Stephen Hong Sohn's Blog, page 16
April 6, 2022
A Review of K-Ming Chang’s Bestiary (One World, 2020)
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ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
K-Ming Chang’s Bestiary was a novel I saved to read during my writing retreat. What can I say, this novel is funktastic, with a lot of transformations and experimental approaches. Let’s provide you with some background via the official marketing description: “One evening, Mother tells Daughter a story about a tiger spirit who lived in a woman’s body. She was called Hu Gu Po, and she hungered to eat children, especially their toes. Soon afterward, Daughter awakes with a tiger tail. And more mysterious events follow: Holes in the backyard spit up letters penned by her grandmother; a visiting aunt arrives with snakes in her belly; a brother tests the possibility of flight. All the while, Daughter is falling for Ben, a neighborhood girl with strange powers of her own. As the two young lovers translate the grandmother’s letters, Daughter begins to understand that each woman in her family embodies a myth—and that she will have to bring her family’s secrets to light in order to change their destiny. With a poetic voice of crackling electricity, K-Ming Chang is an explosive young writer who combines the wit and fabulism of Helen Oyeyemi with the subversive storytelling of Maxine Hong Kingston. Tracing one family’s history from Taiwan to America, from Arkansas to California, Bestiary is a novel of migration, queer lineages, and girlhood.”
I didn’t manage to read anything about the novel prior to getting started on it; I even avoided the book jacket description, so as soon as we get to the point where the protagonist, Daughter, wakes up with the aforementioned tiger’s tail, I was wondering whether or not this transformation was more metaphorical or not. Chang seems to want it both ways, which makes this novel quite slippery and potentially confusing to readers, but it’s an absolute delight in terms of its linguistic wordplay and its dynamic use of transformations (both literal and figurative). The sections provided by Daughter are sometimes interspersed with letters that Daughter and her friend (and later lover) Ben (noting here that Ben is gendered female despite what some might assume is a male name) are translating. The sections from Grandmother read like poetry, which bring to mind Chang’s background as a poet. Indeed, we might actually read this novel as a kind of prose poem. Chang’s work also conjures up the work of Jenny Zhang. Zhang’s short stories in Sour Heart really delve into some of the challenges of immigrant poverty, and we’re absolutely in that terrain here. Chang’s work reminds us of the spirit of survival that is necessary for so many immigrants. A wonderfully inventive debut.
Buy the Book Here
comments
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
K-Ming Chang’s Bestiary was a novel I saved to read during my writing retreat. What can I say, this novel is funktastic, with a lot of transformations and experimental approaches. Let’s provide you with some background via the official marketing description: “One evening, Mother tells Daughter a story about a tiger spirit who lived in a woman’s body. She was called Hu Gu Po, and she hungered to eat children, especially their toes. Soon afterward, Daughter awakes with a tiger tail. And more mysterious events follow: Holes in the backyard spit up letters penned by her grandmother; a visiting aunt arrives with snakes in her belly; a brother tests the possibility of flight. All the while, Daughter is falling for Ben, a neighborhood girl with strange powers of her own. As the two young lovers translate the grandmother’s letters, Daughter begins to understand that each woman in her family embodies a myth—and that she will have to bring her family’s secrets to light in order to change their destiny. With a poetic voice of crackling electricity, K-Ming Chang is an explosive young writer who combines the wit and fabulism of Helen Oyeyemi with the subversive storytelling of Maxine Hong Kingston. Tracing one family’s history from Taiwan to America, from Arkansas to California, Bestiary is a novel of migration, queer lineages, and girlhood.”
I didn’t manage to read anything about the novel prior to getting started on it; I even avoided the book jacket description, so as soon as we get to the point where the protagonist, Daughter, wakes up with the aforementioned tiger’s tail, I was wondering whether or not this transformation was more metaphorical or not. Chang seems to want it both ways, which makes this novel quite slippery and potentially confusing to readers, but it’s an absolute delight in terms of its linguistic wordplay and its dynamic use of transformations (both literal and figurative). The sections provided by Daughter are sometimes interspersed with letters that Daughter and her friend (and later lover) Ben (noting here that Ben is gendered female despite what some might assume is a male name) are translating. The sections from Grandmother read like poetry, which bring to mind Chang’s background as a poet. Indeed, we might actually read this novel as a kind of prose poem. Chang’s work also conjures up the work of Jenny Zhang. Zhang’s short stories in Sour Heart really delve into some of the challenges of immigrant poverty, and we’re absolutely in that terrain here. Chang’s work reminds us of the spirit of survival that is necessary for so many immigrants. A wonderfully inventive debut.
Buy the Book Here
comments
A Review of Nghi Vo’s The Chosen and The Beautiful (Tordotcom, 2021)
Posted by:
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
I’ve sort of hit the wall with writing and work, so what better to do than read more books. Next up on my ever-growing list of books to catch up on was Nghi Vo’s The Chosen and The Beautiful, which I absolutely adored. Vo is already the author of two novellas that also came out of Tor that are a duology. I haven’t had the chance to read those yet, but I definitely intend to. Let’s let the official marketing description get this 1920s party started: “Immigrant. Socialite. Magician. Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her. But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how. Nghi Vo’s debut novel The Chosen and the Beautiful reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice.”
Vo took advantage of the fact that The Great Gatsby has moved back into the public domain, and she was able to integrate many direct quotations from the American literary masterpiece, but she entirely reworks the classic story from the perspective of one of the minor characters. I never found Jordan Baker that interesting, so Vo’s retelling from Jordan’s perspective was a real treat. The novel’s reconsideration of the storyline not only from her vantage point but also by reworking her identity and background gives this text a real fresh take on a story every English student only knows too well. Perhaps, my favorite aspect of this text is that it gives us pause to reconsider what we think we understand from the original text. That is, we assume we know the story but because interiority is really only offered via Nick Carraway, from what I recall, many other characters and context become obscured. Such is the case with Jordan Baker, who comes off as part of the spoiled set of East Egg blue bloods that are so easy to dismiss as too insular and self-centered. To be sure, there’s much about Jordan that is self-centered, but you absolutely get the sense that some of her approach to life is conditioned by her defenses, built up as a Vietnamese adoptee and as someone who never gets unconditional access to certain ways of life. In this way, Vo’s work is perhaps its most inventive, reminding us that minorities were of course trying to find their way in the 1920s and that they cannot be just shunted into the margins not only of stories but of history. It is in this sense that Vo’s work absolutely soars, both in its political heft and its aesthetic re-envisionment. I’ll be sure to teach this work in the future, one that stands very tall next to the other brilliant modernist re-envisioning known popularly as Monique Truong’s Book of Salt.
Buy the Book Here
comments
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
I’ve sort of hit the wall with writing and work, so what better to do than read more books. Next up on my ever-growing list of books to catch up on was Nghi Vo’s The Chosen and The Beautiful, which I absolutely adored. Vo is already the author of two novellas that also came out of Tor that are a duology. I haven’t had the chance to read those yet, but I definitely intend to. Let’s let the official marketing description get this 1920s party started: “Immigrant. Socialite. Magician. Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her. But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how. Nghi Vo’s debut novel The Chosen and the Beautiful reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice.”
Vo took advantage of the fact that The Great Gatsby has moved back into the public domain, and she was able to integrate many direct quotations from the American literary masterpiece, but she entirely reworks the classic story from the perspective of one of the minor characters. I never found Jordan Baker that interesting, so Vo’s retelling from Jordan’s perspective was a real treat. The novel’s reconsideration of the storyline not only from her vantage point but also by reworking her identity and background gives this text a real fresh take on a story every English student only knows too well. Perhaps, my favorite aspect of this text is that it gives us pause to reconsider what we think we understand from the original text. That is, we assume we know the story but because interiority is really only offered via Nick Carraway, from what I recall, many other characters and context become obscured. Such is the case with Jordan Baker, who comes off as part of the spoiled set of East Egg blue bloods that are so easy to dismiss as too insular and self-centered. To be sure, there’s much about Jordan that is self-centered, but you absolutely get the sense that some of her approach to life is conditioned by her defenses, built up as a Vietnamese adoptee and as someone who never gets unconditional access to certain ways of life. In this way, Vo’s work is perhaps its most inventive, reminding us that minorities were of course trying to find their way in the 1920s and that they cannot be just shunted into the margins not only of stories but of history. It is in this sense that Vo’s work absolutely soars, both in its political heft and its aesthetic re-envisionment. I’ll be sure to teach this work in the future, one that stands very tall next to the other brilliant modernist re-envisioning known popularly as Monique Truong’s Book of Salt.
Buy the Book Here
comments
A Review of Zen Cho’s Black Water Sister (Ace, 2021)
Posted by:
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
Ah, I’ve always loved Zen Cho’s fiction and am a huge fan of her Sorcerer series! She’s been publishing up a storm lately, and I haven’t caught up on everything but I have read the wonderful Black Water Sister (Ace, 2021). Let’s let the official marketing description give us more information: “When Jessamyn Teoh starts hearing a voice in her head, she chalks it up to stress. Closeted, broke and jobless, she's moving back to Malaysia with her parents - a country she last saw when she was a toddler. She soon learns the new voice isn't even hers, it's the ghost of her estranged grandmother. In life, Ah Ma was a spirit medium, avatar of a mysterious deity called the Black Water Sister. Now she's determined to settle a score against a business magnate who has offended the god--and she's decided Jess is going to help her do it, whether Jess wants to or not.
Drawn into a world of gods, ghosts, and family secrets, Jess finds that making deals with capricious spirits is a dangerous business, but dealing with her grandmother is just as complicated. Especially when Ah Ma tries to spy on her personal life, threatens to spill her secrets to her family and uses her body to commit felonies. As Jess fights for retribution for Ah Ma, she'll also need to regain control of her body and destiny - or the Black Water Sister may finish her off for good.”
This description does a great job of setting up the central premise in which Jess has to deal with the fact that she is a medium and can not only see ghosts but also gods and other deities. The problem with Ah Ma and others like the Black Water Sister is that they have their own agendas, and they do not always make those agendas clear to Jess. The tension really starts to ratchet up once Jess starts to investigate the link between the land upon which the shrine of the Black Water Sister is located and a Malaysian real estate developer. Readers soon discover that there is a power struggle between Ah Ma’s son (Jess’s Uncle) and the developer and that the two families may have more of a connection than at first appears. The novel gets stronger both in plotting and in its texture as it moves onward. Jess grows in her own right as a heroine, who not only advocates for her family but also finds herself and confronts the complexities of her own queer, transnational identity in the process. Another standout from Cho!
Buy the Book Here
comments
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
Ah, I’ve always loved Zen Cho’s fiction and am a huge fan of her Sorcerer series! She’s been publishing up a storm lately, and I haven’t caught up on everything but I have read the wonderful Black Water Sister (Ace, 2021). Let’s let the official marketing description give us more information: “When Jessamyn Teoh starts hearing a voice in her head, she chalks it up to stress. Closeted, broke and jobless, she's moving back to Malaysia with her parents - a country she last saw when she was a toddler. She soon learns the new voice isn't even hers, it's the ghost of her estranged grandmother. In life, Ah Ma was a spirit medium, avatar of a mysterious deity called the Black Water Sister. Now she's determined to settle a score against a business magnate who has offended the god--and she's decided Jess is going to help her do it, whether Jess wants to or not.
Drawn into a world of gods, ghosts, and family secrets, Jess finds that making deals with capricious spirits is a dangerous business, but dealing with her grandmother is just as complicated. Especially when Ah Ma tries to spy on her personal life, threatens to spill her secrets to her family and uses her body to commit felonies. As Jess fights for retribution for Ah Ma, she'll also need to regain control of her body and destiny - or the Black Water Sister may finish her off for good.”
This description does a great job of setting up the central premise in which Jess has to deal with the fact that she is a medium and can not only see ghosts but also gods and other deities. The problem with Ah Ma and others like the Black Water Sister is that they have their own agendas, and they do not always make those agendas clear to Jess. The tension really starts to ratchet up once Jess starts to investigate the link between the land upon which the shrine of the Black Water Sister is located and a Malaysian real estate developer. Readers soon discover that there is a power struggle between Ah Ma’s son (Jess’s Uncle) and the developer and that the two families may have more of a connection than at first appears. The novel gets stronger both in plotting and in its texture as it moves onward. Jess grows in her own right as a heroine, who not only advocates for her family but also finds herself and confronts the complexities of her own queer, transnational identity in the process. Another standout from Cho!
Buy the Book Here
comments
A Review of Zakiya Dalila Harris’s The Other Black Girl (Atria, 2021)
Posted by:
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
This book was recommended to me by a brilliant former student of mine who wanted my take on it. Zakiya Dalila Harris’s The Other Black Girl (Atria, 2021) is certainly a complicated text, one that I think could be misread given the ways that Black women are essentially pitted against each other in corporate workplaces, but let’s get some more context from the official marketing description: “Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust. Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW. It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career. A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.”
The novel sets up the possible premise that Hazel is not necessarily a friend and could actually be a rival. The initial mystery set-up increasingly moves toward a thriller, as Harris effectively shows us the challenges that Nella is facing not only in the workplace but also in figuring out who these messages might be from. Harris is also able to ratchet up the tension through effective interchapters, which are taken from the perspective of others characters. Readers must try to connect the dots, even as Nella herself is struggling to do so. What makes this novel such a treat for the literary reader is how well positioned Harris is to integrate this particular work through a longer genealogy of African American writing. Nella and Hazel both are working in an industry where they know the odds are stacked against them and that their labor to diversity not only the workplace but also publishing come with incredible obstacles. The internecine issues that develop make this text somewhat more challenging to engage because the novel leaves us with a question: who really are our enemies? Who is the antagonist in the novel? How is racial justice actually achieved? There aren’t any clear answers but the success of this particular work is that it punctuates how far we still have to do to achieve so many different forms of equality.
Buy the Book Here
comments
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
This book was recommended to me by a brilliant former student of mine who wanted my take on it. Zakiya Dalila Harris’s The Other Black Girl (Atria, 2021) is certainly a complicated text, one that I think could be misread given the ways that Black women are essentially pitted against each other in corporate workplaces, but let’s get some more context from the official marketing description: “Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust. Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW. It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career. A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.”
The novel sets up the possible premise that Hazel is not necessarily a friend and could actually be a rival. The initial mystery set-up increasingly moves toward a thriller, as Harris effectively shows us the challenges that Nella is facing not only in the workplace but also in figuring out who these messages might be from. Harris is also able to ratchet up the tension through effective interchapters, which are taken from the perspective of others characters. Readers must try to connect the dots, even as Nella herself is struggling to do so. What makes this novel such a treat for the literary reader is how well positioned Harris is to integrate this particular work through a longer genealogy of African American writing. Nella and Hazel both are working in an industry where they know the odds are stacked against them and that their labor to diversity not only the workplace but also publishing come with incredible obstacles. The internecine issues that develop make this text somewhat more challenging to engage because the novel leaves us with a question: who really are our enemies? Who is the antagonist in the novel? How is racial justice actually achieved? There aren’t any clear answers but the success of this particular work is that it punctuates how far we still have to do to achieve so many different forms of equality.
Buy the Book Here
comments
A Review of Cherie Dimaline’s Hunting by Stars (Amulet Books, 2021)
Posted by:
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
Readers of Asianamlitfans know that I’ve been occasionally reviewing books by authors of different BIPOC backgrounds. This review covers Cherie Dimaline’s Hunting by Stars (Amulet Books, 2021), which is in some ways a direct sequel to Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves. The Marrow Thieves is one of my favorite YA novels; it somehow transcends some of the superficiality attached to that genre and really pushes us to consider the importance of speculative fictions to engage the complications of racial (in)justice. The first in the series provides the key worldbuilding aspects: the world is under a major threat when people begin to lose the ability to dream. Yet discovery is made that results in racialized genocide: indigenous peoples are being killed off because their marrow contains an important power, which allows non-indigenous peoples the ability to dream again. Indigenous people are rounded up, taken to secluded locations, have their marrow extracted, and are then killed. The first novel considered this bleak post-apocalyptic world in which an enterprising teenager named French tries to make his way. He eventually makes a home amongst a roving band of other indigenous characters. They face many tribulations; by the novel’s end, some in the group have died, while others have returned home, somehow against the odds. The second novel is surprisingly much darker, as we discover that French has been taken in by Recruiters, the individuals who round up indigenous peoples and imprison them. We assume the potential worst here, as French must find a way to get out. His journey is one of complicated complicity. He knows he needs to survive, yet surviving also means the potential to enact harm on other indigenous peoples. In this sense, the novel ultimately asks us if the ends justify the means. The novel has no easy answers, but the alternative kinship that French was part of in the first novel continues to endure incredible strain and trauma in the second. What I appreciated most about this particular installment is that we get a stronger sense of the ways in which the indigenous characters are being violated and even weaponized against each other. As always, Dimaline knows how to generate narrative tension, so that you’re absolutely riveted and cannot put the text down. A subplot concerning French’s romantic interest, Rose, for instance, generates even more concern, so that you’re hopscotching from one character to the next, hoping that each will find a way out of their predicaments. Of course, the most crucial aspect of Dimaline’s text is always her attentive eye toward racial politics. Indeed, both Dimaline’s novels remind us of the ways that indigenous cultures and histories have been erased; the struggle to survive therefore is not merely some post-apocalyptic story, but the actual contexts within which indigenous peoples have been mired. In this sense, we must always be vigilant to look beyond the merely entertaining and to engage in the deeper lessons that speculative fictions always bring to us.
Buy the Book Here
comments
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
Readers of Asianamlitfans know that I’ve been occasionally reviewing books by authors of different BIPOC backgrounds. This review covers Cherie Dimaline’s Hunting by Stars (Amulet Books, 2021), which is in some ways a direct sequel to Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves. The Marrow Thieves is one of my favorite YA novels; it somehow transcends some of the superficiality attached to that genre and really pushes us to consider the importance of speculative fictions to engage the complications of racial (in)justice. The first in the series provides the key worldbuilding aspects: the world is under a major threat when people begin to lose the ability to dream. Yet discovery is made that results in racialized genocide: indigenous peoples are being killed off because their marrow contains an important power, which allows non-indigenous peoples the ability to dream again. Indigenous people are rounded up, taken to secluded locations, have their marrow extracted, and are then killed. The first novel considered this bleak post-apocalyptic world in which an enterprising teenager named French tries to make his way. He eventually makes a home amongst a roving band of other indigenous characters. They face many tribulations; by the novel’s end, some in the group have died, while others have returned home, somehow against the odds. The second novel is surprisingly much darker, as we discover that French has been taken in by Recruiters, the individuals who round up indigenous peoples and imprison them. We assume the potential worst here, as French must find a way to get out. His journey is one of complicated complicity. He knows he needs to survive, yet surviving also means the potential to enact harm on other indigenous peoples. In this sense, the novel ultimately asks us if the ends justify the means. The novel has no easy answers, but the alternative kinship that French was part of in the first novel continues to endure incredible strain and trauma in the second. What I appreciated most about this particular installment is that we get a stronger sense of the ways in which the indigenous characters are being violated and even weaponized against each other. As always, Dimaline knows how to generate narrative tension, so that you’re absolutely riveted and cannot put the text down. A subplot concerning French’s romantic interest, Rose, for instance, generates even more concern, so that you’re hopscotching from one character to the next, hoping that each will find a way out of their predicaments. Of course, the most crucial aspect of Dimaline’s text is always her attentive eye toward racial politics. Indeed, both Dimaline’s novels remind us of the ways that indigenous cultures and histories have been erased; the struggle to survive therefore is not merely some post-apocalyptic story, but the actual contexts within which indigenous peoples have been mired. In this sense, we must always be vigilant to look beyond the merely entertaining and to engage in the deeper lessons that speculative fictions always bring to us.
Buy the Book Here
comments
A Review of Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s Sabrina and Corina (One World, 2019)
Posted by:
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
I’m late to reviewing Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s Sabrina and Corina (One World, 2019), which I’m coming to only now as a result of a recent research venture. This collection is definitely a standout and one I look to as evidence of something I’ve always been interested in the afterlife of American regionalism. Let’s look to the official marketing description to give us some more background: “Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Latina characters of indigenous ancestry and the land they inhabit in the American West. Against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado—a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite—these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force. In ‘Sugar Babies,’ ancestry and heritage are hidden inside the earth but tend to rise during land disputes. ‘Any Further West’ follows a sex worker and her daughter as they leave their ancestral home in southern Colorado only to find a foreign and hostile land in California. In ‘Tomi,’ a woman leaves prison and finds herself in a gentrified city that is a shadow of the one she remembers from her childhood. And in the title story, ‘Sabrina & Corina,’ a Denver family falls into a cycle of violence against women, coming together only through ritual.”
This description is spot-on in terms of the stories it picks, but I wanted to pause on the use of the phrase “American West,” as the collection certainly brings to mind the regionalist impulse (and local color narratives) that predominated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I was a big fan of works of Southern regional literatures, including Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Carson McCuller’s The Balad of the Sad Café, and of course Faulkner’s many novels. New England presented its own regionalist dynamics with the masterfully written Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs and Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome. Fajardo-Anstine’s work does much to contribute to what we can call the afterlife of regionalism in her depictions of the so-called American West, but even more specifically to the representation of Colorado. I was especially impressed by Fajardo-Anstine’s exploration of class. As a loosely linked story cycle, one of the elements that provide thematic cohesion beyond the location was Fajardo-Anstine’s exploration of gentrification. In many stories, characters must deal with the changes in their neighborhoods, as place names are altered to reflect something more bourgeois, while those characters must simultaneously negotiate shifts in racial demographics and the higher costs of living. The other element that I so much appreciate about this collection is the quiet intensity of so many stories; there is a kind of tone to these various narratives involving intimate relationships gone awry, families undergoing rupture and reformation, and readers are always offered such meticulous glimpses into these characters’ lives. My absolute favorite beyond the ones described in the marketing description was “Any Further West,” which focuses on a mother and daughter, as they seek to make a new life out in California (moving from Colorado). This story is perhaps the quintessential example of Fajardo-Anstine’s “quiet intensity,” as we see the dysfunctional dynamic that emerges between the protagonist’s mother and her new lover. You want the protagonist to find some sort of salve and stability in this situation, but we know that such possibilities are a long way off, as she must navigate the complicated relationship with her mother and her mother’s choices. A standout collection!
Buy the Book Here
comments
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
I’m late to reviewing Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s Sabrina and Corina (One World, 2019), which I’m coming to only now as a result of a recent research venture. This collection is definitely a standout and one I look to as evidence of something I’ve always been interested in the afterlife of American regionalism. Let’s look to the official marketing description to give us some more background: “Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Latina characters of indigenous ancestry and the land they inhabit in the American West. Against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado—a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite—these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force. In ‘Sugar Babies,’ ancestry and heritage are hidden inside the earth but tend to rise during land disputes. ‘Any Further West’ follows a sex worker and her daughter as they leave their ancestral home in southern Colorado only to find a foreign and hostile land in California. In ‘Tomi,’ a woman leaves prison and finds herself in a gentrified city that is a shadow of the one she remembers from her childhood. And in the title story, ‘Sabrina & Corina,’ a Denver family falls into a cycle of violence against women, coming together only through ritual.”
This description is spot-on in terms of the stories it picks, but I wanted to pause on the use of the phrase “American West,” as the collection certainly brings to mind the regionalist impulse (and local color narratives) that predominated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I was a big fan of works of Southern regional literatures, including Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Carson McCuller’s The Balad of the Sad Café, and of course Faulkner’s many novels. New England presented its own regionalist dynamics with the masterfully written Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs and Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome. Fajardo-Anstine’s work does much to contribute to what we can call the afterlife of regionalism in her depictions of the so-called American West, but even more specifically to the representation of Colorado. I was especially impressed by Fajardo-Anstine’s exploration of class. As a loosely linked story cycle, one of the elements that provide thematic cohesion beyond the location was Fajardo-Anstine’s exploration of gentrification. In many stories, characters must deal with the changes in their neighborhoods, as place names are altered to reflect something more bourgeois, while those characters must simultaneously negotiate shifts in racial demographics and the higher costs of living. The other element that I so much appreciate about this collection is the quiet intensity of so many stories; there is a kind of tone to these various narratives involving intimate relationships gone awry, families undergoing rupture and reformation, and readers are always offered such meticulous glimpses into these characters’ lives. My absolute favorite beyond the ones described in the marketing description was “Any Further West,” which focuses on a mother and daughter, as they seek to make a new life out in California (moving from Colorado). This story is perhaps the quintessential example of Fajardo-Anstine’s “quiet intensity,” as we see the dysfunctional dynamic that emerges between the protagonist’s mother and her new lover. You want the protagonist to find some sort of salve and stability in this situation, but we know that such possibilities are a long way off, as she must navigate the complicated relationship with her mother and her mother’s choices. A standout collection!
Buy the Book Here
comments
A Review of Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness (Viking, 2021)
Posted by:
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
This book is another standout read of 2021. Ruth Ozeki continues the strong transnational themes of My Year of Meats and A Tale for the Time Being in her latest. Let’s let the official marketing description provide us with some key contexts: “A brilliantly inventive novel about loss, growing up, and our relationship with things. One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house—a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous. At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world. He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many. And he meets his very own Book—a talking thing—who narrates Benny’s life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.”
This description is quite detailed, though doesn’t fully convey the scope of the minor characters, who do have a large impact on Benny’s experiences. Indeed, as Benny continues to grapple with the voices she hears in all the objects around him, he faces what might be inevitable: the question of whether or not he may be experiencing some sort of mental illness. Ozeki masterfully balances this complicated line by depicting a range of characters, such as a psychiatrist as well as mental ward patients. It is through Benny’s experiences with those who have been institutionalized or cast off as mentally unstable that Benny begins to generate a kind of alternative kinship, one that will be ever-more crucial given the deteriorating circumstances of his home space. The transnational dimensions I mentioned at the outset of this review come in the form of Benny’s mother, Annabelle, who begins to correspond with a Marie-Kondo-esque character, a Buddhist who publishes a tidying up manual from which Annabelle derives some comfort and inspiration. Annabelle is the other one struggling with her own challenges, dealing (or not fully dealing with) her grief and melancholy. The connection that Annabelle makes with this figure is essential toward the latter stages of the plot, finally providing a sense of closure that Annabelle and Benny might need. At the same time, the novel’s most exceptional aspect is perhaps its focus on what the cultural critic Jane Bennett might call Vibrant Matter. Ozeki’s attention to the animatedness of things: books and other objects, gives us pause to engage this book as yet another manifestation of the rich terrain of posthumanist representation. The more domestic and intimate nature of Ozeki’s plotting is especially intriguing given its length, as the novel comes in at over 500 pages. It’s definitely one you want to savor, perhaps next to a crackling fire or that space heater that’s getting you through the winter. As always, Ozeki’s prose is dynamic, and the changes in narrative perspective give this work dialogic energy that will move you all through those many pages.
Buy the Book Here
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ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
This book is another standout read of 2021. Ruth Ozeki continues the strong transnational themes of My Year of Meats and A Tale for the Time Being in her latest. Let’s let the official marketing description provide us with some key contexts: “A brilliantly inventive novel about loss, growing up, and our relationship with things. One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house—a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous. At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world. He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many. And he meets his very own Book—a talking thing—who narrates Benny’s life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.”
This description is quite detailed, though doesn’t fully convey the scope of the minor characters, who do have a large impact on Benny’s experiences. Indeed, as Benny continues to grapple with the voices she hears in all the objects around him, he faces what might be inevitable: the question of whether or not he may be experiencing some sort of mental illness. Ozeki masterfully balances this complicated line by depicting a range of characters, such as a psychiatrist as well as mental ward patients. It is through Benny’s experiences with those who have been institutionalized or cast off as mentally unstable that Benny begins to generate a kind of alternative kinship, one that will be ever-more crucial given the deteriorating circumstances of his home space. The transnational dimensions I mentioned at the outset of this review come in the form of Benny’s mother, Annabelle, who begins to correspond with a Marie-Kondo-esque character, a Buddhist who publishes a tidying up manual from which Annabelle derives some comfort and inspiration. Annabelle is the other one struggling with her own challenges, dealing (or not fully dealing with) her grief and melancholy. The connection that Annabelle makes with this figure is essential toward the latter stages of the plot, finally providing a sense of closure that Annabelle and Benny might need. At the same time, the novel’s most exceptional aspect is perhaps its focus on what the cultural critic Jane Bennett might call Vibrant Matter. Ozeki’s attention to the animatedness of things: books and other objects, gives us pause to engage this book as yet another manifestation of the rich terrain of posthumanist representation. The more domestic and intimate nature of Ozeki’s plotting is especially intriguing given its length, as the novel comes in at over 500 pages. It’s definitely one you want to savor, perhaps next to a crackling fire or that space heater that’s getting you through the winter. As always, Ozeki’s prose is dynamic, and the changes in narrative perspective give this work dialogic energy that will move you all through those many pages.
Buy the Book Here
comments
January 3, 2022
A Review of David Yoon’s Version Zero (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2021)
Posted by:
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Well, David Yoon’s Version Zero (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2021) sort of surprised me in terms of the tagline that appeared on the cover, which refers to saving the future. I expected a time travel narrative, which is not what we got. The story actually explores the problematics of the internet in a time of increasing virtual surveillance. The story is primarily told through the perspective of Max Portillo, a Salvadoran American, whose parents are undocumented. He works at a place called Wren but is later fired and blacklisted when he expresses concerns over Wren’s data acquisition policies, which certainly infringe upon the privacy rights of netizens. Of course, as many of us well know, the internet is a largely unregulated location, so Yoon’s novel strikes more as a counterfactual than anything speculative. Indeed, Max enlists the help of his longtime crush, Akiko Hosokawa, and her boyfriend Shane, in order to generate a series of hacks that will start to fight back against the digital monopoly of the major companies that appear in this novel, which are fictionalized amalgams of all the places we already know: Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Uber, Lyft, etc. Their grassroots hacks get the attention of a very powerful individual, Pilot Markham, who bankrolls them, so that they can get involved with even more expansive hacks. Their crew also adds a millennial, Braydeen Turnipseed, who brings more youthful gravitas to their ventures and adventures. Yoon’s storyline is very fast-paced: the sentences are short, the chapters are short, and the action moves along quite quickly. The concluding arc—and here, I will provide my requisite spoilers, so if you’re reading this line and don’t want to find out a little bit of what happens, I would turn away now—involves a radical reconsideration of what life might be without the internet as we know it today, and it gets to that question that Yoon seems to be most interested in: what would we do if we had a reset of the internet itself? Though the novel doesn’t fully answer this question, it does push us to confront what we decide to share and how we might move forward more consciously, especially as our every virtual move is tracked and digitized. A chilling but superbly entertaining novel.
Buy the Book Here
comments
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Well, David Yoon’s Version Zero (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2021) sort of surprised me in terms of the tagline that appeared on the cover, which refers to saving the future. I expected a time travel narrative, which is not what we got. The story actually explores the problematics of the internet in a time of increasing virtual surveillance. The story is primarily told through the perspective of Max Portillo, a Salvadoran American, whose parents are undocumented. He works at a place called Wren but is later fired and blacklisted when he expresses concerns over Wren’s data acquisition policies, which certainly infringe upon the privacy rights of netizens. Of course, as many of us well know, the internet is a largely unregulated location, so Yoon’s novel strikes more as a counterfactual than anything speculative. Indeed, Max enlists the help of his longtime crush, Akiko Hosokawa, and her boyfriend Shane, in order to generate a series of hacks that will start to fight back against the digital monopoly of the major companies that appear in this novel, which are fictionalized amalgams of all the places we already know: Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Uber, Lyft, etc. Their grassroots hacks get the attention of a very powerful individual, Pilot Markham, who bankrolls them, so that they can get involved with even more expansive hacks. Their crew also adds a millennial, Braydeen Turnipseed, who brings more youthful gravitas to their ventures and adventures. Yoon’s storyline is very fast-paced: the sentences are short, the chapters are short, and the action moves along quite quickly. The concluding arc—and here, I will provide my requisite spoilers, so if you’re reading this line and don’t want to find out a little bit of what happens, I would turn away now—involves a radical reconsideration of what life might be without the internet as we know it today, and it gets to that question that Yoon seems to be most interested in: what would we do if we had a reset of the internet itself? Though the novel doesn’t fully answer this question, it does push us to confront what we decide to share and how we might move forward more consciously, especially as our every virtual move is tracked and digitized. A chilling but superbly entertaining novel.
Buy the Book Here
comments
A Review of Mike Chen’s We Could Be Heroes (MIRA, 2021)
Posted by:
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Mike Chen’s We Could Be Heroes (MIRA, 2021) pushes Chen to explore a different speculative conceit, at least in comparison to his first two novels, which focused on time travel and plagues, respectively. In this case, Chen has moved on to the superhero genre. Let’s let the official marketing description give us more context: “Jamie woke up in an empty apartment with no memory and only a few clues to his identity, but with the ability to read and erase other people’s memories—a power he uses to hold up banks to buy coffee, cat food and books. Zoe is also searching for her past, and using her abilities of speed and strength…to deliver fast food. And she’ll occasionally put on a cool suit and beat up bad guys, if she feels like it. When the archrivals meet in a memory-loss support group, they realize the only way to reveal their hidden pasts might be through each other. As they uncover an ongoing threat, suddenly much more is at stake than their fragile friendship. With countless people at risk, Zoe and Jamie will have to recognize that sometimes being a hero starts with trusting someone else—and yourself.”
Early on in this text, you know something nefarious is likely going on because both characters have no memory about how they arrived at the locations they are in. They further have no information about how they managed to acquire superpowers. What they both know is that someone is paying for their apartment. That piece of information was the one that made me have some trouble dispelling my disbelief. In any case, eventually, Jamie (Sorenson) and Zoe (Wong) do team up, with Zoe asking Jamie to help her retrieve her memories. Jamie attempts to engage in this task but doesn’t come up with too much concrete information, which pushes them to go after a larger corporation (called TELOS) that seems to be involved in their amnesiac conditions and their strange powers. Chen’s novel largely works because it relies upon Jamie’s and Zoe’s interactive dynamic. Zoe is very gung-ho about going after TELOS and about recovering her memories, where Jamie is largely an introvert and would rather try to steal small pots of money (FDIC insured as Jamie would remind us) so that he might retire one day on some tropical island. Their divergent approaches to their powers and how to use them make this novel one that is immensely readable.
The element that I most appreciated is that there isn’t a romance plot that emerges between them. Chen must rely on their platonic dynamics to drive the social element of the narrative. At the same time, I wasn’t entirely engrossed in the plot concerning where their superpowers arose from. Here, I will provide my requisite spoiler warning, so look away lest you desire finding out about the ending. As we come to discover, Jamie and Zoe were participating in a set of experiments that would enable a mad scientist (named Kaftan) to reanimate her husband, who has been trapped in a sort of suspended state. What she doesn’t realize is that this kind of imprisonment has been a form of torture, and he desires to die rather than come back to another form with superpowers. His reanimation would cause the entire city power grid to go down and potentially cause explosions and other accidents, so Jamie and Zoe must find a way to stop her before all hell proverbially breaks loose. To be sure, a novel like this one perhaps requires some sort of antagonist, but given the many, many shows these days that involve superheroes and evil corporations, you can’t help but find some of these developments to tread similar ground. Nevertheless, I really did enjoy Zoe and Jamie’s dynamic!
Buy the Book Here
comments
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Mike Chen’s We Could Be Heroes (MIRA, 2021) pushes Chen to explore a different speculative conceit, at least in comparison to his first two novels, which focused on time travel and plagues, respectively. In this case, Chen has moved on to the superhero genre. Let’s let the official marketing description give us more context: “Jamie woke up in an empty apartment with no memory and only a few clues to his identity, but with the ability to read and erase other people’s memories—a power he uses to hold up banks to buy coffee, cat food and books. Zoe is also searching for her past, and using her abilities of speed and strength…to deliver fast food. And she’ll occasionally put on a cool suit and beat up bad guys, if she feels like it. When the archrivals meet in a memory-loss support group, they realize the only way to reveal their hidden pasts might be through each other. As they uncover an ongoing threat, suddenly much more is at stake than their fragile friendship. With countless people at risk, Zoe and Jamie will have to recognize that sometimes being a hero starts with trusting someone else—and yourself.”
Early on in this text, you know something nefarious is likely going on because both characters have no memory about how they arrived at the locations they are in. They further have no information about how they managed to acquire superpowers. What they both know is that someone is paying for their apartment. That piece of information was the one that made me have some trouble dispelling my disbelief. In any case, eventually, Jamie (Sorenson) and Zoe (Wong) do team up, with Zoe asking Jamie to help her retrieve her memories. Jamie attempts to engage in this task but doesn’t come up with too much concrete information, which pushes them to go after a larger corporation (called TELOS) that seems to be involved in their amnesiac conditions and their strange powers. Chen’s novel largely works because it relies upon Jamie’s and Zoe’s interactive dynamic. Zoe is very gung-ho about going after TELOS and about recovering her memories, where Jamie is largely an introvert and would rather try to steal small pots of money (FDIC insured as Jamie would remind us) so that he might retire one day on some tropical island. Their divergent approaches to their powers and how to use them make this novel one that is immensely readable.
The element that I most appreciated is that there isn’t a romance plot that emerges between them. Chen must rely on their platonic dynamics to drive the social element of the narrative. At the same time, I wasn’t entirely engrossed in the plot concerning where their superpowers arose from. Here, I will provide my requisite spoiler warning, so look away lest you desire finding out about the ending. As we come to discover, Jamie and Zoe were participating in a set of experiments that would enable a mad scientist (named Kaftan) to reanimate her husband, who has been trapped in a sort of suspended state. What she doesn’t realize is that this kind of imprisonment has been a form of torture, and he desires to die rather than come back to another form with superpowers. His reanimation would cause the entire city power grid to go down and potentially cause explosions and other accidents, so Jamie and Zoe must find a way to stop her before all hell proverbially breaks loose. To be sure, a novel like this one perhaps requires some sort of antagonist, but given the many, many shows these days that involve superheroes and evil corporations, you can’t help but find some of these developments to tread similar ground. Nevertheless, I really did enjoy Zoe and Jamie’s dynamic!
Buy the Book Here
comments
January 1, 2022
A Review of Angela Mi Young Hur’s Folklorn (Erewhon, 2021)
Posted by:
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Erewhon is perhaps the most exciting press right now for Asian American writers who work in the speculative terrain. In this review I am covering Angela Mi Young Hur’s Folklorn (Erewhon, 2021). Once upon a time, it seems like in another life, I had Hur out for a reading and classroom visit related to her first novel, Queens of K-Town (2007), which was published by a cool little indie press that is now defunct. I recalled loving that novel for its spirited depictions of Korean American young adults. I don’t recall having read anything quite like it since! In any case, at some point, I knew that she was working on a second novel, but I hadn’t heard much since, so it was an absolute delight to see that this novel had come out.
Let’s let the official marketing description over at Erewhon give us the background we need to get this review started out: “Elsa Park is a particle physicist at the top of her game, stationed at a neutrino observatory in the Antarctic, confident she's put enough distance between her ambitions and the family ghosts she's run from all her life. But it isn't long before her childhood imaginary friend—an achingly familiar, spectral woman in the snow—comes to claim her at last. Years ago, Elsa's now-catatonic mother had warned her that the women of their line were doomed to repeat the narrative lives of their ancestors from Korean myth and legend. But beyond these ghosts, Elsa also faces a more earthly fate: the mental illness and generational trauma that run in her immigrant family, a sickness no less ravenous than the ancestral curse hunting her. When her mother breaks her decade-long silence and tragedy strikes, Elsa must return to her childhood home in California. There, among family wrestling with their own demons, she unravels the secrets hidden in the handwritten pages of her mother’s dark stories: of women’s desire and fury; of magic suppressed, stolen, or punished; of the hunger for vengeance.”
This description is lengthy partly because Hur’s novel is so ambitious. It is a family epic, and it is also a speculative fiction. The novel begins in Antarctica, where we get a sense of Elsa’s research, but her childhood imaginary friend arrives, reminding her of traumas from her past. She returns to Sweden, where she’s a postdoctoral researcher. Once there, she begins to look into other things, like the folktales that her mother used to tell her when she was just a child. She strikes up a not-quite-romance with Oskar Gantelius, a Korean adoptee, who has an interest in folktales. While in Sweden, she finds out from her brother Chris that her mother has died. She then returns to Los Angeles, her childhood home. Once there, she must wrestle with long-buried conflicts connected to family dynamics. First off, her relationship with her brother has frayed because he has spent so much time taking care of their father, who recently experienced an eye injury. Second, Elsa’s own relationship with her father is complicated by the fact that she grew up in a household where she was witness to the sometimes violent domestic squabbles between her father and her mother. Finally, Elsa seeks to recover a lost book of folktales that her mother had been working on and that Elsa would like to look over again, believing that these tales might hold the key toward addressing what she thinks might be a developing mental illness. The last section of the novel sees Elsa return to Sweden under the guise that she believes her sister may be living there. As Elsa had come to discover, her mother had taken a trip to Korea in the years prior to her birth and had apparently given birth to another child, a baby girl. She was told that this baby girl was stillborn, but it becomes evident that this information was not reliable, and there is a chance that her sister was adopted by someone in Sweden. Of course, this particular storyline ends up dovetailing somewhat with her quasi-romance with Oskar. In a coincidence that seems more fantastic than realistic (and that is after all, part of the tonality of this wondrous novel), the contact and name she is given—Astrid Lilja—is none other than the Swedish foster mother Oskar was paired up with before he was adopted. In this way, Oskar and Elsa both end up on a remote island, connecting with this woman. Oskar has a chance to reconcile with his foster mother, while Elsa comes to the realization that her long lost sister is perhaps some amalgam of the spirit of her dead sister as well as her connection to a line of Korean shamans. In this way, the novel ends up plumbing the depths of Korean folklore and spirituality, linking Elsa with the figure known as the mudang. For Elsa to come to terms with her mother’s folktales as well as her dead sister, she must confront the possibility that she herself is a shaman and that she has the power to help shepherd her sister into the afterlife. The concluding sequence is particularly affecting and powerful, as Hur explores the otherworldly landscape of a remote Swedish island in which there exists unique rock formations that have formed over many years.
Buy the Book Here
comments
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Erewhon is perhaps the most exciting press right now for Asian American writers who work in the speculative terrain. In this review I am covering Angela Mi Young Hur’s Folklorn (Erewhon, 2021). Once upon a time, it seems like in another life, I had Hur out for a reading and classroom visit related to her first novel, Queens of K-Town (2007), which was published by a cool little indie press that is now defunct. I recalled loving that novel for its spirited depictions of Korean American young adults. I don’t recall having read anything quite like it since! In any case, at some point, I knew that she was working on a second novel, but I hadn’t heard much since, so it was an absolute delight to see that this novel had come out.
Let’s let the official marketing description over at Erewhon give us the background we need to get this review started out: “Elsa Park is a particle physicist at the top of her game, stationed at a neutrino observatory in the Antarctic, confident she's put enough distance between her ambitions and the family ghosts she's run from all her life. But it isn't long before her childhood imaginary friend—an achingly familiar, spectral woman in the snow—comes to claim her at last. Years ago, Elsa's now-catatonic mother had warned her that the women of their line were doomed to repeat the narrative lives of their ancestors from Korean myth and legend. But beyond these ghosts, Elsa also faces a more earthly fate: the mental illness and generational trauma that run in her immigrant family, a sickness no less ravenous than the ancestral curse hunting her. When her mother breaks her decade-long silence and tragedy strikes, Elsa must return to her childhood home in California. There, among family wrestling with their own demons, she unravels the secrets hidden in the handwritten pages of her mother’s dark stories: of women’s desire and fury; of magic suppressed, stolen, or punished; of the hunger for vengeance.”
This description is lengthy partly because Hur’s novel is so ambitious. It is a family epic, and it is also a speculative fiction. The novel begins in Antarctica, where we get a sense of Elsa’s research, but her childhood imaginary friend arrives, reminding her of traumas from her past. She returns to Sweden, where she’s a postdoctoral researcher. Once there, she begins to look into other things, like the folktales that her mother used to tell her when she was just a child. She strikes up a not-quite-romance with Oskar Gantelius, a Korean adoptee, who has an interest in folktales. While in Sweden, she finds out from her brother Chris that her mother has died. She then returns to Los Angeles, her childhood home. Once there, she must wrestle with long-buried conflicts connected to family dynamics. First off, her relationship with her brother has frayed because he has spent so much time taking care of their father, who recently experienced an eye injury. Second, Elsa’s own relationship with her father is complicated by the fact that she grew up in a household where she was witness to the sometimes violent domestic squabbles between her father and her mother. Finally, Elsa seeks to recover a lost book of folktales that her mother had been working on and that Elsa would like to look over again, believing that these tales might hold the key toward addressing what she thinks might be a developing mental illness. The last section of the novel sees Elsa return to Sweden under the guise that she believes her sister may be living there. As Elsa had come to discover, her mother had taken a trip to Korea in the years prior to her birth and had apparently given birth to another child, a baby girl. She was told that this baby girl was stillborn, but it becomes evident that this information was not reliable, and there is a chance that her sister was adopted by someone in Sweden. Of course, this particular storyline ends up dovetailing somewhat with her quasi-romance with Oskar. In a coincidence that seems more fantastic than realistic (and that is after all, part of the tonality of this wondrous novel), the contact and name she is given—Astrid Lilja—is none other than the Swedish foster mother Oskar was paired up with before he was adopted. In this way, Oskar and Elsa both end up on a remote island, connecting with this woman. Oskar has a chance to reconcile with his foster mother, while Elsa comes to the realization that her long lost sister is perhaps some amalgam of the spirit of her dead sister as well as her connection to a line of Korean shamans. In this way, the novel ends up plumbing the depths of Korean folklore and spirituality, linking Elsa with the figure known as the mudang. For Elsa to come to terms with her mother’s folktales as well as her dead sister, she must confront the possibility that she herself is a shaman and that she has the power to help shepherd her sister into the afterlife. The concluding sequence is particularly affecting and powerful, as Hur explores the otherworldly landscape of a remote Swedish island in which there exists unique rock formations that have formed over many years.
Buy the Book Here
comments
