Welcome to Fantasy Magazine! We’re so pleased to bring your story “Bari and the Resurrection Flower” to our readers. Can you tell us how this story came to be?
As a diaspora Korean fantasy author, I’ve recently become curious about traditional Korean folk tales, especially stories about shamanism. Last year, I came across the tale of “Barigongju,” or Princess Bari. There are different versions of this story told across Korea, but the basic story goes like this:
Bari is the seventh daughter of a king and queen, and her disappointed parents—who hoped for a boy—abandon her after she’s born. Her name, 버리, comes from the Korean word beori, “to throw away.” Many years later, when her parents are dying, Bari is tasked with saving their lives. Dressed as a man, she goes on a fantastical journey to find a cure for her parents, traveling to the underworld and facing a divine guardian who tests her mettle.
The ending isn’t always the same. In some versions, Bari becomes a goddess of the underworld and patron goddess of shamans. In other versions, she has to bear twelve sons for the divine guardian before she’s allowed to return to her parents with the cure. In all versions, she’s depicted as the paragon of a good daughter who upholds filial piety at great personal cost. I became fascinated with this story because, like most of the diaspora Asians I know, I have a lot of hangups with this concept of filial piety, the fundamental value, rooted in Confucianism, that you must care for and obey your parents no matter what. I was also struck by the crossdressing detail present in most versions of the myth. It’s hard to find original sources that shed light on why this was included, especially since I’m not fluent in Korean. But I started to imagine Bari as a nonbinary witch who secretly resents all the things her family asks of her, which gave me the inspiration to write a diasporic, genderqueer retelling of the folk tale.
What was the most difficult part of writing this story, and what came easiest?
“Bari and the Resurrection Flower” is the first short story I’ve ever written that wasn’t a college assignment. I’m a novel writer at heart, and I’m used to having room for ideas to grow and expand into 80,000+ words of material. Fortunately, I had the existing structure of the folk tale to build around, which made things easier. Still, I struggled to keep the story contained and still include a meaningful character arc for the protagonist.
What came easiest was portraying Bari’s complicated, tangled emotions of love and resentment for her family. I think children of immigrants, particularly eldest children, will experience my story differently from everyone else. It’s a feeling that’s hard to put into words, but I tried. I also greatly enjoyed writing Mujangseung, the imperious, alluring antlered god of the underworld who finds unexpected kinship with Bari. He’s quite different from the version of the divine guardian in the original folk tale who demands that Bari become his wife and bear him twelve children. I wouldn’t have enjoyed writing about that guy.
What authors or stories have most influenced your work?
A handful of my strongest literary influences, in rough chronological order from childhood to the current day: Warrior Cats, The Chronicles of Narnia, Year of Impossible Goodbyes by Choi Sook Nyul, Anne of Green Gables, all the Sherlock Holmes stories, the Animorphs series, anything by Cornelia Funke or Suzanne Collins, His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman, Kenneth Oppel’s Silverwing series, A Song of Ice and Fire, Catherine Jinks’s Pagan Chronicles, Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit, Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation, Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale, Martha Wells’s The Murderbot Diaries, Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Margaret Rogerson’s Vespertine, This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone.
Are there themes or character archetypes that you find yourself returning to in your writing?
Oh, absolutely. I find myself drawn over and over to three character archetypes that I call the outcast, the demon, and the paladin. The outcast is a character who’s been rejected by society and rejects society in turn; Bari is one example. The demon is an otherworldly being who often tempts, torments, or corrupts the outcast, but is sometimes a force that influences them to be more human. And the paladin is the selfless, morally good character who exists in constant conflict with an inherently flawed, brutal world. “Bari and the Resurrection Flower” doesn’t really have a paladin character, but a lot of my other stories do.
Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about this story?
I’m not the first person to write a take on “Barigongju” that dissects filial piety and Bari’s traditional role as the dutiful, happily-suffering daughter. Since writing the story, I’ve discovered that the South Korean novelist Hwang Sok-yong wrote a book called Princess Bari, translated into English in 2019, that retells the myth in a modern setting. I’ve also learned about a Korean webtoon of the same name by Kim Na-im that depicts Bari as a shaman’s apprentice in the modern world.
It excites me that this little story I wrote gets to join an existing canon of “Barigongju” retellings, in the same way that many different authors get to retell the tale of Hades and Persephone, or Odin and the rest of the Norse pantheon. I’m here for all the nonwestern myth and fairy tale retellings, and I’m thrilled that Fantasy Magazine took a chance on my work.
What are you working on now, and what can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?
Since writing “Bari and the Resurrection Flower,” I’ve had an exciting personal development; my debut novel sold to Simon & Schuster / Saga Press and will be published in summer 2024. Pitched as “sapphic Mad Max: Fury Road with magic,” it’s a science fantasy about a motorcycle courier in a post-apocalyptic wasteland who helps a princess she’s in love with flee her unwanted betrothal. It’s called Road to Ruin, and it’s not quite available for preorder yet, but it will be soon. You can add it on Goodreads, subscribe to my newsletter for updates, or follow me on Twitter to get the latest news. I’m currently working on the sequel, featuring the same characters.