Elaine Kim, a Korean-American political activist, feminist and renowned Asian scholar, told students to acknowledge the 'bad women' of their past and to make Asian-Americans a stronger, more visible part of the community.
Her speech Saturday night, titled " 'Bad Women': Ruminations of an Asian American Woman in the Academy," kicked off a year-long Student Assembly-sponsored symposium about "Women, Leadership and Activism."
A "bad woman," according to Kim, is a female who does not live up to society's definition of a woman's role.
"I am descended from a long line of 'bad women,' " Kim told more than 70 students who attended the speech in Carpenter Hall.
Kim said her grandmother fled South Korea alone and pregnant for Hawaii in 1930. She said her mother moved to the mainland after being abused by her husband, whom she married when she was 17 years old. Her mother entered ninth grade when she was 30 years old and went on to complete her bachelor's degree at Mount Holyoke College.
"Most of us are probably descendants of a bad woman," she said.
Kim, who read extensively from her notes, said she has always been seen by the Korean community as a "quintessential sister outsider, sister from another planet."
She received her bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, her master's from Columbia University and her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. She is now a professor of Asian Studies at Berkeley.
Kim said when she arrived at Berkeley there was no Asian American studies program or Ethnic Studies department. Kim played a key role in establishing the department.
Kim said she felt estranged when growing up. "Even though I was not an Asian immigrant like my parents, I was still an alien," she said.
"My life ... was transformed by the African American civil rights movement ... which stimulated me for the first time to think about things I have cared about forever since," Kim said.
Kim encouraged students to take advantage of resources outside of Dartmouth and to become involved in grassroots community organizations.
"It takes a while to get used to the idea that it might be possible to belong to the margins and to the mainstream," Kim said. "It is up to you to transform the America of your forbearers' experience ... into the America of our collective dreams."
Sue Kim '96, an Assembly member who helped organize Kim's visit, said the lecture was outstanding.
"Women on this campus are not allowed to be angry, bitter or loud in the face of continuing gender and racial discrimination, sexual assault and a lacking of a support system for women," Sue Kim said. "Her talk really reinvigorated and inspired women to re-appropriate that 'badness' in activism, leadership, and scholarship."
Elaine Kim is also the faculty assistant for the Status of Women, and former assistant dean of the College of Letters and Science, at Berkeley. She is also the president of the Board of Directors of the Korean Community Center in Oakland, and the founder and member of Asian Women United of California.
She is also the president of the Association for Asian American Studies.
Her publications include the breakthrough "Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context," as well as numerous articles and essays. She co-edited "Making Waves: Writings by and about Asian American Women." Her work has been published in The Columbia Literary History of the United States, Newsweek magazine and various scholarly journals.
Her video documentary credits include "Sa-I-Gu: From Korean Women's Perspectives on the L.A. Uprising" and "Slaying the Dragon: Asian Women in U.S. Television and Film."
Kim is currently collaborating with visual artist Betty Kano on a book titled "Visions and Fierce Dreams: Lives and Works of Asian American Visual Artists."
