In Harvey Award-winning Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s graphic novels (GRASS, THE WAITING), the Korean conflict offers a wealthy tapestry in which to discover the plight of ladies and social class. In THE NAKED TREE, Gendry-Kim continues this narrative together with her visually beautiful adaptation of Park Wan Suh’s traditional coming-of-age novel, mixing historical past and fiction with emotional immediacy and inventive finesse.
Taking place in 1951, the story finds 20-year-old Lee Kyeonga scraping collectively a dwelling in war-torn Seoul as a salesperson on the Post Exchange. By day, she sells handkerchiefs embellished with hand-painted portraits to American troopers. By evening, Kyeonga suffers in distress in a shabby shack together with her mom, who mourns the loss of her two oldest brothers throughout a bombing assault on the residence. When married artist Park Su-geun takes on a job as painter on the Post Exchange, Kyeonga finds herself drawn to him and makes use of her tryst with the painter in a quest to liberate herself from her circumstances. In Gendry-Kim’s fingers, The Naked Tree is devastating and highly effective, a haunting portrait of the aftermath of conflict and its trauma on survivors.
Gendry-Kim affords her ideas on her role as documentarian and spokesperson for ladies’s rights in an interview carried out in and translated from French. She additionally elaborates on how she approached recreating the well-known work by the influential modernist Park Su-geun, whose depictions of Korean every day life launched him into autopsy fame.
NANCY POWELL: Is The Naked Tree the primary time you’ve tailored a prose novel to graphic novel format?
KEUM SUK GENDRY-KIM: Indeed it was the primary time. After The Naked Tree, I tailored one other novel entitled Alexandra Kim: A Woman of Siberia.
POWELL: In the foreword to the e book, Ho Won-Sook, the creator’s daughter, writes, “it was as though the artist had burrowed into my mother’s soul to bring out the intentions of the original story.” What did this story imply to you as a reader and as an artist?
GENDRY-KIM: I can’t assist contemplating a work written as each a reader and an artist. When I first learn this novel, I instantly received underneath Kyeonga’s (the heroine’s) pores and skin. From the very starting of the e book, I might already see photographs of scenes in my head. It was so fascinating that I took the time to reread every passage to savor them much more. I actually loved adapting this e book into a graphic novel, regardless that the story is painful.
POWELL: What have been some of the challenges you discovered in adapting this novel? And how does the artistic course of evaluate with the method you used to create Grass and The Waiting?
GENDRY-KIM: The novel is over 300 pages lengthy. What was tough was making selections. I needed to omit from my graphic novel sure passages that I appreciated in the novel. On the opposite hand, I additionally needed so as to add sure parts that weren’t in the novel.
Grass and The Waiting are based mostly on testimonies (analysis and encounters) that I gathered. I had whole graphic and writing freedom. I might make adjustments, and I did, proper as much as the final second. Just earlier than the e book went to print.
For The Naked Tree, even when I had graphic freedom, I needed to stay devoted to the novel in define.
POWELL: Much of the subject material in these three books – Grass, The Waiting, and The Naked Tree – offers with the post-Korean conflict aftermath in ladies’s lives. And but you’ve solely touched the floor of this essential but understated topic. Do you see your self as a historian? What is the artist’s role in preserving and deciphering historical past?
GENDRY-KIM: I don’t contemplate myself a historian in any respect. What me in these three books was telling the tales of individuals who lived via the conflict, in order to keep away from repeating the identical horrors. In such conditions, the plight of ladies is even worse.
I don’t wish to say an excessive amount of in regards to the role of the artist. But whenever you meet these folks, or you’ve kinfolk who’ve lived via it, or you’ve lived via it your self, as an artist you’ll be able to’t stay silent.
POWELL: How did you uncover Park Su-geun’s work?
GENDRY-KIM: During my college years, after I was younger, I had already seen some of his work in books. He is acknowledged as an artist who painted small, on a regular basis folks with easy strokes and thick layers of paint that give a stone-like look.
POWELL: How did you strategy recreating Park Su-geun’s work in the e book? And did having a portray background assist in that regard?
GENDRY-KIM: I attempted to mimic some of his well-known work, which essentially needed to be included in this e book. I created some “original” ones by imitating his type.
I didn’t wish to copy his work precisely. But whenever you see the replica, if it’s reminiscent of his work, for me it’s a success.
POWELL: In an interview with The Asian American Writer’s Workshop, you spoke of the role of nature as “the most incredible artist.” Autumn and winter play an particularly outstanding role throughout the three books. When you go to create a story, do you additionally contemplate seasonality into the storyboarding course of?
GENDRY-KIM: Of course I do. For me, the seasons are essential in my books. Rain and snow might additionally imply many issues in my state of affairs. Because all this evokes colour, scent, mild, time, sound and silence in my books, even when the drawings are in black and white.
POWELL: Which manhwa artists are in your bookshelf now?
GENDRY-KIM: Ma Yeong-shin, Hong Yeong-sik, Ancco and another manhwaga books not translated into English.
POWELL: Which worldwide comedian e book artists do you wish to learn?
GENDRY-KIM: Drawn & Quarterly has printed Fujiwara Maki. But not in Korean but. I’m curious to learn it. And I wish to learn the more moderen books by Joe Sacco, Kate Beaton and plenty of different very good authors, however sadly, it’s tough to seek out them in Korean.
POWELL: And in the event you have been to translate a global comedian e book into Korean, which would it not be?
GENDRY-KIM: Dirty Plotte: The Complete Julie Doucet by Julie Doucet.
The Naked Tree is accessible out of your native bookstore and/or public library now.
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