Still Present Pasts

Sharon Lapensky

Storytelling

"In the past ten years, my work has evolved from writing about racial identity and the implications it has on my life in America to writing about family connections and disconnections as I became more grounded in a Korean American identity. . . . As a participant in the 2002 Selective Summer Institute of the Minnesota Writing Project, I explored similar issues of identity and family and their impact on teaching writing to elementary (school) children. As a result, I developed a passion for creatively sharing my journey of self-identity. As a fourth-generation Korean American who lives outside of both Korea’s and America’s definition of who I am, I also encouraged my students to find and write about their uniqueness. In 2005, I was selected to join SASE’s Writer-To-Writer mentorship in creative nonfiction, allowing me to continue exploring the impact of cultural influences and intergenerational experiences on my family.

"The narrative piece with accompanying slides entitled Hawaiian Odyssey: A Search into History of Family, Korea and Korean America was written during the 100th anniversary of Korean immigration to Hawaii. . . . I was very conscious of the living history in my family as I wrote about the intergenerational relationship and the influence it will have on my Korean-born children’s lives as they begin to explore their identities in America."

The transcript of Hawaiian Odyssey will be available for reading in the Poetry Library at Intermedia Arts.