Memories of My Ghost Brother | Asian American Bookview

Memories of My Ghost Brother
by Heinz Insu Fenkl
Dutton, New York, 1996, 271 pp, $23.95
The Amerasian experience has won no recognized place in Asian American literature. Partly, it may be from the vague sense that there's something shameful about it, a cultural ghetto in which the American rode roughshod over the Asian. Memories of My Ghost Brother will change that. The author is the son of a German-American NCO and a Corean woman and tells the story of his growing up in and around the 8th Army bases in Yongsan and Pupyong in the 1960s when Coreans were so poverty-stricken that American GIs felt free to use and discard them as something less than human. Fenkl's prose is so lovingly evocative that even the piss-stained walls and the squalid black markets take on a nostalgic glow. Anyone who has known Corea back then will cherish this wonderful book as his own.
EXCERPT

y the time we crossed the Han River bridge and passed the statue of the heroic paratrooper, the aisles of the bus were full of standing passengers. Soon, we reached the back entrance of Yongsan Army post, which was like a park in the middle of the busy city. The bus stopped at the gatehouse and an MP came aboard to make sure everyone was authorized to go on post. The GIs in uniform just ignored him, but all the Korean women and the one man in civilian clothes had to show their ID cards. In a minute the MP left and the bus went on.
     All the loud traffic and the crowds of people vanished when we passed beyond the Yongsan gate. I had been there before, but I didn't remember how quiet or how beautiful it was. The trees that lined the road were taller than any trees I had seen outside and the buildings looked firmer and more rooted to the earth. Even the air was different--it was soothing and clean. The Yongsan Army post seemed even emptier than ASCOM.
     We arrived across the street from the Seoul American Elementary School half an hour early. The woman in the black muumuu took her son by the hand and stood up to squeeze herself out between the GIs in the aisle. "Aren't you getting off, too?" she asked my mother.
     "I'm taking him to get something to eat," said Mahmi. "Will you be here until school ends today?"
     "Yes."
     Then let's meet later at lunchtime."

     "Yes, I'll see you later then. Good-bye." The GIs pressed themselves against the seats and even stepped in between occupied seats to let her pass. A few of the white GIs gave James a disapproving glance as he followed her out.
     The seat left by the fat woman was empty until a short, yellow-haired GI and an Air Force corporal sat down in it. "What a fuckin' whale," said the yellow-haired GI. "Mama whale and baby coon." The corporal just looked at him, slumped back, and closed his eyes.
     I realized I was no longer sick, but quite hungry. I hoped Mahmi would buy me a hamburger so that I would feel full and not be afraid of the cream-colored brick buildings I had seen through the window.

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