Excavating Hidden Histories, Finding Power: An Interview with Author and Professor Hannah Michell

“I think the best historical fiction invites readers to live the history that is being represented; not simply to understand the facts of what happened, but to give access to what a certain historical moment felt like emotionally, sensually, even.”

Excavations is a multi-voice novel that follows the journey of Korean journalist and stay-at-home mother Sae as she seeks to uncover the truth of her husband Jae’s disappearance. Aspiration Tower was supposed to be a hallmark of the country’s innovation and respectability: the building’s construction was supported by the Korean government, and Jae, who worked as an engineer, was even contracted to develop a swimming pool for it on the top floor. One day, however, the grand tower collapses. Jae never returns home. Grieving yet determined, Sae takes it upon herself to launch an independent investigation into the cause of the tragedy. To make headway in her examination in the present, she must delve into her past as a student protestor for a national government democratization movement. Based loosely on real events in Korean history, Excavations compels us to reflect: in love and victory, tragedy and hardship, whose stories are remembered and told?

Today, I am thrilled to welcome Hannah Michell, the author of this incredible novel, to the ANMLY blog to discuss her American debut and the history and personal experiences that inspired her to write it. My questions will be in bold, and the author’s responses will be in standard text.

Welcome to the blog, and thank you for taking the time to join us! For anyone new to your work, could you start by telling us a little bit about yourself?

I grew up in Seoul and later educated in England. From my childhood through to adolescence, I saw Korea transition from a developing country to a wealthy one. I was only four at the time of the student democratization movement but I remember vividly hearing the protests at City Hall. My novel Excavations is, in part, my attempt to better understand what I was a spectator to as a child.

You are also a professor of Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. What brought you to writing fiction?

I was a writer first, before I began teaching, but so much of Excavations was inspired by what I learned in the Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies program. As I did not grow up in the US, I was unfamiliar with historical events such as Japanese American internment during WWII. This raised questions for me about the tension between written histories and embodied memory, especially for those who have less social, economic and political power. This set me onto my own inquiry about what histories are less visible in official national Korean history, which often privileges the story of South Korea’s economic “miracle” from being the second poorest country in the world at the end of the Korean war to the 10th largest economy.

In the acknowledgements of Excavations, you mention that The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation by Namhee Lee and Writers of the Winter Republic by Youngjo Ryu were instrumental to informing the historical background of this book. You also interviewed Woojoo Chang, a student protestor. As a student of history, these are the kinds of details that I love to learn about! Can you give us some more insight into your research process? How did you navigate integrating historical research into a fiction novel?

My novel began with the Chairman’s testimonies, so initially my research involved reading the biographies of the Chairmen of famous Korean companies. This gave me a lot of useful insights into postwar economic history. Once the Chairman’s portions were written, I moved on to studying the student movement. The texts I mention in my acknowledgements page were critical to getting a broader sense of the context of that time, but I think interviewing people is crucial to get important details of their lived experience. There is a detail in the book about Sae carrying $100 in her pocket. This wonderful detail was given to me by Woojoo Chang who told me she had carried it as insurance, in case she got into trouble.

As for integrating historical research into fiction, I think a novelist can get too hung up on historical accuracy; sometimes the facts need to be altered slightly in service of the greater story that is being told. For example, I knew that it was unlikely that a young female reporter like Sae would have been given as much responsibility to conduct serious political journalism in the early 1990s. For a while I lost a lot of sleep imagining that some Korean historian would point the finger at me and accuse me of getting the details wrong, but was reminded that I was writing fiction, not academic history. Ultimately, readers are drawn to fiction for its emotional truths, rather than the accuracy of its historical facts.

One of the most formative experiences for the protagonist, Sae, is her involvement in the Gwangju Democratization Movement, an uprising spearheaded by Korean students and workers that protested the authoritarian rule of a military dictator, and its wake. What compelled you to situate your story in the context of these protests, and what was important to you in portraying them?

My original goal in writing this book was to write the unreliable story of a Chairman who personified the Korean economy. In order to contest the rags to riches miracle narrative of the Korean economy, I had to discuss these protests. The student democratization movement is really evidence that there was significant resistance to the dictator’s agenda of rapid, compressed development of the economy and that the goal of this movement was to contest labor exploitation, and human rights abuses of that regime.

I was really interested by the way you titled the chapters of Excavations. You named them each for the amount of time that passed since the collapse of Aspiration Tower (for example, “Two Days After the Collapse” or “36 Hours After the Collapse”). Why did you decide to mark the chapters in this way?

This decision was partly informed by something I had read about the uncovering of a survivor who had been trapped in the rubble of the collapsed Sampoong department store (on which Aspiration Tower is loosely based), 16 days after the collapse. In a catastrophic event like this, the first 36 hours are crucial to finding survivors. After that time, the chances are the rescue crew are looking for dead bodies. Marking the chapters by hours since the collapse was a way to heighten the tension and show Sae’s dwindling hope of finding Jae.

Motherhood stood out to me as a central theme and tension of Excavations. Sae wrestles with her relationships to her sons and her own mother when she relinquishes her career as an investigative journalist to become a stay-at-home mother and as she searches for her missing husband. Myong-hee similarly wonders if she can ever be a “good” mother when poverty and political forces drive her to leave her daughter at an American adoption agency. At one point, she observes: “Single motherhood was, and still is, like a social death.” In our era, in which a woman’s youth and appearance are valorized above all else, I found it particularly powerful that the two leading protagonists of this story are both single mothers and advocates in their own right. What motivated you to choose two mothers to guide this story?

So much of South Korea’s economic development is associated with men, because of Korean patriarchy. It was important for me to show the impossible choices women are forced to make in a patriarchal culture. It was important for me to make the experiences of women visible in this historical context.

I wrote this book during the Trump Presidency and so at times it was difficult to imagine a happy ending for these female characters. I took some liberties with how much power or agency they might have in their respective positions to imagine conditions that would allow them to be successful in exposing corruption. I guess what I want to say is that women, when they work together and support each other, can have incredible power.

In an article for Literary Hub, you previously wrote that the “multi-voice novel is a form that resists the idea that there can only be one account of history.” One of my favorite parts of Excavations is the way that the multiple third-person narratives empower the reader to excavate the truth about the Aspiration Tower collapse alongside the protagonists. Can you speak here to your decision to make Excavations a multi-voice novel?

When I first began writing the novel, it was written from a single point of view — that of the Chairman’s. I was inspired by Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day and An Artist of the Floating World — stories where the central protagonists gradually accept, over the course of the novel, that the service and contribution that they believed to be worthy is not as valuable as they thought.

Inspired by some of the biographies and autobiographies I had read of the Chairmen of well-known Korean conglomerates, I wanted the novel to be narrated by a charismatic patriarch, who, by the end of the novel, would be revealed as completely unreliable. In the process of writing, however, I realized that an important and emerging theme was the uncovering of hidden histories. It felt important to include counter-narratives. After a while, however, the dominant point of view and voice became Sae’s and the Chairman’s sections became smaller and less important.

Sae introduces her husband, Jae, to the reality of the plight of Korean students and workers with a book titled What is History? What is your perspective on the role of an author in constructing our understanding of history? Is it similar or different from that of your role as a teacher?

This is such a good question! I think as an educator it is imperative to find a way to communicate the “facts” of history in a way that will engage students. Similarly, I think the best historical fiction invites readers to live the history that is being represented; not simply to understand the facts of what happened, but to give access to what a certain historical moment felt like emotionally, sensually, even.

There are some characters in the novel, like Sae’s childhood friend Il-hyung, who regard love as counterproductive to revolutionary progress. However, Sae and Jae not only found each other during the revolution but also deepened their ties to student protest through their relationship. I was struck by this contrast. What was your approach to love in Excavations? As you were writing, did you intend to portray love as revolutionary, or did this contrast emerge organically?

I want to qualify Il-hyung’s position slightly here. I don’t think that Il-hyung believes that love, in and of itself, is counterproductive to revolutionary progress. Rather, he believes that individual interests and affect should be subordinate to the interests of what is necessary to the collective. This is his political position but also ideology that enables him to hide since he doesn’t really have the courage to be in relationship with Sae.

At its best, love can be revolutionary. Through their relationship, Sae was able to open Jae’s eyes to what was happening in the country. He worked hard to forge a new identity for himself and transcend his upbringing. I think for love to be truly revolutionary, though, I think one’s sense of shame needs to be laid bare and redeemed through radical acceptance. Concealed shame can be truly corrosive and destructive in a marriage. If Jae had been more transparent about his shame with Sae, it is possible that what happened at the Towers may have been prevented and it certainly would have prevented the inter-generational trauma his sons would later endure.

About the Author

Hannah Michell grew up in Seoul. She studied anthropology and philosophy at Cambridge University and now lives in California with her husband and children. She teaches in the Asian American and Asian Disapora Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Excavations is her American debut.