Portrait of a Suburbanite
eBook - PDF

Portrait of a Suburbanite

Poems of Choi Seung-ja

  1. 224 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Portrait of a Suburbanite

Poems of Choi Seung-ja

About this book

This volume is a translation of Choi Seung-ja's 1991 anthology titled Portrait of a Suburbanite. Published in the series of "100 Prominent Korean Poets" by Mirae Press, the poems in this volume were selected from four of Choi's previous works titled, Love of This Age (1981), Merry Diary (1984), House of Memory (1989), and the subsequently published My Tomb, Green (1993). Speaking with a fierce sense of equality and independence, Choi Seung-ja's poetry battled ossified forms of language not only on the political but also the personal front. Like her male colleagues, Choi parodied and critiqued the idol of the father, but even further, she insightfully explored irreverent content to reveal the gendered constraints of the lyric form. In particular, Choi exposed the idolatrous power of the lover, the basis of exploitation and injustice at the most intimate level. On top of their political disempowerment as citizens, the private and domestic alienation of women as daughters, lovers, and wives form a deep stratum of repression. When Choi's women personae broke this long silence of compliance nurtured by the traditional lyric and voiced themselves as exploited and traumatized, yet fearless and tenacious human beings, the shock of this transgression shook the nation. In turn it demonstrate how long and how powerfully the gender constrictions had been imposed on Korean women.

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Yes, you can access Portrait of a Suburbanite by Seung-Ja Choi, Eunju Kim in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Asian Poetry. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. i Half-title page
  2. ii Blank page
  3. iii Full-title page
  4. iv Copyright Page
  5. v Contents
  6. vi Biographical Chronology
  7. vii Introduction
  8. xviii Blank
  9. 1 Part I Love of This Age
  10. 3 Before, I Was
  11. 5 Dog-like Autumn
  12. 7 Love or Murderous Intent or Self-Destruction
  13. Untitled
  14. 11 To You
  15. 13 Women and Men
  16. 17 Age Thirty
  17. 19 Rainy Day Reunion
  18. 21 Do You Remember Cheongpa Village?
  19. 23 Ooh I Want to Abandon You
  20. 25 She, My First Love
  21. 27 End of Autumn
  22. 29 My Love Is About To
  23. 31 Rainy Season
  24. 33 Woman in the Empty Air
  25. 35 Yearning Fallen Into A Keg
  26. 37 Loving Hands
  27. 39 Love of This Age
  28. 41 Self-Portrait
  29. 43 Macaroni Western of Mali Estuary
  30. 45 To You
  31. 47 Apprehension
  32. 49 The Phone Rang Endlessly to Find Me
  33. 53 Each Day
  34. 55 Somewhere Without Me Now
  35. 57 Our Love in 197X
  36. 61 No Appetite for Tonight's Dinner
  37. 63 Therefore Someday, Love
  38. 67 Here Comes Ownerless Sleep
  39. 69 A Voice
  40. 71 Where I Cannot Call You You
  41. 75 Were You Happy?
  42. Part II House of Memory
  43. 79 Spring
  44. 81 Would You Teach Me A Bird?
  45. 83 I Went to the Sea in Winter
  46. 85 Portrait of Mr. Phon Ga-Gya
  47. 87 Merry Diary
  48. 91 On Womanhood
  49. 93 Yeoui Island Rhapsody
  50. 105 Confession
  51. 107 For Y
  52. 109 20 Years Later, To Jie
  53. 113 Untitled 1
  54. 121 Untitled 2
  55. 131 Civilization
  56. 133 Slow-Motion Video
  57. 135 Release
  58. 137 Wannabe Poetry
  59. 139 Return, I Write Poetry
  60. 141 Brief History of Spring
  61. 143 A Forget-Me-Not
  62. 145 Western Harbor
  63. 147 House of Memory
  64. 151 Now They Must Go
  65. 153 Prison of Hope
  66. 159 Return Now
  67. 161 Portrait of a Suburbanite
  68. 163 Thirties
  69. 165 Receiver Is Already
  70. 167 House of Destruction
  71. 169 Never Will I Pray
  72. 171 The Night Before
  73. 173 Dance of Pain
  74. 175 Part III Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember
  75. 177 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 1
  76. 179 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 2
  77. 181 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 3
  78. 183 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 4
  79. 185 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 5
  80. 187 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 6
  81. 189 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 7
  82. 191 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 8
  83. 193 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 9
  84. 195 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 10
  85. 197 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 11
  86. 199 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 12
  87. 201 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 13
  88. 203 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 14
  89. 205 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 15
  90. 207 Unready to Forget or Ready to Remember 16
  91. 209 The East Sea
  92. 211 The Capital Species
  93. 213 Forties
  94. 214 Index of Poems Part I Love of This Age
  95. 215 Index of Poems Part II House of Memory
  96. 216 Index of Poems Part III Unready to Forget and Ready to Remember
  97. Cornell East Asia Series