earticle

영어

This paper examines the socioeconomic, racial, religious, and familial factors that have constrained Korean Hawaiians’ ability to live free and creative lives, as portrayed in Gary Pak’s Brothers under a Same Sky: A Novel. As a third generation Korean Hawaiian whose grandmother came from Korea as a picture bride, Pak is a socioeconomic outsider though he belongs to the diaspora. This socioeconomic status enables him to describe the diasporic reality in more detail. Pak also examines the diaspora’s reality from various perspective, shifting the main narrator from the elder brother Nam Kun, Nam Ki, to Nam Kun’s daughter Shelly. This shift adds objectivity to the story of sugarcane farmers’ descendants in the Hawaiian diaspora, highlighting their socioeconomically marginalized positions and the hardships they endured as ‘outsiders-within.’ Even family ties and religious bonds are not enough to hold together the fractured diaspora, as made clear through the tragic story of Nam Ki, the protagonist, who ends his life in separation from his familial and religious roots. Pak’s message is that Korean Hawaiians must move beyond their socioeconomic disadvantages and experiences with racism and unite together through family and religion.