Book No. 40 of 2020
It was a total accident that this book became available and I read it on Mother’s Day; it’s a rendering of the complexity of a geographically distant mother-daughter relationship. The book is structured so translated letters from the author’s mother alternate with recollections from her and her family’s life.
My favorite passages were ones where the sense of place was so strongly evoked that my own memories—of suburbs in the Bay Area, of fancy Asian department stores and their displays—came bubbling to the surface. I also enjoyed seeing the images of the original letters after their translation, presented in a mix of Korean and English with little doodles.
Similar Reads
The memoir-type musings on belonging and family reminded me of Nicole Chung’s All You Can Ever Know (and mind you I was probably primed by Chung’s blurb on the front).
The specific, poetic articulation of certain feelings reminded me of Cathy Hong’s Minor Feelings and Jenny Zhang’s Sour Heart.
The narrative of the author’s mother’s and grandmothers’ lives, shaped by war and conflict in Korea and Japan, reminded me of the multigenerational saga in Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko.