My name is junoh kimm* /ˈdʒuːnəʊ/ , and welcome to my home. I made this space to curate different works i** have done in the past as an effort to show my vision of home. My purpose in life is to empower myself to empower others–one day at a time.

I was born Junoh GimhaeKim and given my pen name Hoji. Koreans have traditionally shortened their surnames to eliminate social biases as many have long preserved publicly accessible ancestry records ***–in re information misuse (a; b). Even though my parents do not share the same genealogy, this tradition led them to carry the same surname ‘Kim.’ To show my respect to my maternal GyeongjuKim family, i* decided to add an extra ‘m’ to my last name, ‘kimm,’ and start my journey–legally as well.

Oh, by the way, for my personal writing, I lowercase "i" and my name to dissent from today's worsening individualism–see below :)

Enjoy your time here!

junoh kimm

* I understand it can be troublesome (apologies in advance) but i would very much appreciate if my name could be all spelled in lowercase. This idea first came about after i started reading the works of danah boyd. In her blog, she points out some historical, personal and political reasons behind her choice. For me, i have two simple reasons: (a) to be able to reflect my positionality (or reflexibility); and (b) to create a more inclusive space for others.

** As a native speaker in Korean, i have always thought it was quite self-righteous to always capitalize the first person singular pronoun in English. Why not ‘You, ‘We’ or ‘They’? In fact, as boyd points out, English language is the only wide-spoken language that capitalizes "i" unless the word appears in the beginning of the sentence. As cliché as it sounds, our lives are becoming both easier and noisier with the advancement of neo-libertarianism and network technology. In a world where competition and individuality is accelerating, i think it is important to step back and provide space for others or You to voice. There are just way too many capital I’s in the world at the moment and we are slowly losing our ability to listen and provide space for others. So, i thought why not start reducing my own individualization first — it’s all about creating an inclusive space. Thus, minimalizing i is my active attempt to practice self-examination and -awareness of my own belief system, positionality, judgements and behaviours — questioning my own taken-for-granted reality and the privilege that i walk with.

***Similar to that of Access to Information Act, RSC , 1985, c. A.