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I'm often asked why I didn't include a glossary of Korean terms at the end of STAND UP, YUMI CHUNG and I'd like to take a moment to share the reason behind my decision https://twitter.com/RLWeasley/status/1321561206197522432
My story is told from the perspective of an 11 year old Korean American girl. She is bilingual. She sees and understands the world through the filter of both her American and Korean cultures which is why sometimes she uses Korean words to describe things
Part of what I aim to do as a writer, is bring you into Yumi's world. I want you, dear reader, to get immersed in it. I want you to see and smell and feel all things the way Yumi experiences it, in the most natural and authentic way possible.
That means, she's going to talk the way she usually talks. Since she's the narrator. She's not going to translate all the Korean. I don't want her to be Zach Morris from Saved By the Bell every time a foreign word comes up, because it'd be every other page, disrupting the flow
Instead, I want you to just go with it. I know it might feel jarring, you're not used to it. What's going on? But please just keep going. Trust me, I've been very intentional about which words to include & for the most part, you can piece together the general meanings by context
Now you know how Yumi feels. There are always Korean words she doesn't quite understand or weird English idioms she's never heard of. It's part of the experience of growing up in America with immigrant parents. She's neither fully this nor that. It's a constant struggle
If I were to include a glossary, I'd be robbing you of that chance to bond with Yumi. That dissonance and feeling like an outsider is part of why Yumi feels unheard or invisible. It's all there for a reason
Personally, I love glossaries and I'm a wikipedia heavy user because I like to know stuff. But for my book, I thought it'd work better without one. I thought it'd help you get to know my character and help you fall into the wonderful and confusing world of Korean-America
