Unacknowledged Legislators: A Comparative Reading of Sukyung Huh and Joy Harjo

Abstract

This paper compares the late Korean poet Sukyung Huh’s Global Blues and American Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings. Both poets share experiences of leaving their ancestral homeland and grappling with the challenges of modernity and its impact on humanity. However, their intersection has often been overlooked due to the academic barriers that separate Korean and American literature, Asians and Americans, humanities and social sciences, and so on. This paper criticizes the limitations of such national perspectives, argues for a global framework that transcends national boundaries, and emphasizes the need to revise notions of modernity, national literature, and canon from a global perspective. For instance, we compare the limited but powerful gestures toward hope found in Huh’s and Harjo’s frequent evocations of the power of memory, both personal and institutional. Such gestures suggest a dynamic fluidity within global humanities that transcends time and space, braiding many strands of world cultural heritages and Earth’s natural memories and constantly reshaping the modern imaginaries of Me and Not-Me into the imaginaries of Sentient Beings on Earth. Critically examining the works of Sukyung Huh and Joy Harjo and stressing the need to shift from a narrow national literary perspective to a broader global literary framework, it ultimately critiques existing approaches that are constrained by an Anglo-Euro-centered view of modernity, national literature, and canon, and argues for a global framework that considers the interconnectedness of humanity in the history of Earth. Connecting and comparing poets like Huh and Harjo will demonstrate the dynamic convergence of ideas and influences across cultures, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of human experiences.