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<\/p>\nJane Park has studied and worked abroad, from Milan to New York, and now makes her home in Calgary. But the Edmonton-born author felt a sense of longing and wanted to showcase her hometown in her first book, to talk about growing up in a small town and place her diaspora story in a location that\u2019s important to her.<\/p>\n
Inheritance, out April 7, does just that. Edmonton is one half of the setting for her story of family and loss, of life in the \u201890s in a small town on the edge of the big city. It was a recognition of where she came from and the place where she held such fond memories.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I went to all these cosmopolitan cities, I realized what made me unique and different was coming from the prairies and it made me nostalgic,\u201d says Park. \u201cBefore, I thought coming from Edmonton was the most boring place on earth, but I realized that\u2019s what made me special and different and unique. And I just missed the prairies, and I started writing about it when I lived in New York and eventually it turned into this book.\u201d<\/p>\n
The details of Inheritance share some similarities with her own life, but Park\u2019s quick to point out it\u2019s only a passing resemblance. She grew up in Edmonton and her parents, who came to Canada from Korea, once owned a small-town grocery store. She pulls from her own experience growing up on prairies, the small-town feel of a time before the internet and digital devices revolutionized life.<\/p>\n
Anne has come back to Edmonton after the death of her father, both to attend the funeral and help her now widowed mother. But the return has surfaced memories she had tried to run from, of a difficult childhood that started in the big city but relocated out to a small town. Half the book takes place in 2015, while the other half is Anne\u2019s childhood in small-town Alberta.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Inheritance by Jane Park is out April 7.<\/p>\n
In the early \u201890s, Anne and her brother Charles are the only two Korean kids at their new school, and one of only a few Asian families in town. Anne avoids the Chinese girl for fear of being labelled \u201cDouble Dragon\u201d by the cruel children in her class.<\/p>\n
Their father purchased a small grocery store in town, one the townsfolk avoided at first. Was it racism or were they just reluctant to meet the new people in town? Things turn around for the family, who sell liquor when the government privatizes the retail sale of alcohol in the province.<\/p>\n
While their financial situation improves, there\u2019s an undertone of tension and disappointment throughout the novel. Finances are precarious, fitting in is difficult and life is never quite as good as it can be. Park attributes this to the hope of the immigration process, coming to a new country hoping things will be better for the next generation.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack in the \u201870s and the \u201880s when there was no internet, there wasn\u2019t really a lot of information; you just saw how great Canada was. So, you moved, not realizing how hard it would be to assimilate,\u201d says Park. \u201cI think disappointment is inevitable when your hopes are unrealistic and high. And I think oftentimes a lot of immigrants do face that, and that\u2019s what I wanted to wrestle with in my novel.\u201d<\/p>\n
That wrestling took place over two decades; Inheritance started taking shape in 2006 and has been an on-and-off project ever since. Park\u2019s protagonist carried a Palm Pilot in early drafts, which had to be changed for obvious reasons.<\/p>\n
The Korean immigrant experience has changed dramatically since the early \u201890s. Park says she found it very isolating, with people often confusing them for Chinese immigrants and not understanding the difference.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very uncool eating Korean food or referencing Korean culture, unless it was like fan dancing,\u201d says Park.<\/p>\n
But now Korean references and culture have permeated popular North American culture, through food and music, such as K-pop or the popular Korean grocery store H Mart.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandmother would roll in her grave knowing there would be an H Mart in Edmonton,\u201d says Park with a laugh. \u201cEdmonton now is so much different than it was in the \u201880s and \u201990s.\u201d<\/p>\n
For more information about the writer, visit her website at janepark.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don\u2019t miss the news you need to know \u2014 add EdmontonJournal.com<\/a> and EdmontonSun.com<\/a> to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.<\/a><\/p>\n You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Edmonton Journal<\/a> | The Edmonton Sun.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jane Park has studied and worked abroad, from Milan to New York, and now makes her home in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752,13619,223938,223939],"class_list":["post-586636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton","tag-inheritance","tag-jane-park","tag-meaghan-baxter-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}