A Korean American author myself, I published my first book in 2001, and in the ensuing years I’ve been heartened by the number of Korean Americans who have made a splash with their debut novels, as these five writers did. All five have ventured outside of what I’ve called the ethnic literature box, going far beyond the traditional stories expected from Asian Americans. They established a trend that is happily growing.
I feel Chang-Rae Lee broke out of the mold of Asian American books that always dealt with immigration or stories set in Old Asia. A young man, Henry Park, is hired to infiltrate the campaign of a Korean American running for mayor in New York City. Yes, this delves into the issues of assimilation and alienation, but the novel is about so much more. It’s lyrical and poignant and universal in its explorations of familial and marital love.
The debut novel from critically-acclaimed and New York Times–bestselling author of On Such a Full Sea and My Year Abroad.
In Native Speaker, author Chang-rae Lee introduces readers to Henry Park. Park has spent his entire life trying to become a true American—a native speaker. But even as the essence of his adopted country continues to elude him, his Korean heritage seems to drift further and further away.
Park's harsh Korean upbringing has taught him to hide his emotions, to remember everything he learns, and most of all to feel an overwhelming sense of alienation. In other words, it has…
This stunning, superlative novel soars in its lyricism. In just 194 pages, we get a lifetime. Yohan leaves the Korean peninsula after the war and becomes an apprentice to a Japanese tailor in Brazil. This story is quiet, without a lot of fireworks, but it’s nonetheless haunting and just gorgeous.
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"At once as delicate and durable as the filament a spider weaves...the finest of fables...a small but radiant star in the current literary firmament." -Dallas Morning News
"[A] quotidian-surreal craft-master." -New York Magazine Yoon's highly anticipated debut novel SNOW HUNTERS promises to be even more beloved than the collection of stories that introduced him to the literary world. Snow Hunters traces the extraordinary journey of Yohan, who defects from his country at the end of the Korean War, leaving his friends and family behind…
In 1950s Sewanee, Chang and Katherine slowly
fall in love and find that the Souths of Korea and Tennessee are not that
different after all, both subject to lingering issues of class, family, race,
and civil war. I love the poetic language in this novel, as well as its
ambitious story and the complexity invested in every relation.
"This wonderful hybrid of a novel--a love story, a war story, a novel of manners--introduces a writer of enchanting gifts, a beautiful heart wedded to a beautiful imagination. How else does Susan Choi so fully inhabit characters from disparate backgrounds, with such brilliant wit and insight? The Foreign Student stirs up great and lovely emotions." — Francisco Goldman, author of The Ordinary Seaman
The Foreign Student is the story of a young Korean man, scarred by war, and the deeply troubled daughter of a wealthy Southern American family. In 1955, a new student arrives at a small college in the…
This coming-of-age novel was groundbreaking, as it concerns a shy Korean American boy who grows up in Maine, singing in a boys’ choir, who has to figure out how to navigate the aftermath of sexual molestation. But then the book takes a startling, provocative turn, with the narrator becoming a young man and teaching at a private school, where he discovers one of his students is his molester’s son. Edinburgh is achingly beautiful.
A poignant work of mature, haunting artistry, Edinburgh heralds the arrival of a remarkable young writer. Fee, a Korean-American child growing up in Maine, is gifted with a beautiful soprano voice and sings in a professional boys' choir. When the choir director acts out his paedophilic urges on the boys in the choir, Fee is unable to save himself, his first love, Peter, or his friends.
This powerful novel involves a young man, Will, who falls in love with a woman named Phoebe in college in Upstate New York. Phoebe is indoctrinated into a religious cult that ends up bombing several buildings, killing five people. Phoebe then disappears, and Will becomes intent on finding her, wanting to figure out her involvement in the terrorist acts. The story’s propulsive and electric, diving into everything from first love to religion to politics. It’s also a personal story. R. O. Kwon herself was, as she phrases it, “a Jesus freak,” though she lost her faith in high school.
'Absolutely electric . . . Everyone should read this book' GARTH GREENWELL'Every explosive requires a fuse. That's R. O. Kwon's novel, a straight, slow-burning fuse' VIET THANH NGUYEN'In dazzlingly acrobatic prose, R. O. Kwon explores the lines between faith and fanaticism, passion and violence, the rational and the unknowable' CELESTE NG'A sharp, little novel as hard to ignore as a splinter in your eye' WASHINGTON POST'Raw and finely wrought' NEW YORK TIMES'The Incendiaries packs a disruptive charge, and introduces R. O. Kwon as a major talent'…
Twenty-one years after the publication of my debut collection Yellow, I return to the short story form for my sixth book, The Partition.
The Partition is an updated exploration of Asian American identity, this time with characters who are presumptive model minorities in the arts, academia, and media. Spanning decades, these nine stories traverse an array of cities, from Tokyo to Boston, Honolulu to El Paso, touching upon transient encounters in local bars, restaurants, and hotels. Culminating in a three-story cycle about a Hollywood actor, The Partition examines heartbreak, identity, family, and relationships, the characters searching for answers to universal questions: Where do I belong? How can I find love? What defines an authentic self?
Growing up in New England, my mother had a set of books that she kept in the living room, more for display than anything else. It was The Works of Edgar Allen Poe. I read them and instantly became hooked on horror. In the seventh grade, I entertained my friends at a sleepover by telling them the mysterious clanking noise (created by the baseboard heater) was the ghost of a woman who had once lived in the farmhouse, forced to cannibalize her ten children during a particularly bad winter. And I’ve been enjoying scaring people ever since.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunged off a waterfall to her death, leaving behind a legacy shrouded in secrets. Her great-niece Julia, a struggling journalist recovering from a divorce, seeks answers decades later.
Tasked with retrieving Dr. Greer’s discovery–a flower that could have world-changing properties–Julia unearths a story rife with hidden agendas and a missionary community unwilling to share the truth. As she confronts the eerie legends and a fellow traveler with his own motives, Julia finds that the longer she stays, the thinner the line between reality and the fantastical becomes until she…
From the award-winning author of Dead Souls and Poe comes an all-new bone-chilling novel where a mysterious island holds the terrifying answers to a woman's past and future.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunges off a waterfall to her death, convinced the spirits of her dead husband and daughter had joined the nightmarchers-ghosts of ancient warriors that rise from their burial sites on moonless nights. But was it suicide, or did a strange young missionary girl, Agnes, play a role in Irene's deteriorating state of mind?
