A Review of Jaeyoon Song’s Yoshiko’s Flags (Quattro Books, 2018).

[xiomara]

A Review of Jaeyoon Song’s Yoshiko’s Flags (Quattro Books, 2018).
By Stephen Hong Sohn 

So, I’ve been trying to catch up on some offerings north of the U.S. border. Quattro Books has been one of my favorite indie presses, as they often come out with novellas, a form that I think is overlooked (both critically and popularly). In this review, I cover Jaeyoon Song’s Yoshiko’s Flags (Quattro Books, 2018). Let’s begin with the official description from the Quattro site:

“Heeja, a displaced North Korean expatriate, decides to become an American citizen at the age of eighty. On the ride to the immigration office two hundred miles away, she tells the unrevealed stories of her past to her loving daughter Euna. When, at the final interview, the officer unexpectedly calls Heeja by the name Yoshiko, a name she carried more than seventy years ago under Japanese imperial rule, Heeja begins to travel to the deepest abyss of her weary soul.”

I don’t think this description is TOO accurate. Much of the novella actually reminded me of oral histories, as there are very attentive details to Heeja’s past. The novella is, as described here, a kind of road novel, as Euna gets the chance to ask more and more things about Heeja’s past. What I appreciated was the way that Song represented the schism between Euna and Heeja’s understanding of history and the past. The gulf between them operates in part precisely because Heeja has not fully dealt with the complicated trajectory of her life. Part of Heeja’s reticence is obviously the trauma of her upbringing. For instance, her name Yoshiko was only given to her precisely because of the oppressive policies mobilized under the Japanese occupation of Korea. Heeja could not use her Korean name or speak Korean freely precisely because of colonial occupation. Thus, Heeja has not told much of this kind of context to Euna. The other element that I thought was absolutely outstanding was the concluding arc, which brings together the larger political stakes of the novella. Song is patiently taking us to the point where we fully understand why Heeja might be a little bit ambivalent about becoming a U.S. Citizen. Over the course of Heeja’s life, she has had to show a form of loyalty to multiple different national entities, including Japan, North Korea, South Korea, and the United States. One of the most problematic moments is when she’s in South Korea, and she is forced to conceal her North Korean background. For Heeja, the concept of her many “flags,” as is alluded to in the title, is that it comes with so many possible burdens and expectations. At her age, can she really be expected to flee and make a new life if she had to yet again? This question is the one that pushes the novella forward. Song’s work of course ultimately reminds us of the Korea’s quite turbulent history. Heeja’s age, of course, also emphasizes how experiential memory of this history is slowly ebbing away. 

Buy the Book Here:

http://quattrobooks.ca/books/yoshikos-flags/

Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Nicholas Clark
Web Posting: Xiomara Forbez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don't hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at sohnucr@gmail.com
Nicholas Clark, PhD Student in English, at nclar004@ucr.edu