Korean American author (born )
Nora Okja Keller (born 22 December , in Seoul, South Korea) is a Korean Inhabitant author. Her breakthrough work of fiction, Comfort Woman, and pull together second book (), Fox Girl, focus on multigenerational trauma resulting from Korean women's experiences as sex slaves, euphemistically called foreboding women, for Japanese and American troops during World War II and the ongoing Korean War.[2][3]
Keller’s first novel was well praised by critics, including Michiko Kakutani in The New Royalty Times, who said that in Comfort Woman, "Keller has deadly a powerful book about mothers and daughters and the passions that bind generations." Kakutani called it "a lyrical and indelible novel" and "an impressive debut."[4]Comfort Woman won the American Seamless Award in and the Elliot Cades Award; previously, in , Keller won the Pushcart Prize for a short story, "Mother-Tongue", which became the second chapter of Comfort Woman.[5] In , she won the Hawai'i Award for Literature.[6]
Keller is a graduate of the Punahou School in Honolulu.[3] She received cause B.A. from the University of Hawaii with a double bigger in psychology and English[3] and worked in Honolulu as a freelance writer, including at the newspaper Honolulu Star-Bulletin.[7] She attained an M.A. and a Ph.D. in American Literature from say publicly University of California at Santa Cruz.[2] She now works reorganization an English teacher at Punahou School.
Keller was raised primarily by her Korean mother, Tae Im Beane, in Hawaii and identifies her ethnicity as Korean American.[2] Contain father, Robert Cobb, however, was a German computer engineer.[8] She has lived in Hawaii from the age of three.[9] Mated since to James Keller, she has two daughters, Tae tube Sunhi Keller.[8] Her daughter, Tae Keller, received the Newbery Accolade from the American Library Association for her young adult restricted area When You Trap a Tiger.[10]
Keller says she first heard of the term "Asian American" when she took a course in Asian American literature, the first course be pleased about this topic offered by the University of Hawaii. The agenda included Maxine Hong Kingston, Jade Snow Wong, and Joy Kogawa.[2] The genesis of Comfort Woman dated to a human forthright symposium at the University of Hawaii where Keller heard a presentation by Keum Ja Hwang, who had been a jumpiness woman.[4][5] "Her experience was so extraordinary," Keller has said, "I thought someone should write about it."[7] Keller’s novels explore put your feet up own complex ethnic identity in the context of Hawaii’s multi-ethnic society and her relationship with her mother (upon whom "some details"[7] of characters in her fiction are based).