The Impact of the Bible on Asian American Writing: The Cases of Richard E. Kim, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Li-Young Lee 1

John J. Han

Introduction

Numerous scholars and critics have discussed the influence of the Bible on mainstream Western authors. In their lecture series The Bible and Western Culture (1996), for example, Michael Sugrue and three other scholars discuss the effect of Scripture on Thomas More’s Utopia, William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and other literary works in the Western tradition. David Daniell, in his voluminous work The Bible in English (2003), notes that the greatness of British literature from the 1580s to the 1680s “was built on many foundations.” However, he adds, “In the successful endeavour to make a literature that led all Europe, a very large, possibly the largest area of influence was the English Bible” (463). Meanwhile, in his lecture “The Influence of the King James Version on English Literature,” Cleland Boyd McAfee identifies three areas of biblical influence on English literature: style, language, and material. Many British and American writers turn to Scripture for their writing style, allusions, characters, illustrations, and subject matter. 2 A substantial amount of research has also focused on the impact of Scripture on African American authors.

Unfortunately, little critical attention has been given to the use of the Bible by Asian American writers. With the exception of the largely Roman Catholic Filipinos, Asians have long been identified with non-Christian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, shamanism, and animism. In the late 1800s, Bret Harte’s poem “The Heathen Chinee” popularized the perception that Chinese people are pagans whose ways are “dark” and “peculiar.” 3 Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu series also augmented the early twentieth-century stereotype of the Chinese as intelligent but sinister heathens. 4

Even some Asian American writers willingly adopted the image of Asians as pagans. In the 1920s through the 1950s, Dr. No-Yong Park, a Harvard-educated Korean/Chinese American scholar, wrote several nonfiction books for readers who were curious of the Asian lifestyle and the future of China. In one of those books, Chinaman’s Chance (1940), he chronicles the challenges and triumphs of his youthful years in the United States. As a guest speaker at a Midwestern university, he was treated “like a pet” by the administrators and faculty (69). He then recollects those times when the colleges he visited allowed him to stay at the co-ed dormitories: “At first it seemed to me unthinkable that I, a heathen Chinese whose ways are supposed to be so dark, should be invited to stay under the same roof with American college girls even for one night” (87).

Another reason for the critical inattention to the biblical elements in Asian American writing is that there is no Asian American work comparable to Dante Alighieri’s Catholic epic poem The Divine Comedy, John Bunyan’s allegory The Pilgrim's Progress, and John Milton’s Protestant epic poem Paradise Lost. Until very recently, most American writers of Asian descent depended heavily on autobiography as a medium for literary expression. Some of these writers were professing Christians but had neither high-level language skills nor time to produce sophisticated poems or dramas with Christian themes.

The passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, however, has brought Asian immigrants to the United States in large numbers, significantly changing the religious landscape of America. Many Asian immigrants, especially Filipinos, Koreans, and Vietnamese, already became Christians before they came to this country. Other Asian immigrants—especially Chinese—convert to Christian faith once they come to America. Thousands of ethnic Korean churches are found in the United States, and hundreds of ethnic Chinese churches in this country serve as launching pads for evangelization of the mainland Chinese. A noticeable increase can also be seen in the number of Asian American writers who reflect Christian senses and sensibilities in their works. The purpose of this paper is to examine how three critically acclaimed Asian American authors—Richard E. Kim, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Li-Young Lee—turned to Scripture for their style, language, and material.

Richard E. Kim

Born in present-day North Korea in 1938, Richard E. Kim came to the United States in 1955 and studied political science and philosophy at Middlebury College. Without receiving his bachelor’s degree, Kim pursued and earned two master’s degrees in creative writing, from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Iowa, respectively. He is one of the best known among Korean American novelists, his fame resting chiefly on three works, The Martyred (1964), The Innocent (1968), and Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood (1970).

Kim cites several familial influences on his upbringing in Korea. His father—a fighter for national independence during Japanese colonial rule—and uncles taught him to put the interests of the motherland first. His maternal grandfather, a Christian minister executed by communists shortly before the outbreak of the Korean War, nourished his religious or metaphysical inclinations; Kim recalls reading many books in his grandfather's study as a child. Kim’s appreciation for fine arts came from his mother and maternal uncles, all of whom were either musicians or artists (Kim, Search 28). Kim advocates a view of history based on the relationship between God and humanity, in contrast to the Hegelian or Marxist view of history which he believes is godless and materialistic (Kim, Search 47).

The Martyred , Kim’s most celebrated novel, deals existentially with the execution of twelve Christian ministers in Pyongyang by communists and the mysterious survival of two others, Mr. Hann and Mr. Shin, immediately before the Korean War. When the United States and South Korean forces briefly occupy Pyongyang, Captain Lee, an intelligence officer in the South Korean army and the narrator of the novel, is ordered to investigate the case. He learns that Mr. Shin was spared allegedly because he was courageous enough to spit in the communist officer’s face and that Mr. Hann survived for reasons of insanity. Although he himself has lost his Christian faith, Mr. Shin continues to minister to his followers because he does not want to leave them in despair and hopelessness. Near the end of the novel, he confesses that he was a Judas figure who betrayed the twelve ministers to save his own life. After his death, rumors abound that Mr. Shin has resurrected and now is a faithful minister in different parts of Korea.

In addition to the obvious theme of betrayal, Kim’s novel existentially tackles the nature of truth. Mr. Shin is a utilitarian thinker willing to tell a lie if he believes his lying will help the greatest possible number of people. When the narrator asks Mr. Shin if he is telling the truth about his survival, Mr. Shin pleads innocent of deception, adding, “I speak the truth of my conscience, Captain.... Don’t you realize that you are speaking of the fact of man, and I of the truth of my faith?” (Kim, Martyred 55). Later on, Mr. Shin justifies his course of action by arguing that hope should be preached even if the preacher does not believe in hope. The narrator asks, “What about your own despair?” to which Mr. Shin replies, “That is my cross! I must bear that alone” (Kim, Martyred 257).

Biblical allusions are frequently used in Kim’s work. Early in the novel, for example, the narrator asks Mr. Shin, “Your god—is he aware of the suffering of his people?” This is an allusion to God’s concern for the suffering of Israel in Egypt. 5 When the narrator asks Mr. Shin if he is innocent of the deaths of his fellow ministers, he replies, “It is for Him to judge me” (Martyred 54), which alludes to Matthew 7:1 (“Do not judge lest you be judged”). 5 In his conversation with the chaplain, Colonel Chang alludes to Matthew 9:17a (“Nor do men pour new wine into old wineskins”) when he says that the Christians in Pyongyang “need new wine to fill the old bottles” (Kim, Martyred 75). Before he dies, Mr. Shin leaves the narrator with the following last words: “Love man, Captain. Help him! Bear your cross with courage, courage to fight despair, to love man, to have pity on mortal man” (Kim, Martyred 286). This remark is a reference to Mark 8:34, in which Jesus proclaims, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Thus, by depending upon the Bible, the author explores the philosophical issue of what it means to have Christian faith, creates a moral framework for the action of the story, and arouses certain expectations in the reader’s imagination.

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982) was born in Pusan, Korea, and immigrated to the United States with her family in 1961. She attended Catholic schools, studying the French language as well as Greek and Latin classical literature. After graduating from the University of San Francisco, also a Catholic institution, she transferred to the University of California at Berkeley, where she earned a B.A. in comparative literature, a B.A. in art, and an M.F.A. in art. Cha was a producer, director, performer, creator of video and film productions, and published texts. She is best remembered for Dictee (1982), an autobiography published several months before she was murdered by a stranger in 1982.

Dictee is composed in a postmodern style. Rather than using linear narration, Cha blends several forms of “texts,” including visual images, passages from the Bible, personal meditation, class assignments, Mass prayers, catechism, calligraphy, Chinese charts of human anatomy, journals, a typed letter, and handwritten manuscripts. Dictee tells the story of several women from European and Korean history, including the Korean revolutionary Yu Gwan Soon, the French revolutionary Saint Joan of Arc, the Greek goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone, Cha’s Korean mother, and Cha herself.

Prominent in Dictee are biblical images of death and rebirth as applied to Cha’s life journey as an immigrant from Korea. In the first section of the book, she chronicles her struggle to adapt to American life by alluding to Christ’s suffering. Instead of using complete sentences, she lists words and phrases taken directly from Catholic liturgy but ultimately from the Bible: “Black ash from the Palm Hosannah,” “The Host Wafer (His Body. His Blood),” “(Wine to Blood. Bread to Flesh.),” “Black dot of ash on the forehead,” and “Crucifixion to follow” (Cha 13). Taken together, these sentence fragments evoke the mood of suffering which Cha endured as a child learning a new way of living in her adopted country.

In the section “Callilope Epic Poetry,” Cha chronicles her Korean mother’s life in Manchuria by alluding to Satan’s three temptations of Jesus in the wilderness (Matt. 4: 1-11; Luke 4:1-13). Still a teenager, the mother falls into a deep sleep and dreams of being tempted by three strangely beautiful, smiling women, each of whom carries a large dish of food. When the first woman brings food, the mother shakes her head in refusal despite its aroma and the beautiful arrangement. Cha compares her mother’s successful resistance of the first temptation to Christ’s defeat of the temptation to fulfill the needs of the body:

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 2. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward ahungered. 3. And when the tempter Came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. 4. But he answered and said, it is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

When the second woman offers another plate of food, Cha’s mother shakes her head. This time, her struggle is compared to Christ's struggle against the temptation to perform an unnecessary miracle:

5. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, 6. And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hand they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. 7. Jesus said unto him It is written again, Thou shall not tempt the Lord thy God.

Finally, the third woman says to the mother, “then you must eat from mine.” The mother rejects the final plate of food in the same way Christ triumphed over the temptation to worship the devil:

8. Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; 9. And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. 10. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. 11. Then the devil leaveth him, and behold, angels came and ministered unto him. 6

With the mother’s third rejection, the tempter pushes her down and says, “If you do not eat, you must become a cripple!” The mother falls deep. Finally, she awakens holding her parents’ hands (Cha 52-53).

For Cha, the Bible is a cultural text which provides universally recognizable symbols and motifs; she illustrates the parallels between biblical stories—especially those of suffering—and contemporary life stories. By using Scripture, the author demonstrates that sufferings of Koreans as colonized people, as exiles in Manchuria, and as new immigrants to the United States are of biblical proportions.

Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, of Chinese parents in 1957. Two years later, after spending nineteen months in jail as a political prisoner, Lee’s father fled Indonesia with his family. The family traveled through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan before settling in the United States. Lee studied at several American universities, earning his B.A. at the University of Pittsburgh, and teaching at various schools, including Northwestern University and the University of Iowa. He has published such poetry collections as Rose (1986), The City in Which I Love You (1990), The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (1995), and Book of My Nights (2001). Lee lives with his wife and two sons in Chicago, where he works in a warehouse.

Lee’s father was a Christian minister who read to him from the King James Bible so that he could learn English. In an interview with Marie Jordan, Lee states, “The consciousness of the Bible stays with me.... God’s presence is in the cells of my body and deep in my subconscious.” Lee equates stillness with God. Asked what he means by the silence being God, he replies:

Do you know the verse in the Bible that reads, “Be still and know that I am God?” That kind of stillness, and silence. I think a really good poem can impart a stillness which is God—which is also awe. I would say that disillusionment is revelation and revelation is apocalypse and every poem is apocalyptic. On the one hand we have ecliptic things that hide and on the other hand we have apocalyptic things that reveal. The writing of poetry is writing that reveals, but doesn't just reveal a personal presence, it reveals a transpersonal presence and the dualities of that presence is silence, stillness, and the saturation of presence. ( Jordan; italics in the original)

Book of My Nights illustrates not only the poet’s familiarity with Scripture but also his biblical vision of reality. The volume addresses God, eternity, and heaven, among other themes. 7 In the poem “Nativity,” for example, Lee describes what it means to live and how we should prepare for the next world by using the metaphors of night and death. In the dark, a child asks what the world is. His sister replies, “An unfinished wing of heaven,” his brother replies, “A house inside the house,” and his mother replies, “One more song, then you go to sleep” (italics in the original). As he grows, he lies awake, asking the same question of the silence, which answers, “This night / arching over your sleepless wondering, / this night, the near ground / every reaching-out-to overreaches.” The silence’s answer is:

just to remind himself
out of what little earth and duration,
out of what immense good-bye,
each must make a safe place of his heart,
before so strange and wild a guest
as God approaches." (Lee 9-10)

Another poem, “Discrepancies, Happy and Sad,” uses moving into a larger house as a metaphor for entering heaven, the Christian’s home. The speaker’s family has moved into a larger house. Wandering among the rooms, the family members call, “Where are you?” and confusedly answer back and forth, “Over here!” Moving is somewhat similar to returning to one’s home village, which looks different from what it used to. The changes are both saddening and bewildering. Then, the speaker adds:

No. It’s more like a memory of heaven.
Voices coming closer, voices moving away,
and what we thought we knew
about life on earth confounding us.
And then that question
from which all the other questions begin. (22)

According to the Bible, New Testament believers are “enrolled in heaven” (Heb. 12:23). As inhabitants of heaven, Christians will enjoy blissful fellowship with each other. The speaker in Lee’s poem envisions heaven as a place where voices are heard near and far, memories from earth will feel confusing, and the fundamental question, “Where are you?” is asked.

Lee also uses biblical terminology in both Christian and non-Christian poems. Examples include “Night is the shadow of my father’s hands / setting the clock for resurrection” (in “Pillow”—1), “If I draw a second bird / in the woman’s lap, it’s ministering” (in “A Table in the Wilderness”—3; italics in the original), “When I awake, the story has changed / the firmament into domain, domain / into a house, and the sun speaks the day” (in “My Father’s House”—25), “But which is the lion / killed for the sake of the honey inside him, / and which the wine, stranded / in a valley, unredeemed?” (in “The Moon from Any Window”—28), and “And singing / collects the earth / about my rest, / making of my heart / the way home” (in “The Sleepless”—32).

In Book of My Nights, Lee examines the meanings of life, death, and heaven by alluding to the Bible. The author’s familiarity with Scripture is evidenced by his extensive use of Christian themes, motifs, and vocabulary. Compared with Richard E. Kim, who uses the Bible to convey an existential message, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, who uses the Bible as one of many literary tools for her writing, Lee demonstrates a more personal interaction with Scripture.

Conclusion

The use of the Bible by Asian American authors testifies to the universal appeal of Scripture as an archetypal text. It also demonstrates the impact the Bible has had on the way Asian Americans view the world. In increasing numbers, Asian immigrants embrace Christianity and hold to their Christian faith. It is ironic that Asian American writers use Scripture as an archetype at a time when mainstream American writers—influenced by postmodern thinking—are turning away from it.

Unlike Christian writers of the Western tradition, however, Asian American authors tend to embrace Christian faith while maintaining their traditional outlooks on life, especially Confucian philosophy. For example, Richard E. Kim, whose worldview is principally Christian, has much reverence for Confucius; in an interview, he refers to Confucius as “kong-ja-nim” (a Korean word translated as “Master Confucius”) (Kim, Search 150). Despite his profession of Christian faith, his novel preaches what Richard G. Lash calls the “doctrine of despair” (39), not the Christian doctrine of hope in Jesus Christ. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha blends Catholicism, Greek mythology, and ancient Chinese philosophy in Dictee. Li-Young Lee was affected by not only Christian faith but also Chinese philosophy. In an interview, he states that ancient Chinese poems his parents recited to him throughout his childhood gave him “the sense that they were instances of the small consciousness embedded in, or residing in, a larger consciousness.... [The] human psyche is embedded in nature. Products of the psyche are finally projections of nature” ( Jordan). Lee’s reply is rife with Eastern pantheism, which views that God is everything, and vice versa. Asians and Asian Americans have traditionally lived in a Confucian, Taoist, Hindu, Buddhist, or shamanistic culture for centuries; and, with few exceptions, those religions affect their way of thinking.

In this sense, Christian writers of Asian descent are highly postmodern and syncretic. 8 In his book Literature and the Gospel: Biblical Norms for Literature (1972), Merle Meeter defines a Christian writer as someone who “crafts his composition in the Biblical Christian perspective, with Jesus Christ, in whom all things meaningfully cohere, as its center.” The Christian philosophy of literature is founded on “such indubitable faith presuppositions as the eternal existence of the Triune God: Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer, Mediator, Sanctifier, Judge, and King.” It also affirms such biblical truths as “Creation, the Fall of Adam and Eve, by which all men have become sinful, the Flood, the physical-historical Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Christ for the Salvation of penitent sinners, and the Return of the Regnant Savior in Judgment to overthrow Satan and his followers and to establish the new heavens and earth” (vii). As we consider Asian American works by using Meeter’s criteria, we discover that—with the exception of Induk Pahk (1896-1980) who recorded her Christian testimonies based on theological fundamentalism and social conservatism—most Christian works are only partially Christian. 9

Notes

1 An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the 2004 International William Tyndale Conference at Regent University, Virginia, September 23-26, 2004. The theme of the conference was “The Bible as Battleground: The Impact of the English Bible in America.”

2 Regarding the influence of the Bible on Western writing, see also: C. S. Lewis, The Literary Impact of the Authorized Version (1950. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963); Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982); Northrop Frye, Words with Power: Being a Second Study of "the Bible and Literature” (1 st Harvest/HBJ ed. San Diego:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992); Larry J. Kreitzer, The Old Testament in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994); Stephen Prickett, Origins of Narrative: The Romantic Appropriation of the Bible (New York: Cambridge UP, 1996); Jeannette King, Women and the Word: Contemporary Women Novelists and the Bible (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 2000); Robert Alter, Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture (New Haven: Yale UP, 2000).

3 For the text of Harte’s 1870 poem, see: themediadrome.com/content/poetry/harte_heathen_chinee.htm. In 1876, this immensely popular poem was adapted into a melodrama by Bret Harte and Mark Twain, author of The Adventures ofTom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

4 Sax Rohmer (pseudonym of Arthur Sarsfield Ward) was born in Birmingham, England, of Irish parents before they immigrated to the United States. In his fiction, Rohmer refers to Dr. Fu-Manchu as “some dangerous Chinese devil” (34), “the hideous, crook-backed Chinaman” (44), “a danger to the entire white race” (100), “a menace to Europe and to America greater than that of the plague” (101), “an object supremely sinister” (125), “a venomous reptile” (131), and “the sinister Chinaman” (162), among many other racially prejudiced phrases.

5 All Bible quotations in this article are from the New American Standard Bible (NASB).

6 Either knowingly or unknowingly, Cha reverses the progression of the biblical narrative of Christ’s wilderness temptation. In the Bible, both Catholic and Protestant, verses 5-7 follow verses 8-11.

7 Perusing some of the titles in the volume reveals Lee’s preoccupation with biblical themes: “A Table in the Wilderness,” “Nativity,” “Hurry toward Beginning,” “The Well,” “My Father's House,” “In the Beginning,” “The Eternal Son,” and “A Dove! I Said.”

8 In The New Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (2003), reviewed in the present issue of Intégrité, Philip Jenkins discusses ancestor worship and shamanism as two prevalent forms of religious syncretsm in Asian Christian communities. At the 1991 annual meeting of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Korean theologian Hyun Kyung Chung unapologetically declared her religious eclecticism this way: “God speaks through Buddha, through shamans and through Christ in my culture. My bowel is Buddhist bowel, my heart is Buddhist heart, my right brain is Confucian brain, and my left brain is Christian brain” (120). Admittedly, this radical statement does not represent Korean Christianity, which is generally known for its fundamentalism, Puritan lifestyle, and social conservatism. However, it is true that Korean churches tend to be stiffly hierarchal regardless of their denominational affiliations, reflecting the influence of Confucianism which teaches absolute submission to higher authority.

9 Induk Pahk was a Korean immigrant who started the autobiographical tradition in Korean American writing. Her three books September Monkey (1954), The Hour of the Tiger (1965), and The Cock Still Crows (1977) demonstrate a profound influence of Christian spirituality on her worldview.

Works Cited

The Bible. New American Standard Bible.

Cha, Theresa Hak Kyung. Dictee. New York: Tanam Press, 1982.

Daniell, David. The Bible in English. New Haven: Yale UP, 2003.

Harte, Bret. “The Heathen Chinee.” 15 Nov. 2004. <http://www.themediadrome.com/content/poetry/harte_heathen_chinee.htm>

Jordan, Marie. "An Interview with Li-Young Lee." Writer's Chronicle May/Summer 2002. 21 Sept. 2004. <http://www.awpwriter.org/magazine/writers/mjordan.htm>

Kim, Richard E. In Search of Lost Years. Seoul, Korea: Somundang, 1985. In Korean.

_______. The Martyred: A Novel. New York: G. Braziller, 1964.

McAfee, Cleland Boyd. “The Influence of the King James Version on English Literature.” 15 Sept. 2004. <http://williams.az.us/writers/library/religious/studykingjames.html#lecture4>

Lash, Richard G. "'The Martyred' in Theological View." Korea Journal 1 Aug. 1965: 55+.

Lee, Li-Young. Book of My Nights: Poems. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2001.

Meeter, Merle. Literature and the Gospel: Biblical Norms for Literature. Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1972.

Park, No-Yong. Chinaman's Chance. 3rd ed. Boston: Meador, 1948.

Rohmer, Sax. The Fu-Manchu Omnibus. Vol. 1 (containing The Mystery of Dr. Fu- Manchu, The Devil Doctor, and The Si-Fan Mysteries; originally published in 1913, 1916, and 1917, respectively.) London: Allison & Busby, 1995.

Sugrue, Michael et al. The Bible and Western Culture. Audiotape. Teaching Company, 1996.

JOHN J. HAN <hanjn@mobap.edu> is Professor of English at Missouri Baptist University, where he also serves as editor for Intégrité and chair of the Faith & Learning Committee. He earned an M.A. from Kansas State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In addition to having articles in such journals as Literature and Belief, Intégrité, and The Steinbeck Review, his essays on British, American, and Irish writers have been published in more than ten books. He has also translated Reginald Cherry’s Healing Prayer: God’s Divine Intervention in Medicine, Faith, and Prayer (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999) into Korean. Dr. Han’s research interests include twentieth-century American literature, Asian/Asian American writing, religion and literature, and Christian higher education. He is currently working on an anthology of Asian literatures.