Gina Chung is a Brooklyn-based Korean American writer and MFA fiction candidate at the New School. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Catapult, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, F(r)iction, Fugue, Wigleaf, Waxwing, Split Lip Magazine, Jellyfish Review, VIDA Review, and LIT Magazine, and her stories have been recognized by the Black Warrior Review Contest, the Los Angeles Review Literary Awards, the CRAFT Elements Contest, and the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest, as well as being named Longform Fiction Pick of the Week. Find her at gina-chung.com. An excerpt from her story “Human Hearts” can be found here. It appears in the May/June 2021 issue of the Kenyon Review.
What was your original impetus for writing “Human Hearts”?
I’ve always been drawn to the myth of the kumiho, or Korean fox spirit. Unlike other East Asian fox spirit archetypes, such as the kitsune, the kumiho is almost always seen as malignant and monstrous. Like many female monsters, she is seen as a threat to the patriarchal order because of her agency, power, and ability to take what she needs from men and destroy them. With this story, I wanted to explore what it would be like to be an atypical kumiho—to be a powerful, immortal being who is, at the same time, incredibly vulnerable because of her fears and how little she knows or trusts herself. My protagonist Okja is everything that a kumiho isn’t supposed to be: she’s awkward, fearful, not considered beautiful, and doesn’t enjoy killing in the way that her mother and sister do. Like most children of abusive parents, she internalizes her mother’s cruelty and tells herself that she deserves it because, as a half-human kumiho, she embodies everything that her mother despises about humans. And yet, when she does encounter humans later on in the story, she actually finds herself becoming more kumiho-like. It’s only in reconciling these two parts of herself that she is able to realize that she is more than just her sister’s foil, or her mother’s scapegoat, and choose another path for herself.
The kumiho that appears in your story is based on Korean folklore. Was the folktale one you were already familiar with before beginning the project? What did your research process entail when choosing which attributes of the legend you wanted to include and reference within this story’s parameters?
When I was a kid, I came across a Korean folktale called “The Fox Sister,” in which a young boy, with the help of a monk, must destroy a kumiho who devours his sister, takes on her appearance, and then kills and eats his parents as well. I was haunted by that story and its use of disguises and doubling, as well as the fact that the kumiho, despite her power, was so easily defeated by the men. Since then, I’ve always wanted to tell a kumiho story from the perspective of the fox spirit herself.
I learned, through my research, that kumiho, which are usually depicted with nine tails, are said to be foxes who have gained their powers by living for a thousand years. They are also said to be shapeshifters, usually taking the guise of a beautiful woman or girl, which I had a lot of fun working with in the story. I did take some liberties with the lore around kumiho by making Okja and Mija half-human. Kumiho are said to use their beauty only to lure and kill men for their hearts or livers, and I couldn’t find any legends about a kumiho actually having a sexual or romantic relationship with a human (though if they do exist, I’m sure it’s happened!). But it occurred to me that Okja and Mija’s mother, despite her distaste for humans, would probably have been fascinated by them, and that that could have led her to seek out and seduce one. I was also interested in the idea that a kumiho, which is already a hybridized and contested figure, could become even more so as a result of her parentage.
Could you talk about the way the experience of family loss unites characters in this story—aptly titled “Human Hearts”? I’m especially interested in the way the narrator observes the expressions of grief within the shaman’s family and breaks down the barriers between her own vulnerability and defense.
I think I’m almost always writing about family dynamics and how they are shaped or impacted by loss. Grief is such a personal and isolating experience, and the way that different members of a family might deal with grief says so much not just about their relationship with the person who has been lost, but also how their role within the family is disrupted by that loss. For Okja, Mija represented everything that she couldn’t be, but instead of resenting her, she loved her and relied on her to protect her from their mother. And so, with Mija’s death, Okja’s ability to forgive her mother is totally challenged, as is her ability to accept her role as the family failure. In terms of the parallels between the two families, I wanted to complicate Okja’s perception of the shaman’s family by having her recognize and understand their grief over Yeonghee’s death. It was also important to me to have her see the parallels between herself and Yeongchul, as the two less-favored children who can’t help but destroy themselves and others in their never-ending pursuit of their parents’ love and approval.
How has your writing changed since you started out?
When I first began writing fiction, I would always start from a place of great enthusiasm and energy about a particular idea or image I had in my head, but eventually, I would run out of steam and abandon the story because I never knew how it should end. It took learning more about the craft of fiction for me to understand that a story is so often driven by characters having a distinct want or need, and how that want or need gets them into or out of trouble. Writing towards that, towards figuring out what my characters want, has really changed the way I approach fiction writing—now it’s much easier for me to see, after enough time spent with a story, how I think it needs to end, and it’s made me a more confident writer.
On a more personal note, I also can’t say enough about how important it was for my trajectory as a writer to find a writing community, trusted readers, and mentors and teachers who were able to help me along the way. Writing is, as many of us know, lonely work, and it’s crucial to have people in your corner who can see what it is you’re trying to do, ask you the important questions, and cheer you on. When you’re first starting out, you need to have people who believe in you, so that eventually you can also believe in you.
What is either the best or the worst piece of writing advice you’ve received or given?
The best piece of writing advice (it’s also just good life advice) I’ve ever received was from my thesis advisor, the wonderful Mira Jacob. During a seminar I took with Mira at The New School, she told our class something that I’ve written down and committed to memory since then: “Don’t get scared. Get curious.” When I get stuck with my writing, it’s often because I’m scared—scared that I’m getting it wrong, that I’m not up to the task, that what I’m trying to say isn’t very original or interesting, or that the thing I’m writing is going to hurt me or someone else. When I start to feel that feeling, of being afraid that everything I’m doing is wrong and that I’ll never be able to write again or finish what I’m working on, I try to follow Mira’s advice and think about what it would look like for me to approach that thing from a place of curiosity, rather than fear. Fear can certainly be a useful and important feeling, but for me, it’s not a generative one. Asking myself questions about that fear has helped me to better understand myself as a writer and what I need in order to protect my relationship to my work.