nobel prizes for noble causes

finding new stories and motivation from a fellow Korean

Something unlocked in me when I found out that Han Kang won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”. It was like when Parasite or Everything Everywhere All at Once won Best Picture, or when Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan won Oscars, but this hits so much deeper.

Maybe it’s because writing is so sacred to me and I’ve been reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Message while traveling here in Europe. He wrote the book to his students and “young writers everywhere whose task is nothing less than doing their part to save the world.”

You cannot act upon what you cannot see. And we are plagued by dead language and dead stories that serve people whose aim is nothing short of a dead world. And it is not enough to stand against these dissemblers. There has to be something in you, something that hungers for clarity. And you will need that hunger, because if you follow that path, soon enough you will find yourself confronting not just their myths, not just their stories, but your own.

Han Kang’s hunger for clarity got her blacklisted by the Korean government for being critical of the government and a culture that’s deeply patriarchal and misogynistic. She shed light on what the dissemblers wanted to keep hidden and dead. A prophet may not be welcome in their hometown, but this award will get her writing in front of so many new people, like me. And we’ll feel some salvation from reading it.

Even in hearing Kang speak, I can feel her resilience. She lived a life of sacrifice, pouring her soul onto a page, and this prize honors her resilience and devotion. What strikes me about that is I don’t see the same thread of resilience and devotion in my own life right now. There are days I can’t make sense of all the destruction and deconstruction of my life the past few years. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking how am I going to keep going? But then I see is a dusty path laid out for me that stretches as far as I am willing to see.

The thread I’m searching for isn’t missing. It’s hidden under all the dead stories and the wreckage of trying to find a new one. The work is to uncover it. What that looks like right now is portraiture, coaching, writing, and music, but even writing that out feels vulnerable and selfish. Who am I to get to choose how I exactly want to spend my days doing? See? Shame is the highest mountain of rubble I have to clear, and the dust that clouds my vision.

In uncovering a new story, I’m also uncovering a deeper motivation to do the work. In the past my motivation was fueled by avoidance and codependency but that doesn’t work anymore. Having witnessed a Korean, not too much older than me, be recognized for her work unlocked a deep yearning to do what I was created to do for something greater than myself.

Because Kang didn’t do all this for the Nobel—she didn’t even want to hold a press conference, given all the death and wars happening in the world. But the prize shines a light on her work and serves as a beacon for people like me, helping us feel seen and realize what’s possible.

Coates, in his book, referenced an Audre Lorde quote that I love that sums up what I can see as my thread of resilience and devotion.

“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized.”

The work I feel called to, and thread that I am uncovering in my photography, coaching, and writing, is the light I shine into the shadows. There are many days I tremble down the stairs into the darkness. But I know that when all is shone and realized, it’s about how how I can better love others and myself.