Theme of Odyssey In Quiet Odyssey and Talking to High Monks in the Snow
The odyssey is one of the most common themes within literature. In two recent works by Asian-American authors, the odyssey is revealed to have both a spiritual and a literal component. In Mary Piak Lee's autobiography, Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America, the author travels to America as a child. Her internal odyssey is one of finding a sense of belonging within herself, and within a turn of the century America that is often tinged by racism. Lydia Yuri Minatoya's odyssey within her memoir, In Talking to High Monks in the Snow: An Asian American Odyssey is also about finding her place. Minatoya struggles with reconciling her Japanese heritage with many of her modern ...
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times, the word odyssey has come to have both a spiritual component, and a more literal, physical meaning. The Merriam Webster dictionary gives two definitions for the word odyssey: 1) "a long wandering or voyage usually marked by many changes of fortune," and 2) "an intellectual or spiritual wandering or quest."
Mary Piak Lee's autobiography, Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America, is the story of her childhood in career, and her life after she and her parents move to America. Quiet Odyssey begins unassumingly enough as Paik Lee notes, "Korea, a small country attached to the northeast of china had been independent for centuries before 1882." She notes that the Japanese takeover of Korea in the early 1900s "began a long history of aggression against Korea and created the unhappy world in which the Koreas have lived since 1905. It is in the climate of this political upheaval that Paik Lee's journey begins. She enjoys a quite life in Korea, with extended ...
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from house to house, teaching the women to read and write so they could study the Bible with her." Eventually, she began to dream of educating more girls, and started the first girls' school in her small town. The author notes, "Her life story shows that when women get together and work for a good cause, miracles can happen. From a most humble beginning, Grandmother saw her dream grow, bit by bit ... Many years later, I met several women in Los Angeles who had graduated from her school."
In Quiet Odyssey, Paik Lee faces the challenge of making a life for herself in a country that is socially, culturally, politically, and even economically different from her native Korea. She ...
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Theme of Odyssey In Quiet Odyssey and Talking to High Monks in the Snow. (2016, April 15). Retrieved November 28, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Theme-Odyssey-Quiet-Odyssey-Talking-High/105553
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"Theme of Odyssey In Quiet Odyssey and Talking to High Monks in the Snow." Essayworld.com. April 15, 2016. Accessed November 28, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Theme-Odyssey-Quiet-Odyssey-Talking-High/105553.
"Theme of Odyssey In Quiet Odyssey and Talking to High Monks in the Snow." Essayworld.com. April 15, 2016. Accessed November 28, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Theme-Odyssey-Quiet-Odyssey-Talking-High/105553.
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