Haunting the korean diaspora, Cho, Grace M.

Grace M. Cho exposes how Koreans in the United States have been profoundly affected by the forgotten war and uncovers the silences and secrets that still surround it, arguing that trauma memories have been passed unconsciously through a process psychoanalysts call transgenerational haunting. Tracing how such secrets have turned into ghosts, Cho investigates the mythic figure of the yanggongju, literally the Western princess, who provides sexual favors to American military personnel. She reveals how this figure haunts both the intimate realm of memory and public discourse, in which narratives of U.S. benevolence abroad and assimilation of immigrants at home go unchallenged. Memories of U.S. violence, Cho writes, threaten to undo these narratives--and so they have been rendered unspeakable.