| Kang Gyeong-ae | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 20, 1907 |
| Died | April 26, 1944 |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | South Korea |
| Period | 1907-1944 |
Kang Gyeong-ae (20 April 1907 - 26 April 1944) (Hangul: 강경애) was a South Korean writer.
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Kang Gyeong-ae was born in Songhwa, Hwanghae-do, and had an unhappy childhood.[1] She was the daughter of a servant, fatherless by five years of age, forced to moved to Changyeon where her mother married a man with three children, all of which resulted in substantial unhappiness.[2]
Kang was something of a prodigy, reading the Tale of Ch’unhyang by age eight and beginning to learn the Korean alphabet at a time in which literacy was not valued for females. By age ten she had been nicknamed the “little acorn storyteller”[3] by neighborhood elders for whom she read traditional Korean tales.[4] She was a literary success as well, praised in school for her essay writing and writing and reading fictions for her friends.[5]
Kang was a rebel who enrolled in a Catholic boarding school from which she was expelled for participating in a sit-in. She met a college student who was visiting from Tokyo, moved to Seoul with him, and began an affair. When the affair failed, she moved back to her family in Hwanghae-do.[6]
In 1931 Kang began publishing her writing (“P'ag ŭm” or Broken Zither, 19310[7]), and moved to Manchuria as a newlywed, married to a communist who divorced his first wife. She lived as a housewife in Yongjin and began to churn out work. This period lasted seven years after which Kang ceased writing fiction altogether.[8] This was partly related to the fact that she became the managing editor of the Manchurian Chosun Ilbo.[9]
On April 26, 1944, one month after her mother died,[10] Kang Kyŏng-ae died at her home in Hwanghae Province.
Kang is often mentioned by literary critics as one of the extraordinary female writers of the colonial period.[11] She produced works focusing on the Korean underclass often based on her experiences with extremely poor Koreans in Manchuria, where many of her works are sited. These include[12]: The Broken Geomungo (Pageum), Vegetable Garden (Chaejeon), Football Game (Chukgu jeon), and Mother and Child (Moja). She also wrote proto-feminist works focusing on women’s oppression including Mothers and Daughters (Eomeoni wa ttal).[13] Most of her works are anti-love/anti family, in which only those women who cut their ties with their failed relationships can achieve freedom.[14]
The Human Problem (Ingan munje), which many consider her best work, deals with a multiplicity of class and gender issues in its story of an educated man troubled by economic struggles who ultimately meets a sad death.[15]
On Wonso Pond ISBN 978-1558616011
The Broken Geomungo (Pageum)
Vegetable Garden (Chaejeon)
Football Game (Chukgu jeon)
Mother and Child (Moja)
Mothers and Daughters (Eomeoni wa ttal)
The Human Problem (Ingan munje)
Salt (Sogom 1934)