Caroline Kim was born in Busan, South Korea, but moved to America at a young age.
Her newly released collection of short stories,
The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, won the 2020 Drue Heinz Literature Prize.
At Electric Lit, Kim tagged "ten contemporary books that enlarge our understanding of Korean America and introduce characters who, until now, haven’t existed seriously in literature," including:
The Kinship of Secrets by Eugenia Kim
I thought a lot about the pain of separation and Korea’s division at the 38th parallel as I was reading this novel of two sisters torn apart by the vagaries of Korean history. When the family in the novel immigrates to America, they leave one child behind, for pragmatic reasons (easier to support a smaller family) and also as a placeholder, a promise to the grandmother that the family will return. They have no idea that soon the Korean War will erupt and keep them apart much longer than they anticipated. I loved this book because it showed me what life was like in Korea during the war and in its immediate aftermath, how people survived and even thrived.
Read about
another entry on the list.
The Page 69 Test: The Kinship of Secrets.
--Marshal Zeringue
Caroline Kim was born in Busan, South Korea, but moved to America at a young age.
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