The Name Jar

I reread this today to see if it'd work for my English lessons, especially since I work with Korean kids who occasionally like to see books about other Korean people. One of them reminded me that this book exists.

And then I realised I don't like it as much as I previously did. Before, I thought it was a nice way to introduce kids (particularly to the idea of microaggressions and how refusing to pronounce someone's name correctly can hurt them). It's also an exploration of a Korean girl who decides to keep her name, rather than taking an 'American' one (in this instance, as many East Asian people often get pressured into taking European names because of the perceived difficulty of saying their names).

I still like that, but I feel like the author and editor needed to re-read it again. The book is primarily about how non-Korean people mispronounce Unhei's name, but the author provides a poor transliteration for her name ('Yoon-hey' or 'Oon-hey' would've been a closer approximation, but the author chose 'Yoon-hye', which doesn't work for English-speakers)... and it's continued to cause people to mispronounce her name, including non-Korean teachers who've read this book to their classes. In fact, I thought I was mispronouncing it until I looked up a pronunciation for it and found that... I wasn't.

The editor should've read it back and out loud with the author. I think that should be a normal practice, especially in the instances where people are transliterating names. Honestly, I think it should happen every time someone puts in a pronunciation guide for something. The book's point shouldn't be lost because of something so simple to catch.