The writing, ôRose of Sharon,ö by Myung Mi Kim, seems to straddle the forms between prose and poetry as it appears to tell the day in a life of a young Amerasian girl. Written in the first person from the viewpoint of the little girl, the reader is told from the beginning that the little girl is conscious of her mixed heritage since she has ôgolden brownö hair and is excluded from playing with the other children because of this (line 1). She seems to be also either anticipating a meeting with someone or daydreaming about it. She seems to be hoping someday to meet her elusive ôround-ôeyed father (line 10), the one that is never discussed at home (line 14). In the end, however, it is her mother the little girl misses as she reminisces about their time together. It is then that the reader learns of her motherÆs brutal murder at the hands of two ôBig Noseö men.
As Kim exposes the reader to more of the young girlÆs story, she takes the reader on a journey. The reader is lead from seeing the girl as a simple young schoolgirl on any school playground who may feel excluded because of her looks to understanding the complete exclusion this little girl faces as a child of mixed Asian/Anglo descent, and the daughter of an assumed prostitute who has been brutally and carelessly murdered by her own customers. At the bottom of the poem, there is a note that the Rose of Sharon is the national flower of Korea.
After reading this piece of writing, I realized that there were some assumptions I was making about the story and that I needed to clarify some terms. The assumption I was making was that the little girl was of mixed white and Asian heritage, since she has light brown hair. I then equated the term ôBig Noseö to mean white as well, but after ôgooglingö this term, I realized it could mean African-American or Jew as well. So, it could refer, basically, to anyone who is not Korean or Asian. I then looked up information...