“The Kindness of Strangers”: Paul Yoon’s Cosmopolitan Imagination in Snow Hunters

Abstract

This paper examines major issues in recent discussion of cosmopolitanism and analyze Yoon’s rendering of cosmopolitan interactions in Snow Hunters. The newly forming cosmopolitanism, distinct from the traditional one that was refined in Western Europe under the influence the Enlightenment, is less antagonistic to nationalism and more focused on gaps, crevices, and overlaps in the national and cultural boundaries. Its goal is to delineate basic ethical responsibility toward political and cultural others while retaining respect for their particular lives. Paul Yoon’s Snow Hunters revises the traditional western cosmopolitanism by focusing on the fluid movements between the positions of a host and a guest displayed by its diasporic main characters. Ultimately, Yoon portrays how, interspersed with and yet counteracting the painful and fragmented memories of Yohan, the traumatized protagonist of the novel, small acts of kindness from strangers and of his own sustain and then heal him.