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In Defense of Navel Gazing
Desirae Matherly
12.1

Navel-gazing as a criticism is most often applied to works that focus merely on the self and do not look out from it. There are many splendid writers through the centuries who have been able to write about the self without a charge of navel-gazing. My own guess is that this word has become a catchall term for any bad writing about the self, even indirectly, as when an academic falls too deeply into scholarly obsession. When people apply the term to their own writing, it has the cast of an embarrassed admission for writing about the self at all. Perhaps the problem that navel-gazing describes is more closely linked to questions about chronology in memoir, and the unfortunate predominance of linear narrative in places where it simply isn’t interesting. We all figure ourselves to have separate beginnings from that first obvious one charted as “birth,” and much bad writing is a catalog of those serial realizations—our awakenings, separations, losses, and humiliations. Click here to continue reading.

Research as Ritual
Kathryn Nuernberger
12.1

1.
I have been searching everywhere for something I cannot name. I have been searching for its name. Understanding, perhaps it is called? Or connection? Or maybe I mean belonging? Every morning I open my notebook and search again.


2.
I was asked to write a craft essay about research for a textbook. Instead, by accident, I wrote about ritual. The essay was very confusing. To the editors. And to me. I had just given birth to twins and was, on good days, only sleeping in 45-minute increments. I was having trouble making sense. I was not completing my sentences. What was I even talking about? Click here to continue reading.

Interview with Margaret Juhae Lee
Molly Tompkins
12.1

 Molly Tompkins: Margaret Juhae Lee, congratulations on Starry Field! This memoir extends beyond the limits of your memory as you probe the past for the stories that inflect your own. You unearth the buried history of your grandfather, Lee Chul Ha, who opposed the Japanese occupation of Korea. This book contains not only your findings, but documents your process of seeking answers from archives, academics, and family members. By chronicling your research journey, you include readers in your excavation of the past and allow us to share in your present discoveries. We travel with you from Houston to California to Boston to Korea to seek the displaced home that you eventually locate within your family. The story of Starry Field, your grandfather’s Communist codename, became a constellation that connects your ancestors and children. 
 
In the beginning of the book, you set out to uncover the story of your grandfather’s arrest. As you gather materials, however, your grandmother Halmoni’s story also emerges through her interviews. Rather than strictly adhering to your original search, you shift to incorporate Halmoni’s emerging character. Can you talk about your experience writing this evolving story? Did you initially resist or embrace the inclusion of Halmoni’s testimony? 
 
Margaret Juhae Lee: It was always my intention to include Halmoni’s testimony, since she was one of only a handful of living people who actually knew my grandfather, but it took me many years to figure out how. I incorporated her interviews almost word for word, because I wanted her voice to be heard. The prevailing issue for me was structure. It wasn’t until close to the end of the process that I realized that the three interviews I conducted with her needed to be the pillars of the book—that I needed to organize the other chapters of the book that centered my grandfather, my father and me around those interviews. Her story was the one that spanned almost the whole of the twentieth century—from Korea’s colonial era to South Korea’s technological boom. When I started Starry Field, the focus was on my grandfather’s forgotten life. As the years went by and I had a family of my own, I realized that Halmoni was the center of the story, not my grandfather. My grandfather died in 1936 at the age of 27 and left her a widow with two children to raise by herself. Halmoni was the one who ensured our family’s survival.  Click here to continue reading.