Eight titles featuring cathartic bathhouse scenes

McKenzie Watson-Fore is a writer, artist, and neighbor currently based in her hometown of Boulder, Colorado. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction from Pacific University. She writes about evangelicalism, relationships to people and place, and self-discovery. Watson-Fore serves as the executive editor for sneaker wave magazine and is the founder and host of the Thunderdome Conference. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best American Essays.

At Electric Lit Watson-Fore tagged eight works featuring cathartic bathhouse scenes, including:

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Set in Korea and Japan between 1910 and 1989, Pachinko chronicles the daily lives of four generations of Koreans in exile. Forty years apart, two different characters—first, Sunja; later, Ayame—visit the public bathhouse, or sento. In each case, the bathhouse is a utilitarian space used for hygiene and relaxation, and each mention underscores the tensions the characters endure in the midst of their quotidian responsibilities. For Sunja—the woman at the center of the novel’s tessellating history—the sento she visits on her first night in Osaka is a reminder of her alienation from her home country, as well as an adumbration of the nationalist prejudice that will intensify over the years to come. This is the work of a skilled novelist: to take a generic personal obligation—something as simple and routine as bathing—and leverage it to convey both context and interiority. For Ayame, her bathhouse visit precedes her discovery of a clandestine sex grove. Her return visits to the sento are infused with a growing curiosity about the secluded thicket and what happens there. In this way, Lee reflects that a bathhouse is not necessarily a sexual space, but neither does it preclude the erotic dimensions of an embodied life.

Read about another entry on the list.

Pachinko is among Adrienne Westenfeld and Sirena He's twenty-five essential books about the Asian American experience, Daphne Fama's seven top novels set during times of great political upheaval, Mia Barzilay Freund's eighteen best historical fiction books of the last several decades, Courtney Rodgers's best historical fiction of the 21st century so far, Bethanne Patrick's twenty-five best historical fiction books of all time, Asha Thanki seven books about families surviving political unrest, the Amazon Book Review editors' twelve favorite long books, Gina Chen's twelve books for fans of HBO’s Succession, Cindy Fazzi's eight books about the impact of Japanese imperialism during WWII, Eman Quotah's eight books about mothers separated from their daughters, Karolina Waclawiak's six favorite books on loss and longing, Allison Patkai's top six books with strong female voices, Tara Sonin's twenty-one books for fans of HBO’s Succession, and six books Jia Tolentino recommends.

--Marshal Zeringue