Idgie Says:I'll be honest, I never read Jane Eyre so I cannot compare the stories. But I also believe that most stories can run along the same themes and be completely different books so I tend not to play the comparison game with them.
This book was interesting in that it told the tale of a girl who tries to be completely Korean and faithful to her culture, while being reminded on a continual basis by her family that she is indeed NOT 100% Korean. This is through no fault of her own, but it does seem to be held against her.
This novel is a coming of age tale where a young woman tries to figure out just where she fits in. Should she be white, Korean, married, single...... or just "be".
A good novel with a realistic approach to life's issues.
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RE JANE: A Novel (Penguin Books ; On-sale: April 19, 2016; $16.00; ISBN: 978014310794) by
Patricia Park is a fresh, contemporary retelling of Jane Eyre
and a poignant Korean-American debut novel that takes its heroine Jane
Re on a journey from Queens to Brooklyn to Seoul—and back.
For
Jane, a half-Korean, half-American orphan, Flushing, Queens, is the
place she’s been trying to escape from her whole life. Sardonic yet
vulnerable,
she toils, unappreciated, in her strict uncle’s grocery store and
politely observes the traditional principle of
nunchi (a combination of good manners, hierarchy, and
obligation). Desperate for a new life, she’s thrilled to become the au
pair for the Mazer-Farleys, two Brooklyn English professors and their
adopted Chinese daughter. Inducted into the world of organic
food co-ops, and nineteenth-century novels, Jane is the recipient of
Beth Mazer’s feminist lectures and Ed Farley’s very male attention. But
when a family death interrupts Jane and Ed’s blossoming affair, she
flies off to Seoul, leaving New York far behind.
Reconnecting
with family, and struggling to learn the ways of modern-day Korea, Jane
begins to wonder if Ed Farley is really the man for her. Jane returns
to Queens, where she must find a balance between two cultures and
accept who she really is.
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A Conversation with Patricia Park, author of RE JANE
What was the genesis of RE JANE? What inspired you to put a Korean-American immigrant spin on
Jane Eyre?
Whenever
I misbehaved as a child, my mother would say in her limited English,
“You act like orphan!” This always puzzled me—how can you
act like an orphan? But for mother, who grew up during the Korean
War, to be an orphan meant to act in a mischievous way that shamed your
family. It meant you never received “a good family education.” She was
simply reflecting the beliefs at the time.
I first read Jane Eyre
when I was twelve, and was struck by the many epithets thrown at Jane:
she was wicked, mischievous, friendless. Later, in grad school, I
learned those epithets reflected
the Victorian constructions of orphans. They were shameful, the
Other—of questionable lineage, morals, manners. My mind drew the link
between the Victorian construction of the orphan and the Korean post-war
one, and RE JANE was born.
How much did you draw from your own experiences in writing RE JANE?
Like
Jane, I also grew up in the Korean community in Flushing, Queens. I,
too, used to ride the 7 train, staring out at the Midtown skyline.
Unlike Jane, I’m not half-Korean; I’m “full.” In Jane,
I chose one of the most disenfranchised figures in Korean society—a
mixed-race, illegitimate orphan. In some ways, I might also represent
the eyes of Flushing, looking critically at Jane for not being “one of
us.”
You
received a Fulbright grant in order to research RE JANE in South Korea.
As a Korean-American woman yourself, were there particular aspects of
Korean culture that surprised you or that you
found unexpected in some way?
I
was hopelessly naive when I arrived in South Korea. Like many
Korean-Americans I thought the country was the same backwards,
poverty-stricken land of our parents’ stories. Turns out: the country
had advanced exponentially in the interim. The Koreans (unhyphenated)
found me rather amusing. I sounded like a 65-year-old fuddy-duddy with a
southern twang.
Nor
was I expecting the extreme aesthetic expectations put on women. Every
ad in the subway is for a plastic surgery clinic. There’s a makeup shop
or three on almost every block. I went out wearing
jeans, sneakers, and no makeup, and I got a bit of flak for that.
Teachers making “polite” suggestions, shopkeepers turning their noses,
that sort of thing.
RE
JANE discusses reverse immigration—what happens when “hyphenated”
Americans go back to the “motherland” and expect to be welcomed, only to
find that they don’t belong. What about the issues
facing Korean-American and Asian-American communities in regards to
immigration, reverse immigration, and community-building do you hope
that readers will understand after reading RE JANE?
Hyphenated Americans like me are often asked, “Where are you
really from?” It’s a dangerous question because (1) it implies you don’t
really belong here, and (2) it sets you up for the false expectation that you’ll be met with open arms “back home.”
Re Jane
is a quest for Jane to answer—as well as reject—that
question, as she travels from Flushing to Carroll Gardens to Seoul and
back. The novel is about finding a community that feels like the right
fit—regardless
of what or where we “come from.”
Your novel is partly about academics and academic life, which seems like a natural fit given
Jane Eyre’s
ubiquity in English literature programs. Why do you think that these
stories are so appealing, and why did you choose to write about
academics yourself?
When
I arrived at Swarthmore, I felt the same culture shock Jane feels on
arriving at the Mazer-Farleys’, which I can only describe as: WTF?
Everyone walked and talked in a way that felt very foreign to me. I guess I write about academia because it’s
the antithesis of the world I grew up in, and I find fish out of water stories fascinating.
In
RE JANE, you deal with issues of blue-collar work versus academic work.
Could you talk a bit about the tensions between these two forms of work
and how they challenge how Americans think
about what it means to be successful?
I come from a blue-collar background, and when I was part of
“the academy”
I
found the two worlds have very, very different notions of success. In
America, the more respectful (read: white-collar) your job, the more
“successful”
you
are deemed to be. I saw this when I was both a university professor and
a cashier. Ultimately, I think we should rethink the stigmas we attach
to certain kinds of work.
RE JANE is an explicitly feminist retelling of
Jane Eyre. What were some of the challenges that you faced in “translating” Victorian literature for a 21st-century audience?
In Nice Work,
David Lodge famously satirizes the four fates for Victorian heroines:
marriage, inheritance, emigration, and/or death. Joking aside, the
unfortunate reality is that women of
the era were not afforded the same options as their modern-day
counterparts. In early drafts of RE JANE, Jane came off as very passive
and old-fashioned—not
at all like Jane Eyre, who was fiercely independent despite her times (yet still—very much a product of). I realized I
had to abandon some traditional frameworks of Jane Eyre in order
to create a contemporary heroine who takes action yet still has room to
grow. I kept true to the spirit of the original Jane…even
if that meant a revision of Brontë’s iconic line,
“Reader, I married him.”
Transformative retellings of classic literature from a variety of perspectives and degrees of seriousness—from
Longbourn to
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies—are growing in popularity. Why do you think that this is the case, and what about retellings appeals to you?
What’s the saying—all
stories boil down to seven basic plots? It’s risky business to take a classic work that is so ingrained in the hearts
and minds of the public and put your own spin on it. For me, I
wanted to pay homage to one of my favorite novels, and
translate it into the times we live in now. Retellings certainly seem
to be in the zeitgeist. Not just in literature, but TV and movies as
well—Sherlock,
Transformers, 21 Jump Street. I think all but the purest of purists want a new and fresh way to experience something that is beloved to them.
What do you love most about RE JANE, and what do you hope that readers will love about it?
I
love the humor of RE JANE and hope readers will, too. The book tackles
some weighty issues, but the comic moments cut through that weightiness.
I also hope to speak to anyone who feels disenfranchised
from the communities they’re “supposed” to belong to.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on my second novel, which features a minor character
of RE JANE (guess who) and takes place in the Korean “ghetto” in
Buenos Aires, Argentina—where my family used to live before immigrating to the States. It’s
also set in western Queens and the campus of Swarthmore College.