A provocative and furious book about race, culture, identity and what it means to be an inter-country adoptee in America Julayne Lee was born in South Korea to a mother she never knew. When she was an infant, she was adopted by a white Christian family in Minnesota, where she was sent to grow up. Not … [Read More]
Booklist: Korea through Literature (page 2)
White Chrysanthemum
Publisher description: ‘Look for your sister after each dive. Never forget. If you see her, you are safe.’ Hana and her little sister Emi are part of an island community of haenyo, women who make their living from diving deep into the sea off the southernmost tip of Korea. One day Hana sees a Japanese soldier … [Read More]
Poems of the North
From the publisher’s website: Treasured in both Koreas, Baek Seok: Poems of the North opens an intriguing gateway into the spirit of the North Koreans of the 1930’s-50’s. In a land struggling for freedom and short of food, he treats his readers to the dishes they craved, exhibiting a Korea not in mired in the … [Read More]
The Scorpion
From the publisher’s website: In mainstream literature, it is not unusual to find a great novel whose themes are simultaneously universal and local. humanity and the human condition can be represented through characters and events that reflect the environment of an author living in a specific time and place. In the case of The Scorpion, … [Read More]
A Lesser Love
A Lesser Love presents poems of love and departure for romantic partners, family members, and even national citizens. Raised around diasporic Korean communities, E. J. Koh describes her work as deeply influenced by the idea of jeong, which can be translated as a deep attachment, bond, and reciprocity for places, people, and things. The spirit of … [Read More]
Pachinko
Publisher description: Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then Isak, a Christian minister, offers her a … [Read More]
The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea
In 1989, a North Korean dissident writer, known to us only by the pseudonym Bandi, began to write a series of stories about life under Kim Il-sung’s totalitarian regime. Smuggled out of North Korea and set for publication around the world in 2017, The Accusation provides a unique and shocking window on this most secretive … [Read More]
How I became a North Korean
From the publisher’s website: Yongju is an accomplished student from one of North Korea’s most prominent families. Jangmi, on the other hand, has had to fend for herself since childhood, most recently by smuggling goods across the border. Danny is a Chinese-American teenager of Korean descent whose parents left China when he was nine; his … [Read More]
Human Acts
Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. In the wake of a viciously suppressed student uprising, a boy searches for his friend’s corpse, a consciousness searches for its abandoned body, and a brutalised country searches for a voice. In a sequence of interconnected chapters the victims and the bereaved encounter censorship, denial, forgiveness and the echoing agony of … [Read More]
The Underground Village (Bi-lingual, Vol 90 – The Naked in the Colony)
Not readily available in the UK, but to be found in plenty of anthologies, including an eponymous one. [Read More]
Dust Star (Bi-lingual, Vol 50 – Diaspora)
“Once I got lost and found myself in the furniture complex at Siksadong. The road was muddy and had deep tire tracks everywhere. Because the doors of the furniture factories were all open wide, I could see the foreign workers working inside. They took sideway glances at me from time to time. A foreign woman, … [Read More]
The Elephant (Bi-lingual, Vol 49 – Diaspora)
No synopsis available online We guess the translators are Nicholas Yohan Duvernay, Lee Moon-ok, as they were responsible for a version of the text published in LTI Korea’s New Writing From Korea vol 1 (2008) [Read More]
Happy New Year to Everyone – To Raymond Carver (Bi-lingual, Vol 48 – Diaspora)
No synopsis available – but Charles Montgomery’s review linked below is helpful Available on Kindle [Read More]
People I Left in Shanghai (Bi-lingual, Vol 47 – Diaspora)
No summary available. Available on Kindle [Read More]
Underwear (Bi-lingual, Vol 46 – Diaspora)
No synopsis available Available on Kindle [Read More]
The House with a Sunken Courtyard
An occasionally terrifying and always vivid portrayal of what it was like to live as a refugee immediately after the end of the Korean War. [Read More]