Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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- All Subjects: Poetry
- Creators: Department of Economics
- Creators: Kong, Erin
One of the poems in my collection, “and the paperwork asks for my family’s history of mental health,” I dissect the intergenerational trauma of my Korean American family as a way to understand the guilt, sorrow, and difficulties buried within me. Intergenerational trauma is trauma transferred through the generations, even if those beyond the first-generation did not directly experience the traumatic incidents (Bombay, Matheson, Anisman, 2). This intergenerational trauma, when specifically tied to Koreans, is called, “han.” “Han” is described as a cultural phenomenon, that scholars often have trouble defining. Theologian Suh Nam-dong describes han as, “a feeling of unresolved resentment against injustices suffered, a sense of helplessness because of the overwhelming odds against one, a feeling of acute pain in one's guts and bowels, making the whole body writhe and squirm, and an obstinate urge to take revenge and to right the wrong—all these combined,” (Yoo, 221). Han, when applied to the Korean diaspora, is referred to as “postmemory han,” which refers to the feelings of han experienced by second-generation Korean Americans. “Postmemory han” is the idea that even if these second-generation Korean Americans did not directly experience the trauma the first-generation Koreans did, they still feel residual han, regardless of whether they actively pursue “remembering” their family’s trauma (Chu, 98-105). This “nonconsensual remembering,” is a concept I have, and continue to, explore throughout my written work, and is the nucleus of “korean mourning rituals.”
Now I wasn’t the first one to discover the canyon, but I remember a time when I was in the fourth grade. When I stepped out of a bus that I had been in for close to four hours and took forty footsteps to end up at a small brick wall that came close to calf-height which was meant to keep me safe. I don’t know why it didn’t hit me until this point, because I had seen pictures of its grandeur and “experienced” the so called “majesty” of the Grand Canyon through the medium of the National Geographic and tasted of the beauty of one of the natural wonders of the world through the photographs of others before, but standing face to face with a five-thousand-foot cliff humbled me and brought a fear in to me that I can’t describe. Especially when a friend of mine had violently jerked me while I was close to the edge. I remember hearing fear in my father’s voice as I got a little too close to the edge for his comfort. He wanted me to be safe, but I wanted to look this canyon in the eye.
I find it really interesting though, that both my father and I feared ME getting close to the edge. I guess it’s because we both didn’t fully trust my young and feeble knees to keep me stable while I was that close to a fall that would’ve meant sure death for me. Or maybe it was because a couple of months before this, he had seen on the news that some kid was playing too close to the edge and had fallen to his death. Or maybe, it was because, for the first time, death was actually close enough to grasp something he profoundly loved. Either way, I won’t ever forget the loving strain in his voice as he sternly said “Grant! Step a little bit further back from the edge Son.”
It’s really a shame that no one knew. Or at least that no one said anything if they did know. Especially because this New canyon I stood looking face to face with was thousands of feet deeper than the one I had been close to the edge of ten years before, and had the authority to not just kill me once, but twice, if I fell.