Category Archives: Korean American

January 10, 2013 · 12:33 pm

Dream Friends by You Byun

What do you do when your most cherished friend isn’t real to anyone else but you? For Melody and her bestest buddy, “[t]hey had fun together every day and every night … but only in her dreams.” As the new kid on the block who is just too shy to talk to the other kiddies, Melody “wanted her dream friend in her real world.” Who wouldn’t?

When no amount of imaginative coaxing (including a toothsome cupcake trail, secret underground passageway, an unstuff-able tiny purple door, even a chemistry experiment!) brings her favorite buddy closer to reality, Melody closes her eyes and dances last night’s adventure solo. She’s interrupted – mid-pirouette – not by her dream friend, but a real-life little girl who asks, ”‘Can I play with you?’” Soon enough, one friend becomes many as the playground fills with twirling, leaping, swirling children: “There was no magic like in her dreams, but it was … magical.”

First-time picture book creator You Byun has clearly found her magic wand, or at least her magic pen. Dream Friends, in both words and pictures, is a happy little fairy tale in which dreams come true all because of the power of friendship. The lesson works for anyone, everyone: One small moment of reaching out certainly begets rich rewards.

Byun’s backflap biography notes that “[m]oving around a lot as a child made it a challenge for her to make new friends.” Constantly rushing as we do in our daily lives pretty much guarantees making connections is going to be tough for us all, regardless of age. While the new year is still fresh and young, take a moment from your distracted isolation, look around, and make a new friend – or reach out to one you’ve been missing for far too long. Surely, we’re never too old for a simple “Can I play with you?”

Readers: Children

Published: 2013

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January 7, 2013 · 7:17 am

Prophecy [Book 1 of Prophecy Series] by Ellen Oh + Author Interview

As the mother of three young girls, Ellen Oh is constantly on the lookout for good books that showcase female empowerment. She’s found a few here and there – say, The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, The Girl of Fire and Thorns trilogy by Rae Carson, The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley, and maybe a few others – but to ask for characters with whom her Korean American daughters might directly identify seemed too tall an order. So the former entertainment lawyer and adjunct college professor decided to write her own: Prophecy, the first of a planned trilogy, debuts this month.

“People feared Kira,” the heart-thumping, fantastical young adult novel begins. With her yellow eyes and unprecedented fighting skills, Kira is hardly the average teenager, much less the picture of modesty and subservience befitting a court royal. Her uncle the King considers her a “freak of nature, and a terrible embarrassment to the royal family,” and yet he must rely on her warrior strength to protect his only son and royal heir.

Throughout a fantasy version of third-century Korea, demons, imps, hobgoblins, and shamans threaten the entire peninsula, falling the seven kingdoms one by one. In Kira’s home kingdom of Hansong, evil forces are moving through the ranks, possessing even once-trusted officials. The horrific events that the great ancestor, the Dragon King, prophesied are proving true: “Seven will become three. Three will become one. One will save us all.”

When and how did the idea for your Prophecy trilogy come to you? Did Kira arrive fully formed like Athena? Or did you struggle to bring her to life?
Kira and [her cousin Prince] Taejo were the easiest characters for me to write, because they did literally spring out of my head, much like Athena – I love that analogy, by the way. I like pretending I’m Zeus! The cousins arrived fully formed, with very specific details about how I wanted them to be. When the idea for Prophecy first came to me, it was about a young prince who is believed to be the hero of a legend. But as the legend progresses, his female cousin – who is also his bodyguard and a far better warrior – turns out to be the true hero. I initially wrote Prophecy from Taejo’s perspective, but he was coming out too whiny and jealous. That changed when the point of view switched over to Kira’s. That’s when the story became more alive, moved faster, and became more relatable, at least to me. Which makes sense because the story was always about Kira – I just had to let her tell it.

Besides the shift in perspective, did the story change in other ways over the various revisions?
I think, overall, the story became more emotional. As a writer, I tend to be oriented more toward action, action, action. Both my agent and editor were really good at making me pause and ask, “Yeah, but what does Kira feel when this happens, or that happens?” I always knew the “how” and “what,” but during the revision process, I had to really work on expressing Kira’s reactions, her emotions.

Besides the obvious fact of your Korean ancestry, why did you choose to set your first novel in ancient Korea? As a fantasy writer, you pretty much have unlimited freedom as to where and when.
I chose ancient Korea for two specific reasons: the first was just practical – I couldn’t find anything like a fantasy adventure story set in ancient Korea in libraries or bookstores; the second was more personal – ancient Korea was such a fascinating, turbulent time with kingdoms changing, collapsing, being taken over, dealing with amazing politics and endless intrigue. But the specific moment I realized I had to write about ancient Korea was when I read a Genghis Khan biography and came to a point in the book when the Mongols invade Korea, and the entire royal court flees to Ganghwa Island (which is at the mouth of the Han River), where the Mongols aren’t able to cross the river to get to them. The Korean leaders are out there laughing, while the poor peasants are getting raped and killed by the Mongols. And then the royals, who’ve been safe and sound in their island fortress, come back to tax the hell out of the peasants and steal all their food. All those layered dynamics between the haves and have-nots were just so visual, interesting, and ultimately inspiring to me. That was feudal society at its best – from my perspective as someone who’s interested in the history – and at its worst – from a human perspective because you really see the worst of what people in power do to their citizens. And through it all, the common peasants endure and survive. [... click here for more]

Author interview: Feature: “An Interview with Ellen Oh,” Bookslut.com, January 2013

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2013

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December 19, 2012 · 9:46 am

Tune | Book 1: Vanishing Point by Derek Kirk Kim

Tune.Vanishing PointAt 18, Andy Go “had life all figured out,” but then so much for the best-laid plans: “None of it came true, of course. Not a single damn thing.” One morning he wakes fully clothed on his bed, in his room, in his (parents’) house … and as he’s groggily doing his business in the bathroom, he finally realizes “Something was horribly wrong.”

Rewind five months back: at the end of his third year of arts college, Andy announces to his buddies he’s quitting school: “I can draw! I can paint! I don’t see why I have go through another year of watercolor blends and contrapastos just get a piece of paper that says I can.” Two months later, he’s still couch surfing and living with his parents who finally pass him the “Help Wanted” section. Luck isn’t on his side at first – Andy’s thinking “Assistant Editor,” but the employer’s offering mailroom or janitor. Then he walks into an office and meets 481(4)-0427.05.03.D86 and 503(4)-0717.04.23.B101, whose employment contract offers a hefty salary, weekends off, three weeks of vacation, generous pension, health and dental benefits, and they’ll even throw in child support. But the job isn’t exactly local, and Andy’s just found out that the love of his life might not go unrequited after all. To sign or not to sign … Andy’s about to take the ride of his life!

Derek Kirk Kim who won the graphic industry triple crown – Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz – with his debut collection, Same Difference and Other Stories, proves to be an epic jokester in this boisterous adventure, complete with goofy boy bonding, generational culture clash (“ai-goo” indeed!), coming-of-age first romance (queue soundtrack, please!), and intergalactic parallel universe science fiction. Kim’s also having quite the laugh, channeling his fellow buddies (did I mention goofy boy bonding? – page 123 is priceless!) including pop culture maven Jeff Yang and graphic artist Gene Luen Yang with whom Kim co-authored The Eternal Smile.

The “Book 1″ on the cover together with the “To Be Continued” on the final page promises more escapades ahead. I’m definitely (can’t resist …!) staying Tuned.

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2012

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December 3, 2012 · 8:02 am

Publisher Interview: Sunyoung Lee and Kaya Press

Early this year, at almost 18 years old, Kaya Press flew the nest. Leaving behind the comfort and familiarity of New York’s publishing world, the non-profit indie specializing in “books from the Asian diaspora,” moved offices across the country to Los Angeles. Now comfortably ensconced in the Department of American Studies & Ethnicity on the University of Southern California campus, Kaya has a new address, new community, new books, new staff, and is definitely basking in new energy.

With all the latest changes, the one Kaya constant is Sunyoung Lee… although she does have the fairly new title of “Publisher and Editor.” Founded in 1994 by Soo Kyung Kim, a postmodern Korean writer, Kaya was originally intended to house a journal of Korean literature-in-translation, which eventually morphed into Muae, a spirited anthology highlighting the newest in Asian Pacific American writing that Library Journal named one of “The Best Magazines of 1995.” Muae fell victim to the Korean economic collapse of 1997, but under the bolstering management of Juliana Koo and Lee, who took over that year as managing editor and editor, respectively, Kaya managed to survive – and thrive – living up to its namesake: “Kaya was the name of a tribal confederation of six Korean city-states that existed from the middle of the first until the sixth century CE,” their website officially explains. “Although the Kaya kingdom was an iron-age culture, it is remembered as a utopia of learning, music, and the arts due to its trade and communication with China, Japan, and India.”

Kaya Press channels that international history, feeding its artistic vision by regularly pushing the boundaries of the Asian Pacific Islander (API) diaspora through the titles the tenacious press has published thus far. A small sampling might include an enhanced reprint of the groundbreaking 1937 classic East Goes West by the first Korean American novelist Younghill Kang; American Book Award-winning The Unbearable Heart by Japanese German American poet Kimiko Hahn; Chinese Australian Brian Castro’s already-major-award-winning-in-Australia novel, Shanghai Dancing; the lauded Commonwealth Prize-winning Where We Once Belonged by Sia Figiel, which was the first novel by a Samoan woman to be published in the United States; and Migritude by Kenyan-born, South Asian-descended, citizen-of-the-world performance artist Shailja Patel.

The word “kaya” echoes the diversity of its authors: in addition to its ancient Korean representation, in Japanese, Kaya is also “summer night” or a type of yew tree that withstands harsh environmental conditions; in Malay, kaya means “rich”; in Indonesian, “prosperous”; in Tagalog, “to be able”; in Sanskrit, “body”; in Turkish “rock”; in Zulu, “home.”

For Lee, home is where the press is. In order to sustain it, she’s worked endless day jobs and freelance gigs – from Billboard magazine to Publishers Weekly – in addition to teaching the requisite composition classes, to pay the bills so she could nurture Kaya well into its teenage years. Now that she’s settled into rooms of her own at USC, Lee’s ushering out the next set of Kaya titles: Lament in the Night, which includes two 1920s Japanese American novellas by Shōson Nagahara, translated by Andrew Leong; The Hanging on Union Square, an experimental novel originally published in 1935 by H. T. Tsiang; Water Chasing Water by Seattle-based poet Koon Woon; and Korean American adoptee Nicky Sa-eun Schildkraut’s debut poetry in Magnetic Refrain.

It’s been a full decade since we officially talked about Kaya. So, what’s your latest, greatest news?
The biggest news, as you know, is that we moved to LA this year. We’re publishing a bunch of new books, and a lot of wonderful new people are working with us. This is the largest group of people we’ve had involved with Kaya. USC gives us funding to pay for two part-time grad students – they’re 25% part-time – and we also get a lot of volunteers. Their involvement – both undergraduate and graduate students – means while they learn hands-on about the publishing process, I’ve been able to do more strategic work, to put more energy into Kaya, and that’s been really gratifying. [... click here for more]

Publisher interview: “Feature: Sunyoung Lee and Kaya Press,” Bookslut.com, December 2012

Readers: Adult

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November 27, 2012 · 8:40 am

Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia’s Underground Railroad by Melanie Kirkpatrick

Please allow me to share a so-called North Korean political joke: “Kim Jong Il and Vladimir Putin … decide to … see whose bodyguards are more loyal. Putin calls his bodyguard Ivan, opens the window of their twentieth-floor meeting room, and says: ‘Ivan, jump!’ Sobbing, Ivan says: ‘Mr. President, how can you ask me to do that? I have a wife and child waiting for me at home.’ Putin … apologizes to Ivan, and sends him away…. Kim Jong Il … calls his bodyguard…. ‘Lee Myung-man, jump!’…. Lee … is just about to jump … when Putin grabs him and says: ‘… If you jump out this window, you’ll die!…’ Lee … tries to escape Putin’s embrace and jump…: ‘President Putin, please let me go! I have a wife and child waiting for me at home!’”

Ghastly humor aside, the tragic joke barely disguises the inhumane policies of the world’s most secretive, repressive regime. In Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia’s Underground Railroad, former Wall Street Journal journalist Melanie Kirkpatrick documents the desperate, dangerous flight of North Koreans toward an uncertain new life. Drawing parallels with American slaves seeking freedom 150 years and continents apart, Kirkpatrick traces North Korean journeys through a network of clandestine routes, safe houses, and courageous individuals willing to compromise their own safety to help others.

For North Koreans attempting to escape starvation, torture, repression, and worse, the “new underground” begins just over the border in China. Because of China’s official political support of North Korea, the Chinese government refuses to recognize escapees as refugees (even though China has signed the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees). Nor does China allow the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to operate in the country.

North Koreans in China live constantly under threat of arrest and repatriation. Women are often trafficked, sold as “brides” in response to a shortage of partners in China (due to that country’s history of male preference that has created a “sex imbalance … [of] epic proportions).” The children of these North Korean/Chinese unions perhaps suffer the most, trapped in stateless limbo: The fear of exposing a North Korean mother’s illegal status prevents a Chinese father from officially registering the child who, in effect, doesn’t exist and therefore has no access to education and healthcare.

Within and beyond China, remarkable heroes extend the escape networks into numerous Asian countries as they work to send North Korean escapees to freedom in South Korea and beyond. These heroes include: Steve Kim, founder of 318 Partners (named for Article 318 of the Chinese criminal code which sent him to jail for aiding North Koreans in China); “Mary and Jim,” a retired couple, who run orphanages in China for mixed children abandoned by missing North Korean mothers and desperate Chinese fathers (the undocumented status of these children makes them ineligible for adoption); and “Mr. Jung,” who has undergone face-changing surgeries to repeatedly fool Chinese authorities while rescuing South Korean prisoners of war held illegally in North Korea since 1953.

The tenacity of such brave individuals is sharply contrasted with the failure of the world – especially South Korea, the United States, even the United Nations – to confront and combat North Korea’s atrocities. Kirkpatrick convincingly argues that escaped North Koreans – from starving children to highly-placed officials – will prove to be the best weapon against toppling the despotic, third-generation Kim regime.

Kirkpatrick is a methodical writer, and Escape from North Korea is a solid, matter-of-fact title that falls somewhere in between the unrelenting brutality of Blaine Harden’s recent Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West, and the flowing narrative of Barbara Demick’s lauded 2010 National Book Award nonfiction finalist, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. As literature, Escape from North Korea is efficient at best; it reads like a series of separate articles patched together. Certain details are unnecessarily repetitive (such as explaining yet again who North Korean founder Kim Il Sung is, two-thirds through the book). Other details seem oddly missing and sometimes surprisingly inaccurate. Kirkpatrick refers to the underground railroad-multiplying organization LiNK (Liberty in North Korea) as “founded at Yale University in 2004 by two Korean-American students,” but identifies only one founder (whose story is one of the book’s most inspiring). Meanwhile, however, Kirkpatrick neglects to tell readers about the never-named co-founder who was actually already a California college graduate when LiNK began.

Quibbles, inaccuracies, and typos aside, Kirkpatrick undoubtedly offers an eye-opening opportunity to explore an overlooked, pressing topic. She shares with readers the harrowing testimonies, the wrenching struggles, and the inspiring successes. Regretfully, in its current incarnation, Escape reads like a powerful draft waiting for a diligent editor’s transformative prowess.

Review: Christian Science Monitor, November 26, 2012

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012

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September 10, 2012 · 1:10 pm

My First Book of Korean Words: An ABC Rhyming Book by Henry J. Amen IV and Kyubyong Park, illustrated by Aya Padrón

No matter where you’ve been hiding, someone has been able to infiltrate your defenses and made you watch the freakishly popular “Gangnam Style” by PSY (in Korean, 싸이, although apparently it’s short for ‘psycho’). The South Korean singer (educated at Boston University and Berklee College of Music, I must add) is an international mega-superstar-in-the-making; his viral prominence has produced more than enough “Gangnam” spin-offs to keep you YouTube-ing for days. [If you need a shortcut, the best is "Umma Gangnam Style." Really.]

So what does all that have to do with this kiddie book? Timing, of course! It’s always about the timing!

I can’t tell you the number of times people have asked me ‘what’s he saying?’ in spite of my rather rusty Korean. [Pretty good answer here, by the way. Even better answer here.] So … given this unexpected interest in Korean, why not start teaching the younger ones earlier than later with this clever, playful, adorably illustrated hybrid of Korean and English?

“The goals of My First Korean Words are multiple,” the informative “Preface” explains, “… to familiarize children with the sounds and structure of Korean speech; to introduce core elements of Korean culture; to illustrate the ways in which languages differ in their treatment of everyday sounds, and to show how, through cultural importation, a single world can be shared between languages.”

“A is for achim,” or breakfast, with comes with a direct question for the young reader, “Would you eat rice and veggies for breakfast” as many Koreans do? “E is for echwi,” the sound of a Korean sneeze, with a note contrasting it with “achoo!” in English. “L is for lamb,” which is yang in Korean, but no ”l’-sound exists in the Korean language, just as “Q is for queen,” or wangbi in Korean, which comes with the gentle question, “Did you guess that the Korean language doesn’t have a Q sound?” “R is for roket,” which clearly borrows from the English “rocket.”

Most serendipitously, “N is for nolda,” which means “I play”; yes, various conjugations of the Korean word for ‘to play’ gets oft-repeated throughout that addictive video – just one more reason to listen again! If you find you need to do more deciphering, the same trio you see here of editor Amen/language software creator Park/artist Padrón also wrote the highly-rated Korean for Beginners: Mastering Conversational Korean for the determined Korean language seeker. Might be high time to order my own copy … if nothing else, to get beyond “Gangnam Style”!

Readers: Children

Published: 2012

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August 7, 2012 · 2:22 pm

Maya and the Turtle: A Korean Fairy Tale by Soma Han and John C. Stickler, illustrated by Soma Han

In between “Long, long ago …” and “… happily ever after,” is a story passed down from grandmother to mother to daughter, as co-author and illustrator Soma Han writes in her “Author’s Note.” That in itself is a lovely tale indeed …

The mother/daughter bond here is strong, even in death: just before Maya’s mother passes away, she shares with Maya a prophetic dream that Maya, still a child, would someday grow up to be a princess. Maya is lovingly raised by her “father [who] did everything he could to make Maya grow up happy and healthy.” Her most constant companion is a turtle she names Boke-doongi, which means ‘lucky one.’

When illness strikes Maya’s father and he can no longer work, the small family can’t pay for food, much less medicine. Maya decides that she must go to the wealthy nearby village, and offer herself to the centipede monster who comes every year seeking a victim. For her sacrifice, the villagers reward her well, enough to save her father, before she must return to “the cursed place” where she awaits death. But faithful, devoted Boke-doongi will not, of course, allow such a tragedy to happen … and so the turtle seals Maya’s fate, and her filial courage is rewarded by the Emperor of heaven and earth, who tells her, “‘You must meet my son, the Prince …’”

The husband-and-wife team create their second title together (Land of Morning Calm: Korean Culture Then and Now), drawing on Han’s Korean heritage, and Stickler’s 13 years of Korean residency. Han, who is also a painter, sculptor, and mosaic artist, credits her mother and grandmother with the original story of Maya. To the couple’s credit, their version gets a 21st-century update: almost every page has a contextual note explaining something cultural, historical, or just downright tongue-in-cheek (“Why is the Prince riding on a dinosaur? ‘They are very strong,’ the Prince says, ‘and can walk long distances without getting tired.’”); and the multi-culti angle gets celebrated with a strikingly detailed, full spread – the royal couple is indeed flanked by “people from many lands,” many colors, many cultures and backgrounds. Hope springs eternal for world peace …

Like many age-old tales (especially of the Asian variety), the bottom-line lesson is loud and clear: filial piety gets rewarded – bigtime! That used to be a great way to get kids to obey … at least it was long, long ago. But uhmm … what was I saying about 21st-century updates …??!!

Readers: Children

Published: 2012

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July 2, 2012 · 8:22 am

The Collective by Don Lee + Author Interview

Don Lee is definitely a good news-bad news sort of guy, albeit all in the same breath.

Good news: he’s not going to Texas this summer, because his fourth and latest book, The Collective, is published this month and he’s going on a book tour so he can meet his waiting readers across the country. Bad news: he’s not going to Texas this summer – specifically to Marfa, one of his favorite places to write – because he’s going on a book tour so he can meet his waiting readers across the country.

Good news: as soon as he gets back, he’s planning to start another novel. Worst bad news: as soon as he gets back, he has to get working on another novel and start the whole cycle of worry all over again.

In spite of all that neurotic hand-wringing, Lee has figured out how to deliver with every book. Lee the writer arrived pretty much fully formed in 2001 with his quirky debut story collection, Yellow, which was populated by the inhabitants of fictional Rosarito Bay, a northern California seaside town not unlike Half Moon Bay. His memorable cast of characters was so real, I was convinced I knew at least a few of them (I lived in that area for a few years). His many awards – that began with the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters –  proved well-deserved; Lee’s steadily garnered continuous kudos with the novels that followed, Country of Origin (2004) about the disappearance of an African American hapa woman in Japan, and Wrack and Ruin (2008) which returns to Lee’s fictional Rosarito Bay of Yellow to the unexpected, wacky reunion of two very different brothers.

The Collective is, undoubtedly, his most personal novel, although don’t let the overlaps with his real life fool you – Lee’s an incorrigible storyteller. The title refers to the 3AC, the Asian American Artists Collective, founded by three friends who meet at Macalaster College and reunite after graduation in Boston. Eric Cho, who narrates the novel, is a Korean American from southern California with hopes of becoming a published writer someday. Jessica Tsai is an independent, feisty artist, the child of Taiwanese immigrant parents from upstate New York. Joshua Yoon is a brilliant, angry Korean adoptee, raised as the privileged only child of two liberal Harvard professors. No spoilers (this happens in the second paragraph): Joshua’s violent, shocking suicide opens Lee’s third novel.

Burning first question: I have to start backward just to be contrary since I leaked the beginning. So Joshua’s first book, which gets glowing reviews, is called Upon the Shore and it’s set in Korea’s Cheju Island. And, of course, his (chosen) last name is Yoon. Immediately when I saw that title in your Collective, I thought of Once the Shore, the much lauded debut title from Paul Yoon, which is set on an imaginary Korean island not unlike Cheju. Then I noticed that Paul Yoon gets a nod in your acknowledgments so obviously you must have a personal relationship with him. Upon the Shore, Once the Shore, Joshua Yoon, Paul Yoon? Any correlation intended? You would not want to wish Joshua’s career and life on Paul, would you?
I’m good friends with Paul Yoon, and it was all an inside joke, but now you’ve outed us, dammit! I first met Paul in Boston. His girlfriend, the writer Laura van den Berg, was my student at Emerson, and then in 2008, the three of us became close when we were all living near Harvard Square for the summer, within blocks of each other. They’ve become two of my dearest friends. Paul is famously reclusive and private. For a while, Laura maintained a hilarious fake Twitter account for him, @No1Hermit (he made her take it down eventually). So to needle him, I initially used the title Upon the Shore in a short story of mine, referring to a cheesy fictitious film, and then decided to use the title and his last name in The Collective for Joshua, and it grew from there. But no, Paul is not at all like Joshua. He’s a strangely upbeat person. I’m much more like Joshua than he is – morose and prone to depression and pessimistic by nature.

Now that you’ve ‘fessed up to your resemblance to Joshua, I must ask the next obvious question: how much of The Collective is real? I know writing in first person sometimes can bring up that sort of question, and this is your first book in first person, right? Certainly the details of Macalaster College are authentic as you were there for a year teaching, and you were also an editor at Ploughshares for years and years before your Midwest gig. You don’t necessarily have to reveal details – although you’re more than welcome to if you want to! – but maybe you might share a few general overlaps to real life?
Yup, first thing I’ve ever written in first person. That was the challenge I posed for myself with The Collective. With each book, I try to do something very different, both technically and tonally, which is not, actually, a good career move for a writer. It’s easier on everyone – booksellers, publishers, readers, agents, reviewers – if your books follow a somewhat familiar trajectory. It’s confusing to people if you don’t, I’ve learned.

There are quite a few autobiographical elements in the book – a few of my romantic disasters and a lot of the staging, like the old Ploughshares office in Watertown, which was the shithole I describe for Palaver – but not as many as you may think. I didn’t hang out with many Asian Americans in Boston, because often I was the sole non-white person in the room when I went to literary events. I was never in an artists’ collective, though later on I had friends in the Dark Room Collective [founded in 1988 in Boston by a group of established and emerging African American poets]. I never got caught up in any of the racial controversies that are portrayed (I based the rigmarole with Jessica and the Cambridge Arts Council on my friend Hans Evers’s experience way back in 1994, but embellished it with a racial component). I’ll say this, though: this is my most personal book yet. A lot of what these characters feel, I have felt acutely at various points of my life. But most of the main actions or events in the book are made up.

I loved Joshua’s obsession with Haruki Murakami the runner… I’m still chuckling at the oddest moments over the “Is that him?” reference. I myself am a running-Murakami groupie, that is, I’ve so enjoyed running with a Murakami title stuck in my ears. So does this mean you’re a runner, a Murakami groupie, or both?
Both. I was a real Murakami junkie for a while, and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle remains one of my favorite books. I used to run every day along the Charles River in Boston for something like 15 years, but eventually my knees gave out, so I started biking. Man, I miss running, the simplicity and accessibility and meditative quality of it.

The only time I caught sight of Murakami was at MIT, where he was giving a reading. There were no seats left, and the guards started herding the people who were standing, including me, out of the auditorium, so I never got to see him read, but I veered down a hallway and passed right by him as he waited to enter.

We published a story of his in Ploughshares, but I only dealt with his agent in New York, his assistant in Tokyo, and his translator, Jay Rubin, at Harvard. But the assistant asked for five extra copies of the issue to be shipped to Minami Aoyama, and it made me happy to imagine Murakami thumbing through them. [... click here for more]

Author interview: Feature: “An Interview with Don Lee,” Bookslut.com, July 2012

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012

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February 1, 2012 · 10:11 am

Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung

As Janie weeps over her first-ever separation from her mother, who is about to give birth, her grandmother admonishes her with the grave responsibility Janie must bear for her new sibling. “In our family … a sister always dies,” her grandmother warns, sharing the horrific tale of her own infant sister’s death during the Japanese occupation of Korea.

Two decades later, living Stateside, Janie’s family is in crisis: sister Hannah has severed family ties, while their father faces terminal cancer. Seeking the latest treatments, her parents return to Korea, charging Janie with bringing Hannah back. The sisters’ devastating confrontation sends Janie alone to rejoin her parents and extended family, each scarred by the terrifying legacy of colonial occupation, war, dangerous politics, and a fractured country.

Verdict: No argument that the prize-winning Chung writes elegiac, exquisite, multilayered prose, yet her debut ultimately falters between too much (self-absorption overload, cousin Gabe’s death, sleazy adviser) and not enough (Hannah’s disappearance, her uncle’s silence). For greater satisfaction, readers might try Sonya Chung‘s Long for This World or Chang-rae Lee‘s The Surrendered.

Review: “Fiction,” Library Journal, February 1, 2012

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012

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November 17, 2011 · 9:50 am

My Korean Deli: Risking It All for a Convenience Store by Ben Ryder Howe

I swear this it not a spoiler because it’s on the dedication page: Dwayne dies. His dates are right there before the book even starts: “1968-2009.” Which is really quite sad, because inherited employee Dwayne Wright is one of the two most colorful Characters (capital intended!) in this rollicking, everyone-gets-sardonically-skewered memoir about the sometimes unintended adventures of owning and operating a Brooklyn Korean deli. That other Character is the writer’s mother-in-law, Kay, who the writer introduces on the first page as “the Mike Tyson of Korean grandmothers.”

That writer, Ben Ryder Howe, is a former senior editor for The Paris Review. Yes, Paris Review – as in quite possibly the most important literary journal ever, at least in English. No, he’s not Korean (in spite of his Korean deli); he’s a Mayflower descendant, raised by “modern-day Puritans … with a technophobic aversion to thinks like dental floss.” His cultural anthropologist father taught him in ninth grade that The Elements of Style was not a book about writing, but “actually about character – specifically, how to be a crusty old man.” The crusty old man, “bizarrely, thrilled” by the news of his son’s entrepreneurial plans, responds with, “‘Could be an interesting experience … sort of an ethnography, a participatory study into the lives of the urban underclass.’” Nope, no comment there.

Howe, unlike his self-isolating ancestors, met and married way beyond his WASP lineage: his University of Chicago sweetheart Gab Pak is the daughter of Korean immigrants. In order to save money, the couple moves into Gab’s mother’s Staten Island basement. Gab, a former corporate Manhattan attorney, channels her fast approaching “thirtieth-birthday paranoia … into an obsession for repaying her mother’s sacrifice” for giving up everything she knew in Korea and immigrating to the U.S. to provide promising futures for her children. Howe observes (with great wit) as Gab transfers the couple’s life savings into opening a business for her mother (in which the whole family will exhaustively participate) – and their lives are never quite the same again.

One warning: read Howe’s multi-layered, memorably humorous, oh-so-cleverly-written first book for yourself; don’t bother with the disappointing audible version! Alas, Bronson Pinchot’s mispronunciations just grate. For an actor whose big break came from playing a heavily accented immigrant (Perfect Strangers), that he couldn’t step into one of the ubiquitous Korean delis throughout NYC (where he is apparently based) for a quick mini-lesson strikes me as irresponsible. Regardless of his geographical location, his producers could (should!) surely have made a single phone call to just one of the estimated 90 million Koreans throughout the world. Really?!! Really!!

Readers: Adult

Published: 2011

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