In 2020, Kyung Peggy Kim returned to writing at the age of seventy after a long career in the non-profit sector. This time, it was with a new sense of grounding in the truth of her experiences and perspectives, witnessed from the uncharted territory between East and West where she drifted all her life. Yet, it was from this space of ambiguity she finally found her voice—a new voice, loosed from the constraints of mimicry.
Kyung recently completed her first manuscript, The Polarity of Dreams, a memoir covering five decades of a woman's search for clarity and wholeness. If she is to realize her dream of happiness and freedom, she must confront the shadows of her past: clashing cultures, antipodal longings, family separations, cyclical migrations, and chronic losses. As she sheds her old coverings of survival, a constellation of memories come to light: the major, pivotal events along with the seemingly minor intermezzos. Together, they divulge the patterns underlying the memoirist’s propensities and motivations. With a sense of afterness, the episodes of former times linger like ghosts in her present. Eventually, she realizes it must be her choice—and hers alone—to release the past in order to fully embrace the future.
Although the memoirist is a Korean immigrant, the story is not meant for only immigrants. It is applicable to those grappling with the meaning of their lives, reflecting on their histories to understand how they have become who they are. The journey may be a long one, but well worth it—for our very sakes.
With the recent completion of The Polarity of Dreams, Kyung looks forward to partnering with a literary agent and finding an appropriate publisher for her debut memoir. She has begun planning a second book, a work of historical fiction of the earliest poet nuns who walked the earth with the Buddha.
Educated at Vassar College (AB, 1972, Political Science) and Brown University (MA, 1974, Asian Studies), Kyung returned for graduate studies nearly fifty years later at Lesley University (MA, 2020, Mindfulness Studies).
She lives in the Boston area, next door to her daughter and granddaughter and their dog and gerbil. Kyung has found her third chapter of life to be wondrous, magical, and empowering.
“As the door of the plane lifted open, I was hooked like a duckling that latches onto the first moving object. Miguk had me spellbound as its magic transmuted my earliest dream to reality. In a flash, my life was radically remade, in a land of safety, as I was reunited with my parents, looking more joyful and bright than my memories of them.”
Excerpts from The Polarity of Dreams, memoir-in-progress
“I believed America could mend our broken parts and make us whole, wipe away my fears and heal Omma of her disease. Here, anything topsy turvy in our lives would be tidied up and set aright.”
“The polarities were evident, and the incongruities echoed in my body as it too split in two. I learned to stand guard, keeping my American and Korean halves separated by the creation of a hidden boundary, my personal DMZ.”
“The sense of being on board our ship stayed with me: the physical discomfiture as we crossed the international date line between hemispheres, my body rocking to-and-fro on flimsy, wobbly legs. Sometimes, I was on one side of the line; sometimes, I was on the other. There was no way to stop the careening even after I stepped onto land.”
“My manifestations of anxiety were meant to be secrets, but as they became increasingly difficult to hide, I turned them into mental practices invisible to the world. There, in the dark and fertile soil of my mind, they proliferated exponentially like rabbits or chicken pox.”
Reactions to Kim's memoir-in-progress
“The Polarity of Dreams is a polished and affecting memoir, and it is clear that this is a talented and confident writer. The judges were all incredibly moved by the story and impressed by ambition of a memoir that tells a personal history and, through it, reveals so much about the history of Korea and of Koreans who made America their home. The characters are vividly drawn, the narrative voice compelling and the scenes the writer paints are often filmic.”
—Bridport Prize judges, 2024
“…beautifully and achingly rendered, from the devastation of war in Korea, to the wonderment of arriving in a new country, to the heartbreak of losing a parent. We particularly admired the attention to landscape, the lush descriptions of place that immersed us in the child narrator’s point of view. We were invested in this narrator’s reckoning with America’s reality and the idea of home post-war.”
—DISQUIET Prize judges, 2025
“… a unique story of immigration and integration, all told in beautiful prose.”
—Stockholm Writers Festival Prize judges, 2025
Awards
Ploughshares Emerging Writers Contest
Shortlisted, 2025
Sewanee Writers’ Conference
Tennessee Williams Scholar, 2025
Stockholm Writers Festival
First 5 Pages Prize, Shortlisted, 2025
DISQUIET International Literary Prize
Nonfiction, Longlisted, 2025
Bridport Prize Memoir Award
High commendation, 2024
Foundation House
Artists Residency, 2023
The Masters Review Anthology XII
Shortlisted, 2023
MASS Cultural Council
Cultural Sector Recovery Grant for Creatives, 2023
Pushcart Prize 2021
Nomination for “ghosts at gardoussel,”, 2021
Publications
“First Death and Faint in America”
Atticus Review 2023
“ghosts at gardoussel”
Bright Flash Literary Review 2021
“Twelve Words, Twelve Months”
Pangyrus 2021
Cheung family, 1954, author bottom row, right
Kettering family, 1986, author bottom row, second from right
“Everything comes with a price, especially wearing the skin that is not one’s own. It would take me a very long time to confront this immutable truth.”
From The Polarity of Dreams