Tag: Korean American

Happiness Falls: A Novel by Angie Kim

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Happiness Falls: A Novel by Angie Kim

I have such mixed feelings about Happiness Falls: On the one hand, it was a brilliant mystery and a dynamic, swift family drama. Equally, its attention to matters of ability and disability struck a profound note for this reader. On the other, the flaws of its characters annoyed the hell out of me. Still, hats off to Kim who wove the story and its characters so seamlessly together that I compulsively — and sometimes against my will — read to the very end.

The noel revolves around a mixed race, Asian and White American family: parents (Hannah and Adam), two young adult children (Mia and John), and an adolescent son (Eugene) who has a mental disability and is non-speaking. One day Adam and Eugene go missing. Eugene returns, injured and unable to articulate what has happened to his father. As the police, authorities, and the family attempt to unravel Adam’s last know whereabouts and uncover the mystery of his disappearance — and hopefully, his safe recovery — family secrets, fears, and flaws come to the surface.

A distinctive appeal of the novel is how Kim embeds a discussion of ability/disability rights and the treatment of persons with disabilities into this tale. What assumptions do normatively abled persons make about those who express themselves differently, about those who are deemed “disabled”, and about the parents and their responsibilities to society and their loved ones with disabilities? It is this element of the novel which makes it so resoundingly relevant and contemporary to our moment.

What then did I find so irritating about the novel? Mia. I found Mia irritating. I found myself annoyed with her youth and rigidity. I have little patience for inflexibility in fictional characters (ironic and hypocritical, I know, but there I am). Still, I could understand her position, and Kim speaks through Mia, as the primary narrator of the novel, with a depth of skill I can only envy as a writer.

The resultant dissonance makes Happiness Falls an engrossing read, one which I could not tear myself from until I reached its end.

Yolk: A Novel by Mary HK Choi

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Yolk: A Novel by Mary HK Choi

Yolk made me feel things, not all of which was pleasant. Nonetheless, I was drawn to finish it, indeed, compelled to finish it.

The novel revolves around two twenty-something Korean American sisters, June (the elder) and Jayne (the younger) living in New York City. June has graduated from college and begun what appears to be a flourishing, successful career, while Jayne is struggling through college. Both are new adults, learning how to navigate relationships and new responsibilities. Both fail the task. But find themselves needing and relying on the other to come to terms with their limitations, desires, their shared history of being yellow and first generation immigrant kids. The reader is treated to a front view of the wreckage of their attempts, watching the sisters bungle every decision as they try to find their way in the world and figure out who they are.

There were parts of this novel I loved, and parts I utterly despised.

I liked the focus on family, and the ways in which being a child of immigrants and the immigrant experience unfolded here, not in a pedantic way that highlights only the awful or only the positive, but all of it. I liked that. But I loved how Choi turned this multifaceted way of looking at the immigrant experience — already great — into a journey that reveals belonging as both a positive and negative transformative factor. I love that Choi acknowledges there is no reconciliation here, no transcending “final” outcome that makes it all perfect in the end.

I liked Jayne and June’s closeness, the assumption of sisterhood. I enjoyed being a voyeur to their dysfunctional relationship.

I hated their privilege, and their obliviousness to it. To be blunt, I hated Jayne. Jayne reeked of “I am the main character” vibes and I couldn’t stand her immaturity. June wasn’t a favorite either. But that said, I appreciated Choi’s ability to make such a horrible characters so readable. Much as I hated the sisters, I had to know what happened to them, how it all resolved in the end.

I don’t think I’d ever want to read Yolk again, but I’m glad I did read it once.

A Ricepaper Airplane: A Novel by Gary Pak

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A Ricepaper Airplane: A Novel
by Gary Pak

Unlike my usual reviews, this is an older book, published in 1998. I found it on sale from the University of Hawai’i Press and since I enjoyed Pak’s other novel, Children of a Fireland by Gary Pak I had to read it. Like Pak’s other works, A Rice Paper Airplane is set in Hawai’i and revolves around one of its communities. In this case, the story centers of Koreans who migrated to the islands to seek better employment or escape from Japanese persecution during the period of the latter’s occupation of the former’s country.

The novel unfolds like origami, turning backwards and forward in time according to the scattered memories of an old man, Uncle, as he recounts his life for his nephew. Threaded through his memories are histories of Hawai’i and its many residents, Korean, Japanese, White, Indigenous. The novel also folds across geography, taking place in both Hawai’i and Korea. This is a novel about conflict, both cultural and political; desires, both of the individual kind and the ambitions of states; resistance and fighting spirit, in body and mind, through success and failure.

This is an emotional novel. Readers should expect to feel grief and sorrow. But also the hope and resilience of Korean migrants in cultures, circumstances, and places not of their own making and wholly according to history and fate.

For these reasons alone, this is a very worthwhile read. It is little known, but ought to rank with the best sellers of today in the vein of intergenerational, multi-generational historical fiction: Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing for example.

But that is not the only reason to read A Ricepaper Airplane: Pak’s prose is also an appeal. The novel’s dialogue is written in Hawai’ian pidgin, a creole language that is unique to the islands, lending authentic voice and substance to the characters and the story itself. The exposition is unfussy, straightforward, yet also flowing. Pak leaves the reader with poetic silences that fill with organic emotion.

This is an incredible novel, one which deserves greater recognition.