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Memory, Community, Identity: Narrating “Chosen” By Zainichi Korean Women in Japan
Zainichi Korean women invoke lives and experiences that reflect class, gender, hierarchy and patriarchy. The notion of “Zainichi” and “women” women has undergone a vivid transformation provoking the question, “What constitutes Zainchi womanhood in a transnational context?” Undoubtedly their identities are constantly evolving, an on-going process of construction and reconstruction in the milieu of multi-cultural, hybrid and hyphenated identities, and situational ethnicities. Many situate themselves in more than one nation-state, displaying intricacies of multiple selves. Thus we ask: What are the dynamics of multiplicity, diversity, malleability, and/ or resistance that Korean women employ in positioning and defining themselves within their own community and society? What are the commonalities and differences of Korean women’s experiences in their cultural settings? What are the discursive frameworks of adjustment and settlement, flux and change, unyielding and stable structures and strategies articulated in relation to work, family, children, and social ties? How do they juxtapose their homeland’s “traditional” value system with new cultural and social encounters? In what way does acceptance, negation, negotiation, and agency affect their identity and legitimacy in society? How do they articulate the spatial imaginaries of “home” and the emotional embodiment of nostalgia, longing, belonging, displacement, and alienation? This paper attempts to present a transgenerational articulation of selves and emerging identities of women, their stories, and meaning within a transnational context. It elucidates narratives that pertain to Zainichi women’s cultural expression of who they are and how they see themselves within the Japanese as well as their own ethnic community.