Sun & Moon by Kathleen Seros

is a book of Korean folk tales—illustrated by white artists who’ve lived in Korea longer than I ever will—from a Korean publishing house located in New Jersey & Seoul, first published in 1982, written in English & sold to me in a Koreatown bookstore in New York City.

When I was a little girl, I flipped to the back and found no sources but blank pages that whispered trust me. The jacket flap stated the book was best “for libraries with large Oriental audiences.” Seros, Sibley, and Krause no doubt created a beautiful book—who knew that neons & pastels could look this good? My parents hadn’t heard of some of the stories, a cursory Google search on some titles yielded “Japanese,” yet they gifted me the thrill of believing I belonged to something beyond myself.

Seros told me of tricksters, animals, farmers, dragons, little children. I found myself climbing bridges & scaling heavenly gold chains alongside them, only to never see the end. I have since learned to give up & drop on the growing tree of how my father got his name, my mother’s pregnancy dreams, my grandfather’s choice to quit smoking—my own family folklore, something to be undeniably mine forever.

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When thinking about the prompt of “retelling folklore,” I came to the realization that I didn’t really have any folklore to “retell.” It felt disingenuous and uninteresting for me to do a European fairytale, which are the ones I’m most familiar with, because I didn’t think I had anything meaningful to say about them. Instead, I decided to write a piece about my first (and pretty much only) exposure to Korean folklore, and how much distance I felt from the actual stories themselves. My desire for ownership over some sort of story or culture felt, and still feels, overwhelming, which is something I think a lot many children of immigrants could understand. However, I have more fondness now for my personal and family history that give me a “culture” that I can belong to.

Author’s bio:

Jisu Yee is a high schooler from New York whose writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. She is an Incandescent Summer Studio alum as well as a current staff writer for The Incandescent Review. While she primarily writes poetry or creative nonfiction, she is also the creator, editor, and writer of The ABLE Initiative’s newsletter. This summer, she will be taking an editing course for Polyphony Lit, mentoring for The Incandescent Studio, and participating in an Ellipsis Creative Writing Workshop.