Interview with author and illustrator Yangsook Choi
by Marjorie Coughlan*

Yangsook Choi was born in Seoul, South Korea, where she lived until she moved to the United States in 1991 to attend art school. Having studied first at the Kendall College of Arts and Design in Michigan, she followed an MFA program at the School of Visual Arts in New York: and by the time she graduated, she already had a contract to illustrate her first book, the retelling of a Korean folktale, The Sun Girl and the Moon Boy. Since then she has both illustrated and written many acclaimed picture books such as The Name Jar, Peach Heaven and Behind the Mask. Her books have received several awards, including the International Reading Association's Children's Book Award and the Skipping Stones Award (both with Milly Lee, for Nim and the War Effort and Landed, respectively).

Yangsook lives and works in New York City.

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When did you first realise you wanted to be an artist?  Did you study formally in Korea before attending art school in the US?

Although my clumsy hand started drawing when I was 4 years old, it took me twenty years to realise that I wanted to be an artist.  My parents were supportive in many ways, but not when it came to ackowledging my artistic inclinations. When I was 7, my dad caught me drawing on the back of my text book one day.  I stopped dead in my tracks and froze, looking at his eyes.  He asked, "Why are you wasting your time and paper? You should be doing your homework.”

At the age of twenty-four, after graduating from college in Seoul, I sat in my first class in an art school, across the Pacific Ocean, 10,493 km away from home. My heart was swollen like a balloon. It wasn’t that I wanted to come to America or go to a new land.  I wanted to leave Korea, where I had been classified as a shirker for my ‘idle doodling’ early on in my childhood. Heart-broken, I had been expected to study all the time to achieve high scores instead: therefore, my joy in art had gasped and shrunk as I became a chameleon to obey the culture.  The irony was that my early life became colorless.

Art was a private thing to do: I would hide and draw. No one knew about my drawing. Not even my own family. But I knew I needed to change the direction of my compass. I waited until I grew to be a senior in college, then I voiced my desire to pursue my "frowned upon dream" to my family and everyone around me.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that being in a wrong place was the beginning of my journey to the right place. A few years after I left home, my first book came out. My parents found it so odd and asked, “Where did that come from?” They still think I became an artist overnight.

When you left Korea to study in the US, did you have an inkling that you would make your home there? Although you were an adult and made your own decision to travel, did you draw on your own experiences at all when working on Good-bye 382 Shin Dang Dong?

I had no inkling at all of making my home in the US.  All I wanted was to become an artist and I was oblivious to anything else

The young protagonist of Good-bye 382 Shin Dang Dong was too young for me to make a link with my adult experience of having left home for a new country, so I tried my best to imagine what the experience would be like to a child.

Is your approach to your work different, depending on whether you are illustrating your own or another author’s story?

My job as an illustrator is to make the story as alive as possible, whether it’s written by me or someone else, so my approach is pretty much the same in both cases.

The little girl in Peach Heaven is also called Yangsook, and in fact the story is based on one of your childhood experiences. (It must have been quite extraordinary, the day it started raining peaches!).  Do you often draw inspiration for your stories from your own childhood?

I like telling stories from my own childhood, but sometimes I run out of inspiration so I borrow others’ experiences, or cook up a story by sprinkling it with some imagination.

My childhood in Korea wasn’t much different from everyone else’s: like most kids, I ate aromatic kimchi every day, avoided doing homework, and felt oppressed by the constant demands of adults. I played outside if I could, until my shadow disappeared at dusk. My tired grandmother would find me in odd places like our damp basement or under a vendor’s cart squatting on my knees in search of something. Once I ran away from home, but my aunt found me and returned me home two days later. Other than that, I grew up without much adventure or unusual experiences. Eighty percent of my childhood in Korea was spent sitting at a desk and studying, at home or school.

What kinds of books did you read when you were growing up?

While at elementary school, I was a huge fan of adventure stories and mysteries such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Sherlock Holmes Mysteries, the Arsène Lupin series, and Edgar Allan Poe’s books. Then I moved on to Hermann Hesse and Louise Linser in my early middle-school years. I savored Hesse’s every written word like a mouse munching a morsel of tasty cheese. And I was interested in biology books as well. All these I had to hide and read in my tiny room, with the thin and rather pointless rice paper door closed.

After that, for several years, there was no more reading for pleasure, unfortunately–and simply because it wasn’t allowed. We had to read only text books.

Love, friendship and acceptance are strong themes running through your own writing.  When you write a story, do you have a message you wish to convey?

I don’t write a story with a message in mind. I believe writing is an expression of what you love, so I guess what I love shows through the stories I write.

Writing actually came about in an unexpected way. After I’d done a couple of illustration jobs for Knopf, my editor took me out for a nice lunch and suggested that I write. Having had no training in writing, except a few Cs I had collected for writing assignments at school, I honestly thought my editor was crazy, but she obviously had more confidence in me than I did and she persuaded me to have a go. The Name Jar was the outcome of our conversation--and it’s my most popular book!

In an interview with Good Characters, you said that “it would be wonderful if The Name Jar [about a girl who gets teased by classmates because of her Korean name] could suggest a positive approach for children who live in a multicultural world.”  What is your vision of a multicultural world and what part do books play in it?

I picture an imaginary bridge, made of books--the books' pages connected like an accordion. The bridge links many cultures, in a circuit. It never falls or sinks, but stays buoyant against any differences or conflicts caused by traffic.

In your book Behind the Mask, you bring together Korean theater traditions and American Halloween customs. How did the book come about and why did you decide to combine these two traditions into one story?

I grew up in Insadong, Seoul. Insadong, which has been the cultural centre of Korea for the last 600 years, has many hidden alleys that branch out from the main street. In those narrow, winding alleys, there are countless antique stores that sell anything from old archeology and history books, paintings, calligraphy and porcelain to hand pressed papers.

I didn’t have much interest in them when I was growing up but living away from home for so many years helped me to understand the value of my rich heritage and strong culture. It seemed as though, by having left home, I had found my way home.  And one day, I was passing by a store on a street of Insadong, and a few Korean traditional masks hung outside stopped me in my tracks. I bought one that was most interesting visually and brought it back to New York, not thinking of anything in particular to do with it. A few months later when Halloween was approching, I suddenly eyed the mask with much favor not only to save myself from a what-to-wear dilema, but also to gift myself with a story idea.

On one Halloween night after Behind the Mask was out, I went out trick-or-treating with 2^nd graders from a school I had visited in Washington, D.C. I wore a traditional Korean mask I had made myself, exactly like the one on the book-cover.

You have illustrated three books by Milly Lee, all based on personal experiences – Earthquake, Nim and the War Effort and Landed.  In an interview with PaperTigers, Milly described how, unusually, she got to meet you.  What difference did that make for you?

Milly Lee cares very deeply about all her stories: I mean, on an extraordinary level. That was evident to me even before I met her. Working on her books and realizing how she put her whole soul in to her writing was a humbling experience for me. I wasn’t surprised when our meeting turned out to be a heart-warming occasion.

How do you think you have evolved as an artist since your first picture book, the retelling of a Korean Folktale, The Sun Girl and the Moon Boy, was published?

I know I've made tremedous progress since my first book, but it's hard to explain how I have evolved. Other than the fact that I feel more than ever connected to the power of colour, the one thing I know for sure is that I am still falling in love with art every day.

What research did you do for your latest book, Gai See: What You Can See in Chinatown, about a young boy who visits a Chinese street market with his family regularly through the seasons?  What research do you generally do?

I have travelled in China a couple of times, and Ilived in Hong Kong for a year and a half, so I had a confident start on Gai See. I filled in any details that I lacked by visiting Chinatown here in New York City and doing some online research.

In general, I find travelling is the best way for me to do research. Seeing things with my own eyes helps me the most; if not, I rely heavily on watching documentaries about other countries and cultures.

I also do research by experiencing things myself: once I didn’t take a shower or change for four days; I’ve visited a cemetery at one o’clock in the morning on Halloween; I didn’t have any heat at home in New York through the winter for three years (it had to be three years for a story); and I’ve done a night hike on a winter mountain in the darkness for a few hours under the stars.

You have talked in the past about how important it is for you to “feed your curiosity for life” – how does your journey as a children’s book writer and illustrator fulfil that?

I welcome anything that piques my curiosity, as mystery is a huge driving force for me. Before I start a story, either by verbal or visual storytelling, I become a romantic whose door is wide open to imagination and possibility.

Through writing and illustrating for a young audience, I have realised that each child or person determines what is to be learnt, how much is to be learnt, and when it is to be learnt. It was a new concept for someone like me, who grew up in an educational culture that strictly forced formulated information to be memorized in a specific time-frame, with no room for individual differences.

What kind of reactions to your books do you get from children when you are visiting schools?  Are there any that particularly stand out that you can share with us?

A 4^th grader I met once at a school presentation told me that she was writing a long story and asked me to be her literary agent!

The students that I meet when I visit schools are the most supportive group of people. The level of encouragement I get is unimaginable. The other kind of excitement comes when I discover young talents. I once did a writing workshop at a school, and a month later, a 5^th grader sent me his writing. His brilliant story thrilled and inspired me. I wanted to write like him.

You were in Malaysia last year, where, I believe, you visited some schools. Would you tell us a bit about your trip?

I visited an Australian school and a British School in Malaysia last year, and two years before that I visited an American school there. I have visited numerous international schools in various parts of Asia such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Laos, and I love it. At a school in Malaysia, I met the same student whom I had met two years previously during a school visit in Boston! Meeting teachers who have an extensive background in teaching overseas also gives me an insight into how children are affected by a different cultural environment -  of how they can struggle or thrive.

Can you tell us what you are working on at the moment and what plans you have for the future?

I am currently working on a story that feeds my passion for natural science, topography and geography. My plan is to stay hungry for more discoveries to come in this wondrous world!

*Marjorie Coughlan is PaperTigers Associate Editor

Posted April 2009

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