So Far from the Bamboo Grove, Yoko Kawashima Watkins

A detailed and compelling memoir that has resurrected clashes of old tensions between Koreans and Japanese. Eleven-year-old Yoko and her family must move from Naman, North Korea, at the end of World War II and the end of the Japanese occupation. The father is imprisoned, mother is ill, yet she and two daughters take a journey of peril, separation, poverty and hunger to be repatriated to wartorn Japan. Once there, they live in a bomb ruin and attempt to go to school (Yoko is befriended by the janitor who saves paper and pencil stubs for her), while their mother searches for her son and husband. The story has been criticized as being an unfair portrait of Koreans, when they were the people and culture subjugated by the Japanese; and for incorrect (and prejudicial) information about Korean participation in the Pacific War. Labeled Young Adult.

Song of Ariran: A Korean Communist in the Chinese Revolution, by Nym Wales

A 1905-1937 biography of “Kim San” (Chang Chi-rak, aka Chiang Min, Han San, and Ying Kuang), narrated in 1937 to the American journalist Helen Foster Snow (Nym Wales). Kim joined the Chinese Communists as way to resist the Japanese occupation of Korea. He was a contemporary of nationalists Ahn Chang-ho and Yi Kwangsu, terrorists Kim Yaksan (Kim Wonbong), and O Songyun; and Korean communists Yi Tongwhi and Kim Chung-ch’ang. His story reveals his idealism and passionate nationalism, and through his eyes we also see the burgeoning communist movement in China.

Still Life with Rice, Helie Lee

A memoir and fictionalized immigrant narrative. The author goes to Korea in search of her identity, and discovers her grandmother's compelling story of growing up in a traditional Korean household, expatriating to China to escape the Japanese occupation, and returning only to survive the dramatic hardships of the Korean War. Her harrowing journey from the North to Pusan with an infant on her back and three little ones in tow, separated from her husband and most precious eldest son, along with hundreds of thousands of other refugees, fleeing the communists and being shot and bombed by American pilots, is an exceptional account of the war's harsh toll on civilians. Although Lee's language is sometimes stiff and her focus narrow, the narrative exposes a rich history of a strong woman's rise from the lowly realm of womanhood, her fall through losses of war and death in her family, and rise again through spiritual renewal and the practice of ch’iryo, a heavy-handed massage/healing art Chinese technique. Among the first modern publications of Korean American writing.

American Woman, by Susan Choi

This fictionalized Patty Hearst saga relates the travails of a Japanese American activist who is both on the run (former radical terrorist bomber with her boyfriend, who is in prison) from the law, and from herself—the rage and disconnectedness she feels. She becomes a guardian of the last three members of the “army” that abducted Pauline, modeled after Hearst, and eventually becomes her closest friend, her first real intimacy. Written with depth, gravitas, precise language and remarkable details in physicality, Choi’s talent for revealing inner lives and intelligent writing are displayed in full. She transitions between scenes by leaps, and we still get it. Pulitzer Prize nominee. Choi’s debut novel is Foreign Student, and her third is Person of Interest, shortlisted for PEN/Faulkner.

Translations of Beauty, by Mia Yun

Written in present tense, this tale is about KA estranged twin sisters who meet in Europe to mend their relationship. The source of their difference is an incident in war-torn Korea that leaves one sister facially scarred, and the other (the narrator) struggling with survivor’s guilt, plus Korean identity issues and conflicts with family tradition.