Interview with Jihyun Yun
Jihyun Yun is a Korean-American writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. A winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, her full-length collection SOME ARE ALWAYS HUNGRY was published by The University of Nebraska Press in September 2020. Her debut young adult novel AND THE RIVER DRAGS YOU DOWN is forthcoming with Knopf BFYR/Penguin Random House (US) and Rock The Boat/OneWorld (UK) in Fall, 2025.
Her work has been published in Best New Poets, Narrative Magazine, Adroit and elsewhere. She currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
My upbringing and experience as a Korean American is reflected at almost every level in my poems from the historical context of the speakers all the way to the types of fruit I tend to write about.
The most overt way my cultural background influences my work is I often braid in Korean phrases and words in my poems because it closely enacts the way I think. I grew up speaking only Korean since I was raised by my grandmother, but as I entered primary school, I started to lose fluency as English began to vie for dominance. Now, though I'm not as fluent as I wish I were, I still think in Korean quite a bit. Or more accurately, I think in Konglish which is the language hybrid I speak with my mom and childhood friends. It only makes sense that my poems would want to reflect that, and I joyously let it.
I started writing around twenty one years old. Young by all standards, but somehow at that time, I'd gotten it in my head that all serious aspiring poets had been reading and writing since they were children. Of course this isn't true across the board, and yet I had this feeling of being very behind. This insecurity bled into my work. I was very self aware in a detrimental way. I wasn't willing to formally experiment. My poetry worried about conventions and wanted to be liked.
For example: there was discourse going around at that time... the diasporic poem discourse. You probably know of it. The criticisms of Asian American writers' preoccupation with food poems. I've also heard it being called “the mango poem” or “the stinky lunch-box poem” discourse on Twitter. In my early years, I totally bought into these criticisms and refused to write food poems. But why should I have let any of this stop me if the food poem was the best vehicle for me to say what I wanted to say?
While my craft has of course evolved since I first started writing poetry, I think my biggest and most crucial evolution is my ability to better filter my own insecurities and fear of being perceived
There is a poem in my collection called “Husband Stitch” (it was originally published in Sycamore Review under the title “Dialogue with the Husband Stitch”). I am proud of this poem as much as I'm repulsed by it. I am repulsed because of the subject matter (violent misogyny as seen in medical malpractice. Trigger warning for those who don't know what it is and are planning to research it), and proud because I feel like I looked the content in the eye and wrote it as unflinchingly as the subject matter necessitated. I almost gave up on this poem so many times, but in the end, I'm so glad I didn't.
My family's reaction to my career path was varied and continues to be fraught at times.
My mother, uncle and cousins supported me unconditionally from the beginning, but my grandparents were very critical (they wanted me to pursue law). I know it came from a place of concern, and they had every right to be nervous given our society's tertiary treatment of the arts. But there were some periods of time while I was drafting my collection where I had to be low contact with my grandfather because our conversations threatened my desire to create and belief in my own work.
Things are generally better now. After my book was picked up and I started to actively make a living off of freelance writing, my grandparents have chosen to reluctantly approve of my choices, largely because they think it's too late for me to pivot to something else.
I wish I had good advice about how to navigate this, but as I continue to wade through this tension to this day, I don't. All I really have to say to fellow Asian Americans with families unsupportive of their chosen field is this: there is no certainty you will prove the dissenting voices wrong. And yes there are risks, and you must be cautious about how you proceed. For example, I always try to dissuade young poets from going into significant debt for their poetry (expensive, unfunded MFA's, pay-to-play publishing schemes). But the only life you get to live is your own. You owe yourself the possibility of trying.
Though I'm grateful to the editors of every anthology I've been in, They Rise Like A Wave was definitely my favorite experience. The editors Christine Kitano and Alycia Pirmohamed were so communicative and intentional with how they curated the anthology. But what I appreciated the most about this was how much community was built from this anthology. Even today, I periodically get emails from other contributors to this anthology, mentioning literary events or reading opportunities in different cities. There is something heartening about being a part of this anthology of Asian American voices, and seeing the way we rise together and share opportunities on and off the page.
My relationship with food is robust! I love it, both making and eating it—and since I was a waitress for most of my working life, I also like serving it and watching others happily eat. It's a comfort mechanism and oftentimes a carrot I dangle in front of myself to get work done. It is a love language I use to communicate with family members like my grandfather who often refuses kind words but will demonstrate affection via the street-stall chicken he buys when he knows I'm coming to visit.
It is also the thing that ties me most closely to my community. I feel most Korean for what I crave. Where all other connections can wane or fail, my appetite for the cuisine sustained my nebulous relationship to the nation of my ancestors. When the language started to elude me when I entered primary school, my cravings for Korean food remained consistent. When I lost Korean friendships after losing my faith and leaving my diasporic church (which, to be frank, is also a community space), food still had me.
I think cuisine functions like this across diasporic communities; it's the most unbreakable tether because it is so closely tied to our somatic senses. Even when we might not have access to our parents' language to articulate our feelings of identity, our tongues know. It's primal.
And as for comfort food... I'm a soup girl. Any spicy soup will make me happy, but seafood soondubu (soft tofu stew) with a good side dish spread is probably my go-to.
I am definitely interested in writing prose in the future! I already do work in prose for one of my freelance jobs (I've contributed sleep stories for the Calm App since 2021) but I am also working on some independent projects.
My current manuscript is a young adult retelling of a Joseon-era Korean ghost story set in a rural American resort town. I also have two other novel ideas that are in the brainstorming phases. I do expect to write another book of poems in the future, but for now it's at such a distance I cannot really visualize it. I feel like I've said everything needed to say for now via poems in Some Are Always Hungry. So until that ineffable energy for poetry comes back, fiction and creative non-fiction it is!
Be aware and assertive of the space you occupy. I think for AAPI folks in the diaspora, we often find ourselves beset on all sides. That's been my experience, anyways. My Korean face always marks me as other, my presence tolerated conditionally in this nation. But even amongst Koreans, I'm often questioned on if I'm “Korean enough” or Korean the right way. In some respects, I am granted unearned privileges for the “American” end of my hyphenation, but also I am excluded in other ways. We exist in a liminal space between cultures. But you are valid in your identity. Your cultural hybridity is a strength. Your work is important. And in the moments you feel defeated, know that somewhere, perhaps hundreds of miles away, I believe in you.
