The Girl-Son, by Anne E. Neuberger

Taken from the autobiographies of Induk Pahk, (a personal family friend), this story targeted toward youth boils down Pahk’s early years and her persistence in gaining an education. It portrays turn-of-the-century Korean life and culture with the kind of details that make the story real and poignant, and the trials and bravery of both mother and daughter toward self-improvement are truly inspiring. What is missing is Pahk's deep Christian faith, and the cover illustration shows a Westernized vision of Korea in that era. Pahk’s three books are September Monkey, Wisdom of the Dragon and The Cock Still Crows.

Archer’s Quest, by Linda Sue Park

Kevin, a middle schooler or a little younger, is a Korean American boy bored with just about everything, and has an ambivalent relationship with his math-genius father. By magic, the legendary Korean archer, Koh Chu-mong, from ancient Korean history (Koguryo period) appears in room. In their quest to return Koh to his time and place, Kevin learns important lessons that will bring discipline and interest back into the everyday chores of school, and establish a new and exciting connection with his Korean heritage, and his father. (Young Adult)

A Step from Heaven, An Na

Young adult autobiographical novel of one family’s late 20th century emigration to America, living in poverty. Story of divided culture and backbreaking work by parents, who are mean to the child.

Memories of My Ghost Brother, by Heinz Insu Fenkl

Post Korean-war fictionalized memoir of mixed-race boy growing up in shadow of US army base. Fragmented language, boyhood snapshots. One of the first of its kind.

The Interpreter, by Suki Kim

A Korean American novel and mystery about 24-year old Suzy Park who is a court interpreter estranged from her past. Her parents were murdered in their greengrocer shop in Brooklyn, and her sister has been strangely absent for longer than that. A mystery is slowly revealed about the confluence of events surrounding the parents’ death and sister’s disappearance, and by learning the truth about her past, Suki comes to accept her own truths and disappointments, and her perceived failures in her own life.

Country of Origin, by Don Lee

A page-turner by the former editor of Ploughshares and author of Yellow. A detective novel that delves into identity issues, setting us in various historical periods via headline news paragraphs. Gorgeous women and gorgeous men are always getting involved, having affairs, screwing all the time, graphically. Strongly woven plot and clearly, cleanly written reveals a lot of research into Tokyo's sex industry.

Songs of the Kisaeng : Courtesan Poetry of the Last Korean Dynasty, by Constantine Contogenis

Gisaeng, sometimes called "skilled women," were courtesans in Korean history. During the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) kisaeng were prominent in society due to Confucian influence and a resulting large number of upper class bureaucrats, for whom gisaeng were a regular "perk." The reign of King Yunsangun (1494-1506) had 10,000 gisaeng in official residence in the capital. Recruited by "woman hunters," gisaeng were taken from peasant families or were daughters of existing gisaeng.

Misygynist Confucian practices required upper class women to remain in their homes until being delivered to her husband, their conduct and grooming dictated by strict rules of "right" behavior, their duty carefully prescribed exlusively toward the well being and continuity of the male family line. In comparison, gisaeng enjoyed freedom to develop emotionally and creatively despite the confines of their position and servitude, and were educated in writing, reading, music and art. This book therefore is an unusual treasure in Korean literature: the rarely heard voice of women in nearly 4,500 years of history. The collection is a bittersweet achievement. Gisaeng were among the lowliest class of people, yet a handful achieved a small measure of status according to the importance of to whom they were attached. This handful left a legacy of their pain through these poems. A gisaeng had many clients, and her experience of love was never avowed nor was it likely to be permanent. All the poems are lamentations of this aspect of love: from the moment she fell in love, her lover was bound to leave her. A sad testament to centures of an oppressive social structure in Korea, these poems continue to resonate with striking imagery, elegant rhythm and rhyme (in the original Korea, happily provided) and powerful emotion. A careful and nuanced translation.

Introduction to Korean History & Culture, by Andrew C. Nahm

What makes this history book different from the others is Nahm’s exploration of cultural change in light of historical change, including in the arts and traditions. Some details that seem essential are missing, such as full names, the growing and changing use of media, and popular cultural attitudes.

Weathered Blossom, by Wan-Suh Park

A 60-year-old widow finds companionship with an eligible widower, and until her daughter and his daughter-in-law meddle in their relationship, she begins to rediscover feelings from youth. This famed Korean short story writer weaves a realization about love and passion into a simple yet compelling and beautifully rendered narrative. Short read, detailed and uniquely true points of view from the perspective of age.

The Fifth Wheel, by Soon Chul Lee

Poetry. Sparse, simple language, reminscent of haiku, evokes small moments, glances of nature and movement, that speak to solitude, love, poetry, memory, longing.

Yellow: Stories, by Don Lee

So. Cal. contemporary interlinked stories. Good storytelling, even-handed prose, familiar Korean American racial themes, and struggles of Asian American singles in modern life.

Echoes Upon Echoes: New Korean American Writings, edited by Elaine H. Kim and Laura Kang

A broad collection organized by age/awareness, focused on identity, family, and the meaning of home and country.

I Wish for You a Beautiful Life: Letters from the Korean Birth Mothers of Ae Ran Won to Their Children, Sara Dorow

Heartwrenching real letters full of the Korean han the inner passion, especially pain and longing that is so deeply felt and most often expressed as rivers of tears. Because of the subject and the nature of the compilation, the melodrama is inherent. The book includes “explanatory” introductory notes to sections, which felt somewhat redundant at times.

The Long Season of Rain, by Helen Kim

A young adult novel about four daughters in the mid--to-late 1960s in Korea. It is primarily the second daughter’s, Junehee, story of family life and her parents’ complex relationship seen through her eyes. An orphaned poor boy comes to live with them and his presence exposes the father’s infidelity, a secret of lost twin premature boys, and the mother’s longing for a son and for happiness with her circumstance with philandering husband and domineering mother-in-law who lives with them. Well written, clean sharp details on daily home life in postwar Korea, including lots of food references and cultural nuances. Family order, confucian structure well drawn in scenes and in expressiveness. YA National Book Award Finalist.

The Search, by Bobby F. Griffin

A Korean war vet returns after 21 years to search for the houseboy, a onetime street urchin, he had during the war. A Christian book. Self published.

Irma and the Hermit: My Life in Korea, by Irma Tennani Materi

Opinionated, condescending, racially and culturally patronizing narrative of life within USMGIK as the wife of a colonel who trained Korean constabulatory, domestic police, then the Coast Guard. A distinctly provincial and domestic portrayal of U.S. quonset-hut life, including appliances and bathroom details.

Encounter, by Moo-Sook Hahn

A must-read tour-de-force for anyone with interest in Korean history or literature. Tasan was a highly regarded Confucian scholar, who chose a life of poverty for scholarship, and to find out more about Catholicism, which had just entered Korea via the Jesuits in China (a Bible was brought from Beijing during one of Korea's regular tributary visits to its suzerain leader). Less than a Xian testament, this exceptional narrative reveals a precise picture of 18th and 19th century Korean life, politics, class, an deeply thoughtful and informed internal struggle, and how Confucian and Xian ideals, when realized, are compatible.

The Language of Blood: A Memoir, by Jane Jeong Trenka

Using a variety of styles and narratives, Korean adoptee Trenka tells of her experience surviving a violent stalking in Minnesota, as well as her coming of age with racism, going to Korea to find her mother who soon died with cancer, an older sister, and ultimately, love. A search for what is Korean and her Korean American identity. The prose is accurately praised for being luminous and carefully beautiful.

Aloft, by Chang-Rae Lee

Lee departs from an Asian protagonist and examines the life of the emotionally bankrupt Italian-American Jerry and the people who surround him. Lee applies new light to familiar themes of a past death of a close family member (his wife), father-son issues, a woman he loves who give up on him due to his lack of expressiveness, one thing that redeems the protagonist from his own emotional disability. To portray a somewhat frozen and unlikable main character is risky, but Lee's deft language and exploration of our interior lives and universal human themes overcome the distance that the people who touch Jerry feel. This is Lee’s third novel (Native Speaker, A Gesture Life) and his fourth, The Surrendered will publish March 2010.

In Full Bloom, Caroline Hwang

Ginger moves to NYC to excape her mother and pursue ambitious magazine career. Mother moves in to help her get married. “Hwang packs the fun of a chic woman’s quest for love and fulfillment into a poignant immigrant’s tale…” Breezy writing in a contemporary novel.

The King’s Secret: The Legend of King Sejong, by Carol J. Farley

A fictionalized telling of how the great King Sejong of early Joseon (mid-1400s) set out to create a Korean vernacular alphabet to replace the unwieldy usage of Chinese characters used to write Korean phonetically. This system limited literacy to the educated aristocrat class. The story involves a commoner youth who helped show scholars from the Hall of Worthies that the alphabet was a gift from the gods. (Ages 5-8)

Kori: The Beacon Anthology of Korean American Fiction, by Fenkl and Lew

16 excerpts of Korean American writing, from Younghill Kang and Kim Ronyoung to Chang-Rae Lee and Susan Choi. Edited by two “early” Korean-American writers (whose work is included) and targeted to Korean American studies programs. An adequate starting point for further reading.

The Foreign Student, by Susan Choi

Well-formed prose with good depth of characters and original descriptions. A love story of a rich white girl and Korean boy. He's a war survivor, torture survivor, in a deep south college town in the 1950s.

A Person of Interest, by Susan Choi

This tour de force by Pultizer-nominee Choi is an amazing exploration of one man's psyche and how his unlikable persona makes him an FBI person of interest in a bombing case, similar to the Unabomber. A deeply felt, carefully drawn portrait of the deep inner workings of Lee's mind and how the mind works to justify itself for past deeds and present weaknesses in pride, shame, and his isolation and yearning. Add to that a compelling plot to discover the source of a letter bomb that kills Lee's neighboring-office professor, and the mysteries of failure and accountability that Lee explores about his past sole love to Aileen, and the child they bore together, who has disappeared, the book is complex, hugely detailed in the nuances that accompany human fear, separateness, suspicion, yearning, revenge, and ultimately redemption. Choi writes with a vast and avid vocabulary rich in variety and description, and her inner examinations of thought and feeling, emotions and sensations, are equal to Philip Roth's, but with more sensitivity and less onanism. It's difficult to establish deep sympathy and empathy with such a difficult character as Lee, but Choi's razor-sharp eye brings about compassion along with the dislike. Quite a feat, and quite a book. Beautifully structured, brilliantly written, exhaustively explored such that every word had importance and meaning.

The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea, transl and annot by JaHyun Kim Haboush

Beyond the scholarly merit and historical significance of this book, the story is hugely compelling, not merely for the facts of the chilling event, but for several other reasons.

First, the view Lady Hyegyong provides of the court life and the strict Confucian beliefs that hinge on filial piety, loyalty, virtue and honor is evident more in what she doesn't say than what is said. It's a growing subtle presentation of how life unfolded within these confines of faith, and as a result, how tragedy after tragedy continued to compound. One could read the Analects or any Neo-Confucian work, and not understand to the degree shown here the depths of the practice and belief that affected every aspect of life in the late Choson era.

Second, along with JaHyun Kim Haboush's careful introduction, the annotations she has so helpfully added, the glossaries and appendices, the book presents a highly respectful translation that brings forth all the humanity of the players in a way that makes the story unfold like a novel of hope, horror, survival and the desire for inner peace and heavenly redemption.

Third, by providing the historical literary context of these MEMOIRS (in the introduction), we benefit from understanding not only the historical events but the tense cultural climate and the severe limitations that Lady Hyegyong had to challenge and overcome in order to redeem the honor of her family. Almost as a self-reflective postmodern work of existentialism, the book stands as its own redemptive testament to its themes.

To read of this historical event from one who suffered in its aftermath, and who despite the strictures of her sex and position could tell of it with artistry, is an amazing literary experience.

The Red Queen, by Margaret Drabble

I read this book and also have read the original, THE MEMOIRS OF LADY HYEGYONG, translated, annotated and introduced by historian and scholar JaHyun Kim Haboush. The first half of Drabble's book, which is a fictional representation of the actual memoirs, seemed like an enormous theft, a disappointing Anglicized version of the actual MEMOIRS. True, the original MEMOIRS can be less accessible than the fictional treatment, but the actual voice of the past presents a reality that cannot be imitated regardless of the attempts at conceits meant to engage Western audiences.

Like seeing the tragedy unfold with one's own eye versus hearing it from a storyteller from another time and another world, If one desires a gripping cultural experience of historical Korea, and especially of this infamous event, I recommend going to the source. But friends have commented on loving this re-creation, especially as this fictional account describes a world that is better understood by the unspoken and taboo: what wasn't said, what wasn't allowed to be spoken of, what words were forbidden, and how the utterance of words mattered so.

Hopefully this book would spur interested readers on to the original MEMOIRS.

In the Absence of Sun: A Korean American Woman's Promise to Reunite Three Lost Generations of Her Family, by Helie Lee

Lee and her father travel to China to find her rediscovered Uncle, in an attempt to reunite him with his mother (Lee’s grandmother, the heroine of her first book). Lee's journey across the border and her own journey of identity and character, recovering from a failed love, unfold simultaneously. Her challenges of limitations and cultural prejudices are embodied in her relationship with the guide who will ultimately find and bring 9 members of the family out of North Korea. He professes his love for her, she eventually sees him as human and lovable, and herself, then, as well. The harrowing exploits and the complicated arrangements of two groups of refugees escaping North Korea are vivid, and the story about rescue, reunion, hope and love are enduring.

Poems from Korea, by Peter H. Lee

Translations of poems by Koreans (written in Korean vernacular, not Chinese), including historical annotations and organized by era. The collection and historical notations are brief but useful, and sadly the translations are weak in song, vitality and in capturing a sense of the different voices in various poets, revealing the difficulty of translating poetry.

Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee

A New York City saga peopled with insecure, wounded, and angry resentful characters. Casey, the protagonist, is somewhat aimless, dangerously impulsive and self-destructive. Her only sibling, Tina, is the “nice” and obedient daughter. Her parents, operators of a dry cleaners, are hard-working Korean immigrants who expect their children to become doctors and lawyers. Casey's circle of friends, family and their individual circles, a mentor, workmates, add up to roughly 20 individuals whose thoughts and feelings are explored in roving points of view.

Kicked out of the house, without job and focus, Casey’s search for herself emphasizes shopping, body image, how much things cost, big name schools, business prestige, money, status. Cigarette-addicted Casey also is conflicted about her Christian faith and growing agnosticism, though this theme doesn’t fully play out. She does find something solid in understanding how many and how much others care for her. A huge family saga of New York.

Among the Flowering Reeds: Classic Korean Poetry Written in Chinese, by Jong-gil Kim

This translation does fine justice to the subtlety of poetry, especially this genre that is suffused with nature as analogy, illusion and reference. The clean layout and organization of the poems is lovely, the choices themselves stunning, with obvious change of voice from poet to poet, who are listed with short biographies in the back. An excellent collection that is sometimes breathtaking, always lyrical, and steadily consistent in careful word choices.

The Golden Mountain: The Autobiography of a Korean Immigrant 1895-1960, by Earsurk Emsen Charr

Memoir. Interesting story of early childhood in northern mts. of Korea, outside of Pyeongyang. Charming though narrow point of view tells of travels and dreams of America, then his arrival. He soldiered in WWI, struggled for an education, made connections with generous Christian friends, and worked toward US citizenship, many times denied and ultimately gained. Dated, but notable for being the first KA memoir. Younghill Kang’s East Goes West is the more literary and compelling version of this story and setting.

The Legend of Hong Kil Dong: The Robin Hood of Korea, by Anne Sibley O'Brien

Beautiful illustration and a clear story line describe this Korean legendary character, along with some of the complicated cultural mores of the early Yi Dynasty, its injustices, and several traditions and customs, without being intrusive or didactic. I was so taken by the strong illustration on the cover and the classic treatment of the cloud background that I sat down immediately and devoured the brilliantly told story. Notable are O’Brien's skilled yet fresh illustrations and the clean layout, as well as her ability to convey the particularity of hard-to-describe Korean sensibility in her brushwork and color use. I also loved the I Ching hexagrams and careful historical accuracy, in particular the clever choice of King Sejong as the monarch of the time.

O’Brien brings such riches to this graphic novel: iconographic images of classic Korean art, accurate and warm depictions of architecture and scenery that it almost becomes a well-researched visual reference book of Korean culture and history. The author’s note at the end is equally revealing, as is her web site. Highly recommended for middle-schoolers and anyone interested in enduring stories and legends from other cultures and traditions.

The Dreams of Two Yi-Min, by Margaret K. Pai

A memoir of the author's parents: the mother a picture bride from Korea married to a man who ends up in an upholstery/furniture/custom drapery businesses and makes a meager, then successful, living in Hawaii during 1920-1940s, with little chance of returning during Japan}s occupation of Korea. A backdrop setting describes the Independence Movement associations organized by the community and the political workings and split of the Hawaiian Korean Methodist church and society. A not atypical immigrant experience story and somewhat flatly told; the tensions in the family are touched on lightly, a sort of rosy sheen of fondness in memory cast on the narrative—a tone that marks many books of this genre. But the story is valuable for the insider’s description of the period and the early Korean diaspora in the islands. Work hard, die young, carry on.

Dokebi Bride (Vols. 1-6), by Marley

Introduces Sunbi, the granddaughter of the village shaman, who also sees spirits and is shunned by others. Wonderful liveliness in the layouts, and the author’s manwha (manga) style is graceful and lyrical. The modern story is told in sections of flashback and ancient flashback, stemming from the “present” when Sunbi comes to live with her estranged father, his wife and daughter in Seoul. The series continues, emphasizing her sense of isolation and the powers that threaten to overcome her, until she learns how to reach the friendly dokebi spirits, one of whom will become her protector. Rich in psychology and alternative spirituality theology, the story unfolds with episodic incidents, and we eagerly await Marley’s next edition.