While most people can point to an influential teacher, English graduate student Seong-Hoon Kim changed his entire academic concentration to focus on a professor’s writing.
Kim received a fellowship from the Sequoyah National Research Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to research indigenous literature from professor Simon Ortiz’s life and writing.
Kim first took a class on indigenous poetry with Ortiz in spring 2010.
“(Ortiz) is a great poet,” Kim said. “I was very overwhelmed by his presence as a professor and a national poet.”
A concentration in indigenous literature was the last thing on Kim’s mind when he came to ASU from South Korea in 2008 to pursue a graduate degree on the British and American modernism movements in literature.
Kim said he grew up watching American western movies and he, as well as most Koreans he knows, thought of American Indians as ancient and primitive.
“(Ortiz’s class) was an eye-opening moment for me,” Kim said.
After learning more about American Indian literature, Kim began to compare it to South Korea's history.
He said South Korea was officially colonized by Japan in the early 20th century, and he saw parallels between post-colonial South Korea and the post-colonial America.
Ortiz said he thought his writing intrigued Kim because of Kim’s childhood and their shared experiences in colonized countries.
Ortiz is known as a key figure in the “Red Power” movement of the mid-20th century, something he said is often inaccurately referred to as the “Native American Renaissance.”
“It’s not so much a renaissance because literature was being presented for the first time,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz was a college student during the 1960s when the movement started. He worked as an editor for two indigenous newspapers, the Rough Rock Community News andAmericans Before Columbus, as well as writing his own poetry and stories.
He said he wrote his own original work, but based it on oral tradition.
“When your knowledge of yourself is embedded in you, you express as you, but within a community context,” Ortiz said.
Kim’s focus is on how Ortiz’s work began to influence activist movements, including the National Indian Youth Council.
“Few to no critics have ever focused on issues in this literary field, even though it was an important moment,” Kim said.
He will travel to the Sequoyah National Research Center in March and continue researching Ortiz’s writing there.
Department of English Chair Maureen Goggin said the department was proud of Kim’s accomplishment.
“This is a wonderful honor for Mr. Kim,” Goggin said. “It shows he’s been well-prepared and speaks well of both him and the English department.”
Reach the reporter at julia.shumway@asu.edu or follow @JMShumway on Twitter.
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