What I Read On and Off The Internet This Week - The Korean American Wave Year Edition
The 35 Korean American fiction titles for 2023 thus far
This week I mostly read things that were off the internet. A few exceptions: this essay by my late friend and colleague at Dartmouth, Jonathan Crewe, about his friendship with J. M. Coetzee, is a kind of consideration of Coetzee’s Scenes From Provincial Life from inside of the writer’s life and subjects—he is one of the subjects. It eventually became a book as well, and as the Coetzee is an inspiration for my current third person memoir newsletter project it has been a perfect way of visiting with his extraordinary intellect a year after his passing.
I found this post at the London Review of Books blog moving: Mahmoud Muna, a bookseller at the Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem, finds himself lately acting as a support system for the many hundreds of journalists arriving there to cover the war. In this post he writes about recommending books to them when they ask him for a recommendation for reading materials on “the current situation.” His suggestions make for a good addition to anyone’s reading list right now.
Here by the way is a link for you to make more calls in support of the ceasefire.
This week also saw the publication of Ed Park’s Same Bed, Different Dreams, E. J. Koh’s The Liberators, and Chi-Sun Lee’s Upcountry. All three novels are accompanied by a great deal of excitement and also, in a historic turn of events, a great many peers. The number and range of Korean American fiction titles this year is astonishing to me. There’s literary novels, short story collections, historical fiction, speculative fiction, YA, children’s books and anthologies. I had noticed as the ARCs came my way that there seemed to be, well, a lot of Korean American fiction, and as I play with books at times in my house as a child might play with dolls, staging vignettes, I will often mix them all in together and not ponder, too much, the specific category. But then it just became too hard to ignore.
I’ve posted versions of this year’s list of Korean American fiction on Instagram and Facebook, and each post has seen it expand. Please add news of anything I’ve missed.
Your Love Is Not Good, by Johanna Hedva
Y/N by Esther Yi
The Sense of Wonder by Matthew Salesses
The Apology by Jimin Han
All-American by Joe Milan
Excavations by Hannah Michell
Sea Change by Gina Chung
Flux by Jinwoo Chong
Skull Water by Heinz Insu Fenkl
Happiness Falls, by Angie Kim
The Liberators, by E. J. Koh
What We Kept To Ourselves, by Nancy Jooyoun Kim
Same Bed, Different Dreams, by Ed Park
Upcountry, by Chi-Sun Lee
Fortune by Ellen Won Steil
Deep Roots by Sung J Woo
8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster by Mirinae Lee
The Hive and the Honey, by Paul Yoon
Waiting For Mr. Kim, by Carol Roh Spaulding
The Do-Over by Suzanne Park
The Long March Home by Tosca Lee
Imposter Syndrome, by Patricia Park
Cataclysm: Star Wars: The High Republic, Book 7 by Lydia Kang
Just a Few Fake Kisses...: A Forbidden Fake Dating Romance (Hana Trio Book 3)
by Jayci Lee
Hurt You by Marie Myung-Ok Lee
See Us Bloom by Kyunghee Kim
Mindy Kim and the Summer Musical by Lyla Lee
Ben Lee and the Magic Lunch Box by Hanna Kim
The Goblin Twins by Frances Cha
Throwback by Maureen Goo
Forget Me Not, by Alyssa Derrick
Haru Zombie Dog Hero by Ellen Oh
Camp Zero, by Michelle Min Sterling
Connecting Flights, edited by Ellen Oh (anthology of 12 Asian American writers)
When We Become Ours, edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung (anthology of 15 adoptee writers of color)
Here for an example are some of the above books in a vignette with other exceptional books and one exceptional magazine (and a cocktail).
I didn’t have time to insert sales links to all of these but I would encourage you to use this list as a guide to your own purchases, wish lists and library holds, etc. I have been just as astonished to see how little prize attention any of these books have gotten from the committees thus far, especially when there’s a tremendous amount of extraordinary work here, so I hope that at least a hundred new Korean American book clubs will form to celebrate.
Until soon,
Alexander Chee
Thanks!
Thanks for reading THE MAGIC LUNCH BOX! Much love!
-Hanna