Tag: Book Review
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Not A “Messy Woman,” We’re Just Trying Our Best: Memoirs by Women
This summer was for memoirs by the likes of Dolly Alderton, Baek Sehee, and Jennette McCurdy. What can we learn from other women’s vulnerability, and how can our relationships with women change us? Back in May, I surprised my life partner, Camila, with a visit to Chicago. My other partner, Ike, picked me up from…
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Your Metamorphosis by Kim Ewhan (너의 변신, 김이환)
Your Metamorphosis is an extraordinary short story that challenges the boundaries of the bodily. Through his gripping science fiction, author Kim Ewhan places us teetering on the edge of medical speculation, pushing us to consider the corporeal consequences of human identity. When presented with the opportunity to surgically achieve the perfect body, how far can…
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The Best Books I Read in 2022
2022 felt like three separate eras packed into one year. Season one started off modestly–I was still crashing with my parents in my hometown as I waited patiently for my big move (which I didn’t know would only be the first of the year). My first destination was Chicago, where I moved in with my…
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The Best Books I Read in 2021
2021 was a year of transition—I moved back to America after almost three years living in Korea, I threw myself into language study, and I tried to avoid feeling stagnant as I moved back in with my parents and worked from home. I can remember most of my year from what books I was reading…
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National Adoption Month and All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
“Every child deserves to grow up with a safe and loving family, with the care and support of their community. During National Adoption Month, we celebrate all of the children and families nurtured, enriched, and made whole by adoption and recommit ourselves to ensuring that every child in America can grow up in a loving and…
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Human Acts by Han Kang
Please be aware that there is a content warning for graphic violence, death, and trauma from real historical events. Human Acts is part historical account of the Gwangju Uprising and part lucid dream of grief and trauma. Han Kang muses about the cruelty human beings are capable of, and wonders if this brutality is fundamentally…
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If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
“Enter the players. There were seven of us then, seven bright young things with wide precious futures ahead of us. Until that year, we saw no farther than the books in front of our faces.” Summary If We Were Villains is an updated take on dark academia conventions, placing our characters in a prestigious acting…
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Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River by Jung Young Moon
This is a book about Texas. It’s also about boysenberries, yogis, cats in space, Hemingway, cowboy churches, Marx, and more. It’s about all of these things and none of these things. From the lens of a Korean visiting Texas on a writer’s residency, he chronicles all of the hyper-Americana that the state has to offer…
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To The Warm Horizon by Choi Jin-Young
One hundred thousand Koreans dead in a single day. The next day five hundred thousand—all dead from a strange virus, rapidly mutating with every vaccine. Rumors begin to circulate that eating the livers of little girls will cure the disease. To protect her remaining family, Dori flees with her younger sister to the barren expanse…
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Saturn and Their Rings by S. N. Benenhaley
Nymeria Publishing sent me an ARC of this poetry collection in exchange for an honest review. “I am Saturn, a planet of diamond rainstorms, Mega blizzards, and hexagonal hurricanes. I will have to find my own light by my own means.” Talk about some atmospheric poetry! This collection features stellar illustrations and poems from the…
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