Nora Okja Keller

Nora Okja Keller (born 22 December 1966, in Seoul, South Korea) is a Korean-American author. Her 1997 breakthrough work of fiction, Comfort Woman, and her second book, Fox Girl, focus on multigenerational trauma resulting from Korean women's experiences as sex slaves, euphemistically called comfort women, for Japanese and American troops during World War II and the ongoing Korean War.

Professional background

Keller is a graduate of the Punahou School in Honolulu. and worked in Honolulu as a freelance writer, including at the newspaper Honolulu Star-Bulletin. She has lived in Hawaii from the age of three. Married since 1990 to James Keller, she has two daughters, Tae and Sunhi Keller.

Influences on her work Keller says she first heard of the term "Asian American" when she took a course in Asian American literature, the first course in this topic offered by the University of Hawaii. The syllabus included Maxine Hong Kingston, Jade Snow Wong, and Joy Kogawa. The genesis of Comfort Woman dated to a 1993-human rights symposium at the University of Hawaii where Keller heard a presentation by Keum Ja Hwang, who had been a comfort woman. "Her experience was so extraordinary," Keller has said, "I thought someone should write about it." of characters in her fiction are based).

Other writing Fox Girl Yobo : Korean American Writing in Hawai'i, edited by Keller, Honolulu, HI : Bamboo Ridge Press, 2003 Intersecting Circles: The Voices of Hapa Women in Poetry and Prose, edited by Keller & Marie Hara, Bamboo Ridge Press, 1999 Comfort Woman