses the greater, more profound narrative that unfolds in the universe—one that includes but is not confined to the human condition. Ultimately, "Breaking Boundaries in Literature" asks more questions than it answers, and that is precisely the point. The story of Korea—its division, its pain, its resilience—is not one that can be told from a single perspective, nor can it be understood within the limits of binary thinking. It is, in fact, a story that belongs to the cosmos, to the chaotic interplay of forces that shape not just human lives, but the very fabric of reality itself.

The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War

The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War
Author: Monica Kim
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2020-11-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 069121042X

Traditional histories of the Korean War have long focused on violations of the thirty-eighth parallel, the line drawn by American and Soviet officials in 1945 dividing the Korean peninsula. But The interrogation rooms of the Korean War presents an entirely new narrative, shifting the perspective from the boundaries of the battlefield to inside the interrogation room. Upending conventional notions of what we think of as geographies of military conflict, Monica Kim demonstrates how the Korean War evolved from a fight over territory to one over human interiority and the individual human subject, forging the template for the U.S. wars of intervention that would predominate during the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond. Kim looks at how, during the armistice negotiations, the United States and their allies proposed a new kind of interrogation room: one in which POWs could exercise their "free will" and choose which country they would go to after the ceasefire. The global controversy that erupted exposed how interrogation rooms had become a flashpoint for the struggles between the ambitions of empire and the demands for decolonization, as the aim of interrogation was to produce subjects who attested to a nation's right to govern. The complex web of interrogators and prisoners -- Japanese-American interrogators, Indian military personnel, Korean POWs and interrogators, and American POWs -- that Kim uncovers contradicts the simple story in U.S. popular memory of "brainwashing" during the Korean War

Trust Exercise

Trust Exercise
Author: Susan Choi
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2019-04-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250309883

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Electrifying” (People) • “Masterly” (The Guardian) • “Dramatic and memorable” (The New Yorker) • “Magic” (TIME) • “Ingenious” (The Financial Times) • "A gonzo literary performance” (Entertainment Weekly) • “Rare and splendid” (The Boston Globe) • “Remarkable” (USA Today) • “Delicious” (The New York Times) • “Book groups, meet your next selection" (NPR) In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed—or untoyed with—by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley. The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls—until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true—though it’s not false, either. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place—revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence. As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Susan Choi's Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, and about friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.

Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2009-03-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307371336

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • The moving, suspenseful, beautifully atmospheric modern classic from the acclaimed author of The Remains of the Day and Klara and the Sun—“a Gothic tour de force" (The New York Times) with an extraordinary twist. “Brilliantly executed.” —Margaret Atwood “A page-turner and a heartbreaker.” —TIME “Masterly.” —Sunday Times As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.

I Can Write the World

I Can Write the World
Author: Joshunda Sanders
Publisher: Six Foot Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2020-06-15
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 164442035X

"Lovely and timely. So glad Joshunda is telling our stories." - Jacqueline Woodson Eight-year-old Ava Murray wants to know why there’s a difference between the warm, friendly Bronx neighborhood filled with music and art in which she lives and the Bronx she sees in news stories on TV and on the Internet. When her mother explains that the power of stories lies in the hands of those who write them, Ava decides to become a journalist. I Can Write the World follows Ava as she explores her vibrant South Bronx neighborhood - buildings whose walls boast gorgeous murals of historical figures as well as intricate, colorful street art, the dozens of different languages and dialects coming from the mouths of passersby, the many types of music coming out of neighbors’ windows and passing cars. In reporting how the music and art and culture of her neighborhood reflect the diversity of the people of New York City, Ava shows the world as she sees it, revealing to children the power of their own voice.

Outline

Outline
Author: Rachel Cusk
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2015-01-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374712360

A Finalist for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. One of The New York Times' Top Ten Books of the Year. Named a A New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Vogue, NPR, The Guardian, The Independent, Glamour, and The Globe and Mail A luminous, powerful novel that establishes Rachel Cusk as one of the finest writers in the English language A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking—about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own fictions about their lives. Rachel Cusk's Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other visiting writers for dinner and discourse. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her neighbor from the plane. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves: their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss. Outline takes a hard look at the things that are hardest to speak about. It brilliantly captures conversations, investigates people's motivations for storytelling, and questions their ability to ever do so honestly or unselfishly. In doing so it bares the deepest impulses behind the craft of fiction writing. This is Rachel Cusk's finest work yet, and one of the most startling, brilliant, original novels of recent years.

The Vegetarian

The Vegetarian
Author: Han Kang
Publisher: Hogarth
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2016-02-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0553448196

FROM HAN KANG, WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE “[Han Kang writes in] intense poetic prose that . . . exposes the fragility of human life.”—from the Nobel Prize citation WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE • “Kang viscerally explores the limits of what a human brain and body can endure, and the strange beauty that can be found in even the most extreme forms of renunciation.”—Entertainment Weekly One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century “Ferocious.”—The New York Times Book Review (Ten Best Books of the Year) “Both terrifying and terrific.”—Lauren Groff “Provocative [and] shocking.”—The Washington Post Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself. Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her. A Best Book of the Year: BuzzFeed, Entertainment Weekly, Wall Street Journal, Time, Elle, The Economist, HuffPost, Slate, Bustle, The St. Louis Dispatch, Electric Literature, Publishers Weekly

Kudos

Kudos
Author: Rachel Cusk
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2018-06-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374714584

New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2018 • Amazon Editors' Top 100 of 2018 Rachel Cusk, the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of Outline and Transit, completes the transcendent literary trilogy with Kudos, a novel of unsettling power. A woman writer visits a Europe in flux, where questions of personal and political identity are rising to the surface and the trauma of change is opening up new possibilities of loss and renewal. Within the rituals of literary culture, Faye finds the human story in disarray amid differing attitudes toward the public performance of the creative persona. She begins to identify among the people she meets a tension between truth and representation, a fissure that accrues great dramatic force as Kudos reaches a profound and beautiful climax. In this conclusion to her groundbreaking trilogy, Cusk unflinchingly explores the nature of family and art, justice and love, and the ultimate value of suffering. She is without question one of our most important living writers.

How We Show Up

How We Show Up
Author: Mia Birdsong
Publisher: Hachette Go
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2020-06-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 158005806X

An Invitation to Community and Models for Connection After almost every presentation activist and writer Mia Birdsong gives to executives, think tanks, and policy makers, one of those leaders quietly confesses how much they long for the profound community she describes. They have family, friends, and colleagues, yet they still feel like they're standing alone. They're "winning" at the American Dream, but they're lonely, disconnected, and unsatisfied. It seems counterintuitive that living the "good life"--the well-paying job, the nuclear family, the upward mobility--can make us feel isolated and unhappy. But in a divided America, where only a quarter of us know our neighbors and everyone is either a winner or a loser, we've forgotten the key element that helped us make progress in the first place: community. In this provocative, groundbreaking work, Mia Birdsong shows that what separates us isn't only the ever-present injustices built around race, class, gender, values, and beliefs, but also our denial of our interdependence and need for belonging. In response to the fear and discomfort we feel, we've built walls, and instead of leaning on each other, we find ourselves leaning on concrete. Through research, interviews, and stories of lived experience, How We Show Up returns us to our inherent connectedness where we find strength, safety, and support in vulnerability and generosity, in asking for help, and in being accountable. Showing up--literally and figuratively--points us toward the promise of our collective vitality and leads us to the liberated well-being we all want.

Set Boundaries, Find Peace

Set Boundaries, Find Peace
Author: Nedra Glover Tawwab
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2021-03-16
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 0593192095

The instant New York Times bestseller End the struggle, speak up for what you need, and experience the freedom of being truly yourself. Healthy boundaries. We all know we should have them--in order to achieve work/life balance, cope with toxic people, and enjoy rewarding relationships with partners, friends, and family. But what do "healthy boundaries" really mean--and how can we successfully express our needs, say "no," and be assertive without offending others? Licensed counselor, sought-after relationship expert, and one of the most influential therapists on Instagram Nedra Glover Tawwab demystifies this complex topic for today's world. In a relatable and inclusive tone, Set Boundaries, Find Peace presents simple-yet-powerful ways to establish healthy boundaries in all aspects of life. Rooted in the latest research and best practices used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), these techniques help us identify and express our needs clearly and without apology--and unravel a root problem behind codependency, power struggles, anxiety, depression, burnout, and more.