April was a huge pub month with many titles that caught my eye. Though April was a slow reading month due to variety of reasons, I’ve already read a few of the April releases I was really excited for, which I included below. Others I am currently reading and/or on my literal shelf next to me staring at me to be read as I type this.

So, let’s talk about them.

Honey in the Wound by Jiyoung Han is one of my favorite books I read in 2026 so far, which surprised me. As you know, I love Korean-authored books, but I’ve been distancing myself from historical fiction for a bit. Since Korean history has a lot of trauma and war, I just haven’t had the emotional and mental capacity for it lately. But here I was reading a book about comfort women, one of the most difficult subjects to read about, crying my eyes out on a plane, and thinking “I love this book”. The writing, the magical realism, the characters, and the author’s intention of writing about such an important but easily forgotten piece of history with care and grace were all reasons why this book left a lasting impression on me. Highly recommend.

Inheritance by Jane Park is another Korean-authored book on my list (is anyone surprised?) that I am reading now and as a 90s kid to Korean immigrant parents, there is so much I can relate to in this book. And I’ve been gravitating for more books that are set in this time frame. I know the 90s have been making a comeback, and maybe because I’m an old millennial, but I really miss those days. I’m still working through this one, but I really think if you are part of any diaspora, this is one you should pick up.

This is another debut novel that I read and absolutely loved. Tailbone by Che Yeun is set in Korea in 2008 about an unnamed teenage girl who leaves her home to escape her father’s abuse and her mother’s complacency. She ends up at a boarding house where she meets Juju and slowly gets pulled into her world. The book is gritty and violent and unsettling. It also was so damn good. Another one I would highly recommend and would consider one of my top reads of 2026.

I haven’t read any fantasy in awhile, but this is one I’m really excited for. I follow the author, Shay Kauwe, on TikTok (though I deleted the app a few months ago) and I really appreciated her uplifting her Native Hawaiian heritage. She also did a series on YouTube where she interviewed authors and the one with Jasmine Iolani Hakes (author of Hula) was very illuminating for me. That all said, she’s been talking about her fantasy book, The Killing Spell, for years and now it’s here! Really excited for this.

I am currently reading Sorry to Disrupt the Peace by Patrick Cottrell, because told me I should read this before I start his newly released and loosely connected book, Afternoon Hours of a Hermit. I am loving it so far so I am pretty sure I’m going to love this one (which by the way also came highly recommended to me by ). This book picks up five years after Sorry to Disrupt the Peace ends, and I just can’t wait to read this one.

April was poetry month and while I had a stack of poetry books I wanted to read, I did not get to it. Will that stop me from buying and acquiring more poetry books? Nope. And Intifadas by Edward Salem is going to the very top of that pile. I’ve read a few poetry collections by Palestinian authors (Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd is a favorite) on resistance, survival, and displacement. A lot of it is, as one could imagine, absolutely heartbreaking. Intifadas is about uprising in all its forms, which in our current shitty situation of a world, feels timely and inspiring. Definitely prioritizing this one.

Jimin Han’s newest novel, Dreamt that I Found You, is a contemporary retelling of one of Korea’s oldest love story—the tragic story of Chunhyang and Mongryong. I am very familiar with the story since it was read to me so many times as a child, and therefore am very interested in how Han reimagines this classic. I generally enjoy retellings but because I do, I feel like I am a bit discerning about them. Still, I’ve read Han before so I think I’ll enjoy this one.

The last book is one that I probably would never have picked up if it weren’t written by my friend . I grew up in a religious home and was a big believer up until college. Since then, my relationship with church, God and Christianity as a whole has become pretty nonexistent. I have a lot of feelings about this religion and my experience growing up in church, most of it is… not great. What I appreciated about We Mend with Gold is how Kristin approaches our doubts and questions about faith and religion. I read this and have not written a review yet because it stirred up a lot of unprocessed feelings for me. Lots to think about in here for me, but I think if you are or once was a believer and am interested in reading about all the questions and doubts you had, this one would be a good place to start.

Below is the full list of books that came out in April that was on my radar (with affiliate links). Tell me which ones you read or are excited about!

-helen

• A Killer in the Family by Amin Ahmad (out 4/7)

• Enemies to Lovers by Alisha Rai (out 4/7)

• Honey in the Wound by Jiyoung Han (out 4/7)

• Inheritance by Jane Park (out 4/7)

• My Dear You: Stories by Rachel Khong (out 4/7)

• Release Me by Tahereh Mafi (out 4/7)

• Seyoon and Dean, Unscripted by Sujin Witherspoon (out 4/7)

• Tailbone by Che Yeun (out 4/7)

• The Dog Meows, The Cat Barks by Eka Kurniawan, tr. by Annie Tucker (out 4/7)

• The Rise of the Celestials by Kritika H. Rao (out 4/7)

• The Subtle Art of Folding Space by John Chu (out 4/7)

• We Mend with Gold by Kirstin T. Lee (out 4/7)

• Sour Fruit by Ahana Virdi (out 4/9 in EU/UK only)

• Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead by Mai Nguyen (out 4/14)

• Deathly Fates by Tesia Tsai (out 4/14)

• I Could Give You the Moon by Ann Liang (out 4/14)

• Spit: A Life in Battles by Jonnie Park & Donnie Kwak (out 4/14)

• Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker (out 4/14)

• Lady No by Kim Hyesoon, tr. by Jack Saebyok Jung (out 4/14)

• Light Burned by Jayci Lee (out 4/14)

• The Killing Spell by Shay Kauwe (out 4/14)

• The Take by Kelly Yang (out 4/14)

• Afternoon Hours of a Hermit by Patrick Cottrell (out 4/21)

• Gods & Comic by Kat Cho (out 4/21)

• Intifadas by Edward Salem (out 4/21)

• Livonia Chow Mein by Abigail Savitch-Lew (out 4/21)

• Mrs. Shim is a Killer by Kang Kayoung, tr. by Paige Morris (out 4/21)

• The Memory Museum by M Lin (out 4/21)

• The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang (out 4/21)

• The Photonic Effect by Mike Chen (out 4/21)

• Theft of the Ruby Lotus by Sayantani Dasgupta (out 4/21)

• Break Room by Miye Lee, tr. by Sandy Joosun Lee (out 4/28 in US

• Boring Asian Female by Canwen Xu (out 4/28)

• Dreamt I Found You by Jimin Han (out 4/28)

• If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light by Kim Choyeop, tr. by Anton Hur (out 4/28)

• Molka by Monika Kim (out 4/28)

• Ms. Mebel Goes Back to the Chopping Block by Jesse Q. Sutanto (out 4/28)

• Project V by Park Seolyeon, tr. by Gene Png (out 4/28)

• The Abyss by Jeyamohan, tr.by Suchitra (out 4/28)

• Questions 27 & 28 by Karen Tai Yamashita (out 4/28)

• The Summer I Remembered Everything by Catherine Con Morse (out 4/29)

• Ambrosia Lee Drops the Mic by Patricia Park (out 4/30)

• Mom, Unfiltered by Leah Kim (out 4/30)

Leave a comment

She Who Remains by Rene Karabash, translated by Izidora Angel, was the first book I read from the 2026 International longlist and has become the best book I’ve read all year. I realize that is a bold statement. But, hear me out.

In an Albanian village high in the mountains, an ancient set of customary laws called the Kanun rules the land. In this same village lives seventeen-year-old Bekija, her parents, and her younger brother, Sále. When Bekija’s father arranges a marriage between her and a neighbor’s son named Nemanja, she renounces the marriage (and her gender) by becoming a sworn virgin and living as a man—a custom that is part of the Kanun. Also part of the Kanun is the groom’s family right to restore their honor, which was violated with the breach of the marital contract, by killing a male member of the bride’s family.

my brother sends his best

says Nemanja’s brother and shoots his gun just once

my father’s warm body tumbles into the dead leaves, his big eyes fixed on him, my father’s big eyes locked into Nemanja’s brother’s eyes, his strong hands grab my father and turn him to the setting sun, he’s exalted by the sight of his fingers in blood, wipes them on Murash’s shirt, the heralds of death spread the news, they shot Murash, Murash was killed

I swear to the ruler of the Albanian Alps, Lekë Dukagjini, that to my dying day, to my dying day I shall not touch a man, I shall not touch a man and I shall preserve my virginal innocence, renouncing for all times the woman in me

renouncing forever the woman in me

These two events—the first death, ending of father’s life, and the second death, the ending of a girl’s womanhood, both customs enacted and held by the Kanun—are important to note especially as a beginning. When a book begins with an ending, you take notice. And when that beginning comes full circle at the end, you not only take notice, but you revel in its beauty. Karabash explores and excavates the different fragments, layers, and textures of an identity, all within the confines of societal and cultural oppression. As Bekija becomes Matija, bound by law and honor and duty, more memories, histories, and parts of this person are unearthed. And as I discovered more, I questioned…

What does it mean to be truly yourself?

How do you know when you are really you?

What are we willing to give to be our true self?

When I first started this book, it felt a lot like walking in the dark. I was disoriented, guided only by the knowledge of these two endings and the seemingly connected threads between the two. Quickly, though, a spell was cast and I was swept up in the lyrical, fable-like, prose. I had become bewitched by Karabash’s writing, and the only way out was through, unaware that my journey would not be linear. It was not a simple and direct story. It was cyclical, repetitive, and complicated. As life usually is.

And just like in life, at the end, I can surely say, it was absolutely worth it.

I have read some stellar books so far this year, but this one really belongs on its own shelf reserved for books that defy genres and refuse to be put in conventional boxes of what “fiction” is supposed to be.

I loved this one and will be thinking about this book for a very, very long time.

until next time,

helen

Share

It’s April so naturally I am here to talk about the books that released in March by authors from Asia continent and/or the Pacific Islands. I promise, I’ll get my shit together and start releasing this in the same month. And one day, I’ll release this even earlier.

March is usually a busy month for me, personally. It’s also when I talk about all the books for #ManseMarch—a month-long challenge I created and host to read and talk about all the Korean-authored books. I have a post in the works where I will talk about the books I’ve ever recommended for #ManseMarch for my paid subscribers (thank you, omg) so stay tuned.

Back to the new books that came out in March that I am excited about (and some I’ve already read)…

Minbak by Ela Lee is curretnly only available in the UK/EU with a U.S. release coming next year (exact date as of today: February 27, 2027). Because of that, not many in my bookish circle have read this. I intend to be the first (one can dream).

The book is about three generations of women in Korea and their lives surrounding a minbak (민박) or boarding house. Books that deal with multiple generations of women in one family is usually an auto-buy for me, especially when it’s set in Korea. As Korean diaspora, I am constantly yearning to connect the parts within me that I cannot name. And that is why I find myself drawn to literature that explores generational trauma and triumph, pain and resilience, through the lens of mothers and daughters. I am really excited for this one.

I absolutely loved Jung Yun’s debut novel, Shelter. And while I do have her second novel, O Beautiful, on my shelf, I got an early review copy of Jung Yun’s newest release, All the World Can Hold, and could not resist reading that first.

The book is told through three different people who board a cruise ship just five days after 9/11. Each person has their own different reason to be on this cruise, and while their narratives don’t intersect, they do orbit one another, providing a layered and nuanced character study. I really enjoyed this one. You can find my full review here.

T. Kira Madden’s memoir Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is one of my favorite memoirs so when I heard she was coming out with another book, I was ecstatic.

Whidbey is a “portrait of three women connected through one man in the aftermath of his murder” and from some of the reviews I’ve seen, I know this one will be a tough read, content-wise. The murdered man was a pedophile, and the three women are his two victims and his mother. So, I want to share a content warning here for child SA. Please be mindful and take care if you do pick this up.

I’ve been wanting to read this, but because of that CW I’ve been a bit hesitant. I will report back when I do.

A Mask the Color of the Sky by Bassem Khandaqji and translated by Addie Leak is about Nur, a young Palestinian refugee who gets often mistaken as an Ashkenazi Jew. When he discovers an Israeli ID, he uses it to assume a new Jewish identity.

Just that premise alone, I am absolutely intrigued and desperate to find out what Nur learns and experiences. I am patiently waiting for my copy.

Woodwind Harmony in the Nightime by Reza Ghassemi and translated by Michelle Quay is about an Iranian exile named Yadollah who lives in a run-down apartment in Paris. When a new neighbor moves in, who goes by Prophet, Yadollah’s life is forever changed or rather, ended. He has to now figure out the mystery of his own murder. Despite the bleak premise, I am hearing that this one is quite funny. And who doesn’t love tragedy with a dose of comedy?

For those of you who follow me on Instagram know that I am an absolute Han Kang stan. So, of course, I have to talk about her newest book. Light and Thread is her first publication since her Nobel Prize win, the title borrowed from her Nobel lecture, which is included. As I’ve mentioned in my review, this book is complementary to her other books and I think would be best for those who have already read her work and are a fan. It provides context and insight into her writing practice and inspiration behind her works. If you’ve never read her before, highly recommend saving this for after you’ve read her other works.

I do not read a lot of poetry, though I desperately want to. I have Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s Bite by Bite on my shelf that I have been meaning to read—a book I know I will love because as much as I am a reader, I am a also a “foodie”. (Before I talked about books and way before Instagram, I was a food blogger.) And because of that book and knowing she was a poet, I’ve always kept an eye out for Nezhukumatathil’s books.

In Night Owl, she explores the nocturnal and the book “meditates on our connections to family and beloveds, and explores our position within the broader beauty of the planet”—how beautiful is that. I’m really excited to read this.

These were the books that caught my eye in March. The full list (with affiliate links) is below. I have my substack for April books coming shortly. Please stay tuned.

Meanwhile, tell me which ones caught your eye!

-helen

• Our Funny Love Story by Byrd Koto (out 3/2)

• City Like Water by Dorothy Tse (out 3/3)

• Days of Love and Rage by Anand Gopal (out 3/3)

• On Censorship by Ai Weiwei (out 3/3)

• Ramin Abbas Has MAJOR Questions by Ahmad Saber (out 3/3)

• Sakura by Kanako Nishi (out 3/3)

• Strange Buildings by Uketsu, tr. by Jim Rion (out 3/3)

• The Dragon and the Sun Lotus by Amelie Wen Zhao (out 3/3)

• The Makeup Remover, Volume 1 by Lee Yeon, tr. by Somin Parker (out 3/3)

• The Ok’s Are Not Ok by Grace K. Shim (out 3/3)

• The Valley Vengeful Ghosts by Kim Fu (out 3/3)

• When Tomorrow Burns by Tae Keller (out 3/3)

• Minbak by Ela Lee (out 3/5 in UK/EU only)

• All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun (out 3/10)

• Bing’s Cherries by Livia Blackburn, illustrated by Julia Kuo (out 3/10)

• Brighter than Nine by June CL Tan (out 3/10)

• Coming Alive on the Ride by Michael Yang (out 3/10)

• Defying China by Tsultrim Dolma and Rebecca Wei Hsieh (out 3/10)

• Hafsa’s Way by Aisha Saeed (out 3/10)

• Right as Rain by Tashie Bhuiyan (out 3/10)

• Songs for Darkness by Iman Humaydan Yunis (out 3/10)

• Strange Girls by Sarvat Hasin (out 3/10)

• The First Step by Tao Wong (out 3/10)

• Whidbey by T Kira Madden (out 3/10)

• A Mask the Color of the Sky by Bassem Khandaqji, tr. by Addie Leak (out 3/17)

• Heiress of Nowhere by Stacey Lee (out 3/17)

• Hooked by Asako Yuzuki, tr. by Polly Barton (out 3/17)

• I Love You Don’t Die by Jade Song (out 3/17)

• Prodigal Tiger by Samantha Chong (out 3/17)

• Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami, tr. by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio (out 3/17)

• The Book of Fallen Leaves by A.S. Tamaki (out 3/17)

• The Fortune Flip by Lauren Kung Jessen (out 3/17)

• Woodwind Harmony in the Nighttime by Reza Ghassemi, tr. by Michelle Quay (out 3/17)

• Celestial Lights by Cecile Pin (out 3/24)

• Light and Thread by Han Kang, tr. by e.yaewon, Paige Aniyah Morris (out 3/24)

• Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories by Amal El-Mohtar (out 3/24)

• The Dog Meows, the Cat Barks by Eka Kurniawan, tr. by Annie Tucker (out 3/24)

• American Han by Lisa Lee (out 3/31)

• As Long As You Loathe Me by Swati Hegde (out 3/31)

• Night Owl by Aimee Nezhukumatahil (out 3/31)

• The Celestial Seas by T.A. Chan (out 3/31)

Leave a comment

Share

I startle awake. It’s the middle of the night and I’m on the floor in my bedroom next to my dog, Dazzy—a nineteen-year-old miniature pinscher. He’s been asleep for hours, burrowed inside an old nap roll that my son used at daycare. The dark blue nap roll is dappled with planets and stars, and astronauts who usually are floating serenely in space, now in my blurry, no-contacts-wearing eyes, seem to be violently shaking. I lift the blanket. Dazzy is laying on his side but his whole body is convulsing. His nose is pointed up, as if he’s smelling, looking, searching, for something. I cup my right hand under his head, and hold his body with my left.

I whisper,

I love you, you’re a good boy, I love you, you’re a good boy, I love you, you’re a good boy

over and over again.

He lets out a small yelp before his whole body stills. His eyes, that have grown cloudy over the years, lose their light. And in a moment, like lightning that flashes in the night, he is here. And he is not.

.

.

.

.

.

.

*

Dazzy is not my dog. He is my partner’s dog. But from the first moment I first met him, it was as if he knew that I was his and he was mine. I used to joke that Dazzy and I were soulmates, and M—my partner—was just the medium that finally brought us together.

Before M and I lived together, I would visit him and Dazzy every other day. Before I even opened the door, he would be at the top of the stairs wagging his tail. I would slowly make my way up the stairs, calling out to him, telling him how much I missed him. As his tail—no, his whole bottom—shimmies with excitement, he starts to howl: hurry up, mama. Once I finally reach the top of the stairs, he would leap into my arms, greeting me with his wet kisses.

One of my favorite games to play with him was hide-and-seek. Once we all shared a home, there were times I would come home while he was out on a walk or I’d sneak into the house very quietly. And, I would hide. It never take him long to realize I was home. He smelled me immediately and would start sniffing the air trying to find me.

He always did.

*

M and I got married in 2018. We’ve been dating for almost five years, but had known one another since we were twelve-years-old. We went to the same college, had a lot of mutual friends, and over the years would randomly meet up to smoke weed once in awhile. But it wasn’t until years later, that we somehow reconnected and knew instantly that we wanted to be together. Since we were one of the last of our friends to get married, I was eager to start trying for kids right away.

It didn’t happen for us right away, and soon it became 2020. We were in lockdown and all of a sudden, I was online more than ever. My life was nothing but revolving zoom meetings: virtual “dinner” parties with friends, online yoga classes, and of course, telehealth appointments with my fertility doctor. As my social life dwindled, my fervor for a baby grew. I took over twenty pills of vitamins a day, I got acupuncture weekly, I meditated, I chanted daily positive affirmations. And as each month passed with disappointment, I withdrew. I stopped texting my friends, I stopped picking up phone calls from my mom, and I stopped scrolling through my social media. I could not open up Instagram without seeing friends, acquaintances, and random people on the internet, share their news of being pregnant. I did not know what was wrong with me (and according to our doctor, absolutely nothing), but I was convinced it was my fault. The pandemic became the perfect cover for my withdrawal from friends and family. We were all in isolation, mine more emotional than physical, and I welcomed it.

Stuck within the walls of our San Francisco loft, I grew resentful and angry and sad. M was growing tired of my intense dedication to getting pregnant. He didn’t mention it at first, but the pressure was getting to him.

I felt so incredibly alone.

One night, I was up late, a normal occurrence. I couldn’t sleep well during this time because I was stressed out about getting pregnant, which would stress me out more because I knew sleep was important for my health. So, I did what I always did late at night when I couldn’t sleep. I read. On this night, I was reading The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein in bed. M was asleep next to me and Dazzy was in his dog bed under my vanity desk. He always started the night by sleeping in the crook of my belly as I slept on my side. And throughout the night, he would make his way down between my legs and feet until, after probably some unconscious kicking from me, he would finally go into his own bed to sleep undisturbed.

When I get to a particularly sad part of the book, I started to cry. I didn’t want to wake M or Dazzy up, so I swallowed my cries and tiptoed into the bathroom. I continued reading on the bathroom floor and I quickly found myself sobbing silently. I knew the tears weren’t just about the book. In that moment, I understood I was grieving, that I had to grieve, to let myself feel all of my sorrow and rage at myself, for myself.

Not long after, I heard scratching. It was Dazzy. He was at the bathroom door. I let him in and he starts immediately licking my tears, my face. I know how this sounds. But it’s true. He heard or smelled or just knew that I was upset, so he came. It wasn’t the first time he’s done this, comforted me when I was distressed, but it was the first time I felt like I truly needed it. At the time, his knowing of my pain gave me solace that no other human at the time could give me.

That night, Dazzy saved me from a darkness that was slowly engulfing me. I could not see the darkness because, as I do and have done all my life during times of desperation, I put myself to work. If I had a plan, if I had things to do, I could not and would not feel the pain of the question that has haunted and will continue to haunt me my entire life: am I good enough?

Was my body good enough to get pregnant? To be able to carry a baby? Was I good enough to become a mother? Was I deserving to be a mother? To give and feel the love of a child? Was I good enough to be loved?

To Dazzy, I was.

And I sit here and write this knowing that I may never feel the love of a dog again, the unconditional, boundless, stupid kind of love that only a dog, your dog, can give, I feel broken. I have the love of my family and friends, so mourning the loss of a family pet so deeply, I know, feels dramatic. But, I don’t care. Because sometimes I don’t want other humans to tell me what I should do and how I should feel. I don’t want their advice, their judgement, their pity.

Sometimes, all I want is the silent comfort of a dog, of my dog. And often times, that is all I need.

*

After I started cosleeping with my kids when they became toddlers, Dazzy slept with M in our master bedroom. The night that he died was the first night I slept with him in almost two years. I’d like to think he knew I was there. He knew I was there and that’s why he decided to go that night.

I know how this sounds. But, I wish it to be true.

*

Dazzy,

My buddy, my best friend, my soulmate. I’m so happy that I got to be your mama for the past 13 years. I loved every single moment with you.

Do you remember when you came to live with me in Colorado? It was a first for both of us, being away from family. A couple of California kids living in snowy but sunny Boulder. We hiked so many beautiful places there. Do you remember? You would run ahead first, but always look back to make sure I was there, following. Those were my favorite memories. Just you and me, bud.

Oh, do you remember that time I hid behind the laundry closet door at our San Francisco loft? You were sniffing back and forth, back and forth, convinced I was there but could not find me. Until you did. Because you always did. You always found me.

Dazzy, I hope you weren’t too scared at the end. I hope you could smell that I was there. I hope you could feel me holding you. Did you hear me? Did you hear me tell you how much I love you? Because I do. I do so so so much.

You were such a good boy. Thank you for showing me what kind of mama I could be. Thank you for giving me a reason to get up out of bed during my darkest times. Thank you for loving me, all of us, unconditionally. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more, be with you more, especially at the end. I hope you knew, though, how much you were loved. How much we still love you. How much you changed our lives, and just how much we will miss you.

I promise I’ll find you again in the next life, just like I did in this one.

Love,

your mama

Leave a comment

This was really hard to narrow down. I mean, I could easily name twenty fiction books that I read and loved in 2025 so narrowing it down to just ten was difficult. And really, the books in #2 - #5 could really be interchangeable given my mood.

But, you’ve heard the same tune from me before, so let’s get into it.

Coming in at number ten is a novella that really stuck (and still sticks) with me. Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated by Helen Stevenson is a work of fiction that was inspired by a true event: the tragedy of an inflatable dingy crossing the English Channel that sunk in the early morning hours of November 24, 2021. What is really interesting about this book is that the entire perspective is from a French coastguard operator, and through her, we explore collective blame and complicity.

It was a powerful book, and a great reminder why I love reading the longlist. I am always find gems on them. I wrote a review for this on my instagram if you are interested, but just know that this one is very well worth your time.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai is a behemoth of a book. Clocking in at over 600 pages, this family saga about two people, Sonia and Sunny, and their families covers a lot. A lot of history, a lot of ideas, and a lot of nuances. There are layers of depth and details within these pages about art, of living, on neighborhoods.

Did I think this could’ve been a bit shorter? Sure. But, I still am blown away by Desai’s writing.

A violent and dark book about whale hunting being one of my favorite books I read in 2025 was not on my bingo card, but here we are. North Sun: or The Voyage of the Whaleship Esther by Ethan Rutherford was horrifying book to read. It was horrifying but it possessed me. The book is about whale hunting, but it’s also about human violence and greed. The animal slaughter, the toxic masculinity, the child abuse—these were all very hard to read. But, Rutherford’s fable-like writing pulled me in and did not let me go.

You can find my full thoughts here. I highly recommend (if you can stomach it).

When I say I rarely get excited or care about books written by white men that are about white men, I really mean it. (As a woman of color, I’ve spent so much of my young adult life reading white men so I am trying to remedy that as much as I can now.) But Seascraper by Benjamin Wood was on The Booker Prize longlist, so it caught my eye. I wasn’t expecting much.

This book snuck up on me. Wood’s beautiful and atmospheric writing drew me in quickly and I was absolutely mesmerized. I’m glad this was longlisted (though I wish it was a finalist) because otherwise I would never have picked this up.

We the Animals by Justin Torres has been on my shelf for years. And I finally decided to read it last year and it became one of the best books I read in 2025. This is a devastatingly beautiful book about three brothers growing up in Brooklyn with a Puerto Rican father and a white mother. It’s about toxic masculinity, dysfunctional families, poverty, and the coming-of-age within these environments. I loved this book.

Another backlist title that I read in 2025 that I absolutely loved is Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. I know this is a beloved book and it did not disappoint. Spanning three hundred years in thee hundred pages, the book follows two sisters and their descendants—their lineage running parallel to one another. And this book has an ending that I still think about to this day.

Coming in at number four is a book that is quite polarizing. Audition by Katie Kitamura is a book told in two parts (or acts) that is abstract, complex, and obscure—in the best way. It’s a book about the roles we play, the performance of life, and the authenticity of it all. This book pushed me out of reality and into a space that demanded my suspension of belief and complete faith. And I had to reread the ending multiple times, each time my conclusion different.

I devoured the book and am in love with what Kitamura did here. I think this one deserves all the flowers that its been getting.

Memento Mori by Eunice Hong is an underrated book that more people need to read. At first, I couldn’t really make sense of where the author was going due to the book’s unique structure. But the more I read, the deeper I went into Hong’s exploration of grief, memory, and tragedy. And I found her reexamination of Greek mythology in relation and braided with Korean history to be absolutely fascinating.

A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar was a book that was talked about every where. It was Oprah’s Book Club pick and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize. The book was full of hype, so I was a bit wary going in. And I can assure you, this lived up to all the praises and more. A book about how far one would go for their family’s survival, the writing is beautiful and intimate. You can read about how much I loved it here. That ending still haunts me.

My favorite book of 2025 is a sci-fi literary fiction that was translated from Korean. A Thousand Blues by Cheon Seon-Ran, translated by Chi-Young Kim is set in the near future and is about two sisters, a sentient robot, and a racehorse that gave me hope in the bleakest of times. I don’t think this book is perfect. I can definitely point out flaws if I have to. But despite them, this book made me feel so deeply that no other book could compare. When posed with deciding between the heart or the mind, I will always go with the heart.

I wrote a review for this on my substack last month, so please check that out if you haven’t. And please do check out this book if it interests you.

Until next time, happy reading.

-helen

Leave a comment

Last day of February which means I am, once again. But, who actually cares? (Maybe me, a little.)

February was a great month for some books by authors from the entire continent of Asia and/or Pacific Islands. As usual, below are a few books that caught my eye and that I’m excited about. The full list of books that I was aware of with January releases are listed out at the end.

Simple Heart by Cho Haejin, translated by Jamie Chang is about a pregnant, Korean-born woman named Nana who was adopted as a child and raised in France. When she receives a request from a Korean filmmaker to make a documentary about her life, she heads to Seoul to learn about where she came from. A book about identity and belonging, as well as the international adoption and motherhood, this book was compared to Shin Kyung-Sook’s Please Look After Mom—a book that profoundly moved me. I’m also really curious to see how the author depicts an adoptee’s voice and how she leans into the controversial topic of international adoption in Korea.

I used to be a diehard fan of H.O.T. (a very popular K-pop boy band in the 90s) when I was young. I never reached that level of fandom again, and probably never will. I’m I’m grateful I experienced it, though, especially when I read books about extreme fandom (Y/N by Esther Yi and Idol Burning by Rin Usami are two that come to mind—the former I loved, the latter not so much). So, when I saw the premise for Superfan by Jenny Tinghui Zhang, I was intrigued. A book about a pop idol, his fans, and what happens when those two worlds collide, Zhang takes a look at the lengths people will go to fight their loneliness.

Translated from Korean, this collection of eight fantastical stories is one I was excited about this month and can now say is one that I enjoyed. With the Heart of a Ghost by Lim Sun Woo, translated by Chi-Young Kim is a book that blends reality with the surreal while centering the lives of people and their loneliness and yearning for more. The stories are speculative but also lean into the healing fiction genre. Sad but also hopeful, I really enjoyed this one. Full review to come on my instagram for #ManseMarch!

Rebel English Academy by Mohammed Hanif is a book set in Pakistan struggling under martial law after its former leader is executed. Three lives become intertwined and we become bystanders as we are given glimpses into Pakinstani life. Sometimes I want to avoid books like this, that feel so relevant and timely. But other days, like today, I can’t wait to dive in and watch how it all plays out. Tomorrow I might feel different. But, regardless, I hope to read this soon.

First thing’s first. This cover is bangin’. It’s so good that I didn’t even read the synopsis but I still added it to my TBR. And, of course, that blurb from Ed Park didn’t hurt either. The cover coupled with Ed Park’s blurb, I just know that this is something I will enjoy. I’m sure I am the Ghost Here by Kim Samek will be funny and weird in all the right ways, and if I’m guessing correctly, it might even be a little hopeful. And we all need a little (or a lot) of hope these days.

As usual, the full list of the releases that were on my radar are below (with affiliate links). If you’ve read any of these or any of them look interesting, please let me know in the comments.

Leave a comment

• Every Happiness by Reena Shah (out 2/3)

• Good People by Paten Sabit (out 2/3)

• Greedy by Callie Kazumi (out 2/3)

• Love Me Tomorrow by Emiko Jean (out 2/3)

• One & Only by Maureen Goo (out 2/3)

• Simple Heart by Cho Haejin, tr. by Jamie Chang (out 2/3)

• Superfan by Jenny Tinghui Zhang (out 2/3)

• The Knight & Her Emperor by G.M., adapted by Heyum, illustrated by Winter (out 2/3)

• The Vanishing Bookshop by Takuya Asakura, tr. by Yuko Maeno (out 2/3)

• Belgrave Road by Manish Chauhan (out 2/10)

• Night of the Golden Butterfly by Tariq Ali (out 2/10)

• Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree by Tariq Ali (out 2/10)

• The Fourth Princess by Janie Chang (out 2/10)

• The Midnight Taxi by Yosha Gunasekera (out 2/10)

• The Stone Woman by Tariq Ali (out 2/10)

• To the Death by Andrea Tang (out 2/10)

• With the Heart of a Ghost: Stories by Lim Sunwoo, tr. by Chi-Young Kim (out 2/10)

• Bad Asians by Lillian Li (out 2/17)

• Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl by Mandy-Suzanne Wong (out 2/17)

• Goodbye, French Fry by Rin-rin Yu (out 2/17)

• Holy Boy by Lee Heejoo, tr. by Joheun Lee (out 2/17)

• Hot Chocolate on Thursday by Michiko Aoyama, tr. by E. Madison Shimoda (out 2/17)

• Messenger Cat Cafe by Nagi Shimeno, tr. by M. Jean (out 2/17)

• Rebel English Academy by Mohammed Hanif (out 2/17)

• The Obake Code by Makana Yamamoto (out 2/17)

• Crown City of Naomi Hirahara (out 2/24)

• Floodlines by Saleem Haddad (out 2/24)

• I Am the Ghost Here: Stories by Kim Samek (out 2/24)

• The Iron Garden Sutra by A.D. Sui (out 2/24)

• The Legend of the Nine-Tailed Fox by Katrina Kwan (out 2/24)

• Weavingshaw by Heba Al-Wasity (out 2/24)

• Why We Suffer and How We Heal by Suzan Song, MD, PhD (out 2/24)

In the year 2026, every time I see anything referenced or alluding to AI, I cringe. I cringe and curse under my breath. The rapid growth and push of this by corporations and the powers-at-be really make my stomach turn. I don’t use ChatGPT in my personal life, and I really try not to use any form of AI for work (though sometimes I have to because of orders). In general, I am against the use of AI, especially in the context of creative work because I believe in the nuanced and unique work that comes from humans and their lived experiences.

That said, the topic of artificial intelligence has long been explored in media—we’ve seen it in our movies and books for years—and one that I’ve always been fascinated with and terrified of. I still remember watching A.I., the 2001 movie with Haley Joel Osment as the lead character, a robotic boy named David programmed to love, and losing sleep over it. If you haven’t watched the movie, the quick synopsis is that in the 22nd century human population has been in decline due to the decimation of coastal cities from global warming, and because of the decline humanoid robots were created to fulfill certain human roles. David is an 11-year-old robot child who is capable love when his “imprinting” is activated. He is given to a couple with a child that is in the hospital with a rare disease and is eventually integrated into the family. But after their human child miraculously recovers, he clashes with David and a sequence of events follow that lead the family to abandon David in a forest full of scrap metal and abandoned robots. From there, David embarks on a Pinocchio-esque journey to be turned into a real live boy who is deserving of love.

Friends, I cried so much in this movie. I know that probably doesn’t mean much to folks who know me in real life because I am a self-proclaimed crier, but I bawled and bawled so hard at the end. After watching the movie, I couldn’t sleep because all I could think about was this poor robot boy and his purpose to love and be loved. I understand this was the whole point of the movie, to illicit a natural human emotion for an unnatural robot. And watching that movie, I realized how deeply I felt as a human. Even now, as I am writing this, my eyes are wet. Not a lot of movies or books about artificial intelligence and humanoid robots leave me so wrecked. Many of them, because I always fail to connect to a scrap of metal, do not phase me at all. I must acknowledge that A.I. really got under my skin because the main character was played by an actual human. Everything about the movie was tailored for the audience to fall in love with the human-looking robot boy. I certainly did. And because I did, I wept and grieved for him at the end.

I had a similar reaction with A Thousand Blues by Cheon Seon-Ran. In this book, there is no human-looking robot boy, but there is a sentient robot jockey. In the near future of 2035, robots are fully integrated into society providing the labor many humans used to do, including racing horses. C-27 is a sentient robot jockey whose sole purpose is to ride and race a horse named Today. Until one day, it falls off and trampled by the other horses. C-27 is sent to the junkyard to be repurposed for its parts and Today, after a lifetime of being overworked as a racehorse, is headed to be euthanized.

Eventually, a young woman who is skilled at robotics named Yeonjae finds C-27 during a scrap heap and decides to rebuild it. She names it Coli. Yeonjae’s sister, Eunhye, visits the racetrack almost every day. At first, she is captivated by the horses galloping down the track, but her attention turns to Today, the champion horse with legs that have been destroyed and can no longer run. When Yeonjae and Eunhye learn about Today’s fate, they—along with Coli—decide to rescue Today and have him run his last race. But, it will be the slowest race Today will have ever run.

I read this book last year (it was my favorite fiction of 2025) during a time when I could not go a day without seeing content about artificial intelligence. While the book was originally released in 2020, an apocalyptic year when the world was locked down due to COVID, it’s English translation debut in 2025 seemed extremely on-the-nose. I was not planning on reading books about the impending doom of our world with the rise of A.I., and I can say with confidence that I didn’t. This wasn’t that book. In fact, for a book set in a future where A.I. is a part of everyone’s lives, this has very little A.I. in it. From Yeonjae’s passion to her mother, Bogyeong’s wariness, we see the characters interact with A.I. and robots with varying degrees of comfort and tolerance, and the range of it all represent a very real picture of their world.

And in that world, there are big systematic and societal issues that stem from or are related to A.I. that affect very real humans. From Yeonjae losing her job at the convenience store to a robot to Bogyeong losing her husband to lack of funds supporting real humans in the field, there is a reality that harm and misfortune cannot be avoided when the use of A.I. and robots are integrated into society. There are also universal problems explored in the book like ableism, seen through Eunhye as she navigates the word as a wheelchair person; and animal cruelty, with Bokhui, Today’s veterinarian, as she reflects on the treatment and discarding of Today and other animals by humans. Both, issues that have existed long before the inception of artificial intelligence and still run deep in a world that is technologically dependent, but first and foremost, capitalistic. Because we know that in a capitalistic world the marginalized are usually left behind to suffer the ramifications of a world that prioritizes profit over people.

Yes, the book is about a sentient robot and how artificial intelligence has impacted human society. But, the book is also very human.

Similar to the movie A.I., the book explores what a world looks like when robots are blended into the lives of humans. It can feel bleak. But unlike the movie, this book offers hope. Hope for all of us who wake up every day hearing the latest news and feeling doomed with our current state of the world. But also hope for any person who has ever felt exhausted and rejected for just existing. This is a book that tell us to slow down, to appreciate one another, to be proud of yourself, to look up at the sky and look at the thousand blues.

Because you, living this life according to what makes you happy at your own beat, are doing great. And in this moment, that’s all that matters.

A Thousand Blues by Cheon Seon-Ran, expertly translated by Chi-Young Kim was my favorite fiction book that I read in 2025. I read this back in July and I still think about how much I loved it. I know I am probably doing this book a big disservice by raving about it since I hate to set such high expectations. I am too familiar with having been disappointed by them before. But, I don’t care. I love this book and I will still love this book even if you don’t. And, that’s okay.

It’ll all be okay.

Until next time, happy reading.

-helen

Leave a comment

As per usual this post is late, but in the year 2026, doing anything beyond just surviving, to me, is winning. So, let me talk about my favorite five short story collections I read last year.

It was really hard choosing five because I really loved six, but “top six” just doesn’t seem to roll off the tongue. I’ll post my honorable mentions at some point, but until then here are my top five that are really interchangeable in terms of ranking.

Shoko’s Smile by Choi Eunyoung, translated by Sung Ryu is a collection of short stories about the lives of ordinary South Korean women. The beauty of this collection is how beautifully the author captures the everyday, small moments that seem to reverberate throughout these women’s lives, leading to tremendous consequences. The stories focus on the personal and intimate while set against political and historical events that affected the nation deeply.

I’m writing my full review for this to talk about during #ManseMarch, but please know that this one is practically a near-perfect collection in my eyes.

Number four is one of the last books I read in 2025 and proved to be one of my absolute favorites. God-Disease by An Chang-Joon caught me by surprise. I was expecting speculative, but I wasn’t expecting the exploration of nuanced and complex spaces that exist in the “in-between” for the Korean diaspora, never quite feeling like here or there.

The title story alone should be read by anyone who enjoys speculative writing. And, yes, I will also be writing my full review for this for #ManseMarch so stay tuned. In th meantime, pick this up.

Coming in at number three is a book I only found out about and read because it was longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize. And books like Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda, translated by Heather Cleary and Julia Sanches is the reason why I follow the Booker Prizes. I’ve always wanted to read the longlist, even before I started by “book influencer” journey, but I have yet to complete the list. Maybe 2026 will be my year? But, I digress…

This collection focuses on the femicide and violence against women in Mexico, but can be easily applied to women worldwide. There is a lot of violence in these pages, but damn, there is a lot of violence against women in the world. So, I’m glad this book exists. If you are a woman, or know a woman in your life, or have come from a woman, read this book.

My full review can be found here.

Ed Park’s Same Bed, Different Dreams was one of my favorite books I read in 2024. So when I heard his collection of stories was coming out, I was ecstatic. And if you are a fan of his writing, like I am, you’ll love this one. To be completely honest, when I started reading An Oral History of Atlantis, I struggled with it—just like I struggled with SBDD. I was trying to make sense of it all, but I remembered my experience with SBDD and just let go. So, I did. And after I did, I laughed my ass off with this one.

I wrote a review for this for Reactor Mag, but it doesn’t really do this book justice. It’s one that you have to experience yourself because your mileage may vary here. And my mileage took me to my past, to the future, and to some middle-of-nowhere island with many women named Tina (IYKYK). It was a wild ride and I loved it.

My favorite short story collection of 2025 is Bluebeard’s First Wife by Ha Seong-Nan, translated by Janet Hong, which wasn’t a surprise to me. I loved Ha’s Flowers of Mold and have been meaning to read this collection as well for some time. And I’m so glad I did because this collection just solidified the suspicion I had—that she is a master at painting complex characters within the small canvas of a short story. No easy feat.

In this collection, Ha focuses on the lives of ordinary people in the midst of unfortunate to tragic situations and does so with an eerie and melancholic tone that left me feeling unsettled. I thought every single collection in this story was strong and impactful. I can’t wait to share my full review for this for, you guessed it, #ManseMarch.

I feel like short story collections can be a hit or miss, understandably so. Crafting a short story means the each word, sentence, an essentially each choice made by the author must be intentional and matter. I felt these five showcased the not only that skill, but each author’s voice and perspective shone as well. If you don’t usually like short story collections for whatever reasons, I urge you to pick one of these up and see how they fare for you.

Have you read any of these? What were your thoughts?

Until next time,

helen

I’ve been meaning to post this since last week, but as you all know it’s been a hell of a insane time in the world right now. It’s the last day of January so we are still technically in the same month, so I call this a win. There’s been some really exciting books written by authors from the Asia continent or thePacific Islands that came out in January. Below are the ones I have on my to-be-read pile. And per usual, the full is at the end.

Call me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo is a re-imagining of Herman Melville’s classic, Moby Dick with a modern feminist twist. I haven’t read Moby Dick since high school and it wasn’t until I read North Sun by Ethan Rutherford, a dark book about whaling, exploitation, and hyper-masculinity, did I think I needed to revisit it. North Sun was one of my favorite fiction books I read in 2025. It was a surprise. Now, another whaling book, a remixed version of a classic at that, is here and I am so intrigued.

Author of Winter in Sokcho and The Pachinko Parlour, Elisa Shua Dusapin’s new novel, The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins, is about a woman named Agatha who returns home to the French countryside after fifteen years due to her father’s death. Her and her younger sister start the emotionally and physically arduous task of clearing out their childhood home. I love no-plot, all-vibes novels, especially ones that explore the complicated dynamics of a family. And this one seems to be exactly that.

If you don’t know already, I am an absolute sucker for Korean translated books. They make up most of my reading, and I am always adding more to my list. Two Women Living Together by Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo, translated by Gene Png was a bestselling memoir in Korea that was co-written by two best friends who decide to live together than alone as they find themselves single in their 40s. The patriarchal nature of Korean culture and history has always pushed marriage as a given for women, so this memoir immediately piqued my interest.

Discipline by Larissa Pham is about a woman named Christine who wrote a revenge fantasy book about her former painting professor and their brief affair, which derailed her career as a visual artist. While she is on her book tour, her old professor resurfaces back in her life. I’ve seen some mixed reviews for this, but I still remain fascinated. I assume this book may be triggering, but I also assume it will read like a thriller with what I hope is a satisfying ending. I might start this one next.

Do any of these catch your eye?

Here is the full list of books that came out this month that I’m aware of (with affiliate links for US releases):

• Birthstones in the Province of Mercy by Bo Hee Moon (out 1/6)

• Call Me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo (out 1/6)

• The Swan’s Daughter: A Possibly Doomed Love Story by Roshani Chokshi (out 1/6)

• City of Others by Jared Poon (out 1/13)

• A Midnight Pastry Shop Called Hwawoldang by Lee Onhwa, tr. by Slim Jung (out 1/13)

• Fly, Wild Swans by Jung Chang (out 1/13)

• Game Changer by Cindy Ta (out 1/13)

• Kokun: The Girl From the West by Nahoko Uehashi, tr. by Cathy Hirano (out 1/13)

• The Last Of Earth by Deepa Anappara (out 1/13)

• The Moon Without Stars by Chanel Miller (out 1/13)

• The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin, tr. by Aneesa Abbas Higgins (out 1/13)

• The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans by Maya Shankar (out 1/13)

• The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game by C. Thi Nguyen (out 1/13)

• Discipline by Larissa Pham (out 1/20)

• Our Ex’s Wedding by Taleen Voskuni (out 1/20)

• The Elsewhere Express by Samantha Sotto (out 1/20)

• The Poet Empress by Shen Tao (out 1/20)

• Two Women Living Together by Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo, tr. by Gene Png (out 1/20)

• Early Mornings at the Laksa Cafe by Janet Tay (out 1/22 in UK/EU only)

• A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang (out 1/27)

• Between Tea and Tandoori by Vaibhavi Kataria (out 1/27)

• Such a Perfect Family by Nalini Singh (out 1/27)

• Tell-Tale Treats by Jennifer J. Chow (out 1/27)

• When the Museum is Closed by Emi Yagi, tr. by Yuki Tejima (out 1/27)

Until next time. Happy reading.

helen

When I was five I went on a winter cabin trip with my family and four other families—my parents’ friends and their kids. A lot of my childhood memories revolve around this group, and there are many photographs to remind me if I ever forget. Recently, I came across one of me standing with seven other kids next to a snowman we had built. In the photo, I am standing to the left of the snowman in the back with a faint smile on my face, visible enough to not ruin the mood or the picture, but small—an act of defiance to show my parents that I was upset.

I don’t remember much from this trip except for a single memory leading up to this photo. We had all just arrived to the cabin and were getting settled in. It was dark but we were all excited to see and play in the snow. In the living room, the parents were changing their kids into their winter gear. Big puffy jackets were flying out of duffel bags, beanies adorned our heads, scarves and mittens were put on with extra socks on our feet. It was a bit of a frenzy, our excitement buzzed in the air. As my mom was putting on my red beanie and matching red scarf, that is when I saw what my friend, the daughter of my parents’ friends that we spent a lot of time with and the one I was closest to, was wearing.

She had on the cutest matching scarf and mittens I had ever seen. They were red and white with red pom poms and a blue line drawing of an animal’s face. What animal, I don’t remember. It’s hard to tell in the photographs. But I just knew that I had to have them. I immediately asked my mom for something similar. I complained that mine were ugly and so plain. I don’t remember what my mom said, but I assume it’s along the lines of either “we’ll buy it for you later” and “just wear what you have right now”. I remember crying and looking in the mirror by the door and thinking how I hated how ugly and plain I looked, how I never had the pretty clothes other girls had. I remember being ushered outside to “play” with the others while I was still crying. I remember how everything felt so unfair.

Despite how I felt back then, I look back at this memory now as an adult and a mother myself with fondness. I realize now how much my parents were struggling financially at the time, and how much they probably did want to buy me new clothes but couldn’t. I didn’t understand it back then, nor do I think I should have or even would have. Because I was five. It’s understandable that my biggest worry and complaint was wanting what others had: cute clothes, pretty dolls, and other fancy toys. Wondering what yummy snacks I’m going to eat, who I am going to play with, and what toys I was going to play—these were the thoughts that occupied my mind as a five-year-old.

I certainly was not worried about the safety of my parents let alone my own self. I was not concerned with my parents being kidnapped and detained in an unknown place wondering if they were dead or alive. I definitely wasn’t trapped in a car with my dead family members desperately waiting for help while tanks were shooting at me.

Two years ago, on January 29, 2024, the car that Hind Rajab was traveling in with six of her family members was shelled. I tried to summarize what happened but I couldn’t get past that first line. So, let me just quote Omar El Akkad from One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This:

On the second weekend of February 2024, the decomposing body of five-year-old Hind Rajab, whom the Israeli military murdered, is found in a car with her family, next to a burned-out ambulance that was dispatched to rescue her. Later, an independent investigation will find 355 bullet holes in the car Hind was in. But early on, the story is reported in multiple media outlets as though it were a missing-person’s case, as though this child simply walked out of sight and then walked straight out of this life.

She called for help. She had picked up a phone and begged for help. She cried, said she’d wet herself. She was five years old.

What happened to Hind still haunts me. There was a good stretch of time when my own personal life issues consumed my attention and her tragedy, along with the rest of the world’s was far away, but Hind was always there in the back of my mind, lingering, never letting me truly forget. Maybe because I am a mother to young children or maybe because listening to her small voice begging for help has been permanently imprinted onto my psyche, whatever the reason may be, I know that Hind has become a part of me. A part of us. She is all of us.

While Hind’s story has been heard around the world, she is just one of hundreds, no, thousands of children who have been murdered by Israel. And as the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians continue in Gaza, fascism is in full trench-coat-face-mask-wearing-kidnapping-people-executing-American-citizens-in-broad-daylight effect here in the U.S. This isn’t a dystopian novel. This is real life. And I do not understand how every day citizens, humans who consider themselves good people, godly people, who pray before meals, who teach their kids about being kind are not more upset about this.

Last Tuesday, ICE agents detained five-year-old Liam Ramos when he returned home from preschool. They ambushed him and his father in the driveway, and took Liam out of the car and told him to knock on their front door, using him as bait to see if anyone else was home. Another adult who was at the house pleaded to leave Liam in their care, but was denied.

I wept when I saw this photo. I wailed out loud and deeply because how could I not when I immediately pictured him as my own son. How could I not when I imagine how terrified he must’ve been. How scared any five-year-old would have been being separated from his parents and taken away by men in masks with guns. How much anguish his parents must’ve felt and still feel. Are you not outraged?

Before Liam, there was six-year-old Yuanxin who was separated from his father during a scheduled routine ICE appointment when his father was detained. His whereabouts was unknown for some time until the two were deported back to China in late December 2025. Yuanxin is not Brown. He is Chinese. So, the thinking for many in the Asian community that this cannot happen to us is simply not true and extremely harmful.

I focus on children in this post because children are usually the common denominator in our collective moral consciousness. Most of us can agree that children are innocent. And I say most because this requires the ability to see others, even children, who are different from us as humans. I understand this is hard for some, especially when you’ve been indoctrinated from a young age to view certain groups of people as less than humans. I focus on children in hopes of appealing to basic human decency but what is happening in our streets to adults, to parents, to sons and daughters, to community members, to asylum seekers, to tax-paying workers, to neighbors should be alarming to every single person living in American right now. It is absolutely terrifying and infuriating, and it demands our voice and action.

I write all of this with anger but also with care because, like many of you, I have felt helpless and numb. I’ve felt stuck and in need of a mental and emotional break from everything that is happening. That is my privilege. It is my privilege to be able to reset and rest, to be able to turn off my phone, to focus on my children and my livelihood, to be able to tune out what is happening in the world. If that is you, I understand. But I am here to tell you it’s time. It is our time to say something, do something, to model what we teach our kids: help those in need and uphold what is right.

If you are at a loss of what to do, please check out this post by Leona Waller on what you can do. The cliff notes version is:

1. Call your senators. Use 5calls.org to find who your senators are, their contact information, and a script on what to say.

2. Donate to organizations helping immigrants and ICE detainees. Donate whatever you can, even just $5 helps.

3. Stop supporting and buying from organizations that support ICE. This includes Home Depot (allowing ICE roam patrol their stores and parking lots), Target (succumbed to the fascist demands of this Trump administration and not to mention their headquarters is in Minneapolis and have been silent about it all), Hilton Hotels (houses ICE agents), to name a few. You can also add Amazon to this list.

My parents never did buy me the cute matching scarf and mittens I had so wanted on that trip. But they did buy, thrift, and borrow other things I needed in order to bring me joy, keep me healthy, and raise me the best way they knew how. My childhood was not perfect, nor were my parents. In fact, a lot of it was toxic, but they raised me to be kind and to help others. While they did not radicalize me, my beliefs and actions today are a direct consequence of my upbringing. They showed me how people can change, build and repair, and support those in need. They helped me see that my mere existence is radical. When my grandparents and ancestors lived through colonialism, war, poverty, and authoritarianism, my birth and existence act as resistance and survival of that resistance. I am blessed and fortunate to be here. And I want to use this life to do something that matters.

Small acts are okay. They matter.

I will cry and yell. And then I will call my senators, and speak to my local community, my colleagues, my friends and family to say THIS IS NOT NORMAL. I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS.

Take care of yourself and others. And if you need someone to talk to, please reach out.

Until next time,

helen

We are halfway of January 2026 so seems like the perfect time to talk about my favorite books of 2025. I already posted this on my Instagram and TikTok (videos 1 and 2), but of course this deserves a substack piece because I will use any and all platforms I have to talk about these books.

I used to read a lot more nonfiction before I started my Bookstagram, and it seems that I’m slowly getting my groove and craving back for it—something I want to continue for 2026. Last year was a good reading year for me in terms of nonfiction books because most of what I read were great. My top ten is below, which by the way was difficult to rank especially #2 - #5. My number one spot was easy (Chee FTW). It was the rest that was hard as I felt like I was just splitting hairs, and depending on my mood my rankings would differ.

Nonetheless, this is the final list that I’ve committed to and no matter what ranking these books are at, I would highly recommend any and all of them.

Coming in at number ten is No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson by Gardiner Harris, a detailed account of the decades-long history of corruption and illegal practices of one of America’s most trusted pharmaceutical companies. This book absolutely enraged me, but it was also so incredibly informative. We’ve all been familiar with the trouble J&J has been in over the years, but the public has been deeply misinformed and lied to about the depth of their lies and deception. This book not only exposes the truth about J&J, but also sheds a light on the mistakes and outright malfeasance of the FDA. I cannot stress enough how important this book is. It should be read every single person living in America.

If you want a glimpse of what is discussed in the book, I outlined ten facts that I learned from this book on my Instagram post.

Here’s a final quote I will leave you with:

Procrit, Risperdal, and Duragesic alone helped cause three distinct and enduring drug crises that have contributed to the deaths of as many as two million people and counting.

Number nine is also an investigative journalism piece that was equally detailed as it was devastating. A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children by Haley Cohen Gilliland is about the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo—the grandmothers who marched, protested, and fought to bring back their kidnapped children and stolen grandchildren during Argentina’s dictatorship. Reading this book in 2025 as both immigrants and American citizens are being kidnapped, trafficked, assaulted, and murdered by ICE under the direction of this administration was..surreal. What I was reading and what I was witnessing felt like fiction, something out of a dystopian novel or a history book, a fever dream I was waiting to wake from.

History is repeating itself. It’s in the books. Read them. Read this one. It’s incredibly well-researched. I am sure you’ll find this book valuable.

Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls is a graphic memoir that has been on my shelf since it came out in 2024 and I am kicking myself for not reading it sooner. Though a year late, I can say that no matter when I would have read this book, it would have been a favorite. Hulls takes on the monumental task of excavating her family’s history while exploring generational trauma against the backdrop of the Sino-Japanese War and Maoist China. She explores her relationships with her mother and grandmother, and their relationship to one another, making sense of it all within the context of her upbringing. Hulls is incredibly vulnerable and open as she begins her journey and she brings us along like a trusted friend. The art, the words, the structure—all of it was absolutely phenomenal.

As a mother, I can only imagine how painful it is to lose a child and reading about such experiences devastate and deplete me. That is why I was hesitant to pick up Yiyun Li’s Things in Nature Merely Grow, a book about the author’s loss of her son, James. But after learning that this book is a different perspective on loss—the “thinking” behind it vs. the “feeling” of it—I decided to pick it up and I can say, I am better for it. As an emotionally-driven person, I feel first and think later, so this approach to grief and coping with loss was a new perspective that I found valuable. This is not your typical book on mourning, but testament of her “radical acceptance” of her son’s death.

Letters from Gaza edited by Mohammed Al-Zaqzooq and Mahmoud Alshaer is a collection of short works by Gazan writers who have been displaced time and time again. The book is short, some works only a page or two, but the content is heavy. Straight from the source, we hear firsthand experiences of what life was like for these Gazans. And as you already know and, if you don’t, one can imagine, it has been and still is absolutely terrifying and dehumanizing. We can’t stop talking about Palestine. Please read this. It’s urgent now more than ever. I’m glad I read it and I think you should too.

Number five is the National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad, a memoir blended with criticisms on Western imperialism and the West’s complicity to the genocide and ethnic cleansing happening in Gaza. The writing is beautiful and the criticisms are sharp, all informed by the author’s lived experience as a Egyptian-Canadian-American journalist. I’ve read some critiques of this book that El Akkad is using the genocide of Palestinians to market his memoir, especially because he is not Palestinian. I disagree with this take. I thought his personal experiences added the necessary nuances to his perspective on Gaza and the Western Empire. I loved the book for capturing so much of what I’ve felt and thought as a person living in the West and under the systems of Empire who has been witnessing what is happening in Gaza. If you are outraged, read this. In fact, this should be required reading for any person living in the West.

As a first-gen K-Pop fan and a Korean-American, there was so much in I’ll Love You Forever: Notes from a K-Pop Fan by Giaae Kwon that resonated with me. This essay collection weaves Kwon’s personal life with her decades-long love-affair with K-Pop. And while this book is about K-Pop, it’s also much more than that. Kwon writes with a vulnerability and awareness that is refreshing. If you don’t listen to K-Pop or know nothing about it, don’t let that deter you from picking this up. It’s a necessary and alternate perspective to the Korean-American experience. I loved it.

content warning: rape, incest, child sexual assault

Third on the list is a book that I found so distressing and captivating I read it twice, and that is Sad Tiger by Niege Sinno, translated by Natasha Lehrer. I first listened to this as an audiobook and was completely enraptured (and horrified). I could not stop listening. When I received my physical copy, I immediately opened it and read it again. Sinno was raped by her stepfather for years, and she recounts her experience in this book. It was very difficult to read. But what set this memoir apart from others was the author’s exploration, critique, and thoughtful engagement with other literary works that talk about rape, child sexual assault, or incest (Lolita, for example) as a survivor and writer. I thought Sinno’s approach to her trauma in the execution of this book—her writing, the style, the structure, the choices of other literary works—was unique and beautifully done. If the content warnings do not trigger you, I urge you to pick this up. One of the best books I read in 2025.

Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha is a book that most students of literature, especially Asian American literature, will recognize. It’s a book that I’ve come across during my time in school and again and again on recommendations list from authors I’ve admired. It’s a book I knew I wanted to read but always felt intimidated by, but one I finally read last year. Twice. Comprised of photographs, calligraphy, prose and poetry that defy logic, this book was challenging to read. But as I read and witnessed Cha explore and interpret her life as a Korean-American woman through this book, I was met with an intense emotional reaction.

Yes, I read this book twice last year and I still don’t understand everything (I did not expect to). But, I know that I will spend the rest of my life reading this over and over again until I get close. I can’t wait to revisit this one again.

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee is a beloved book. It’s easy to see why. Chee’s writing is beautiful and there is a lot to relate and love in here for a wide range of audience. Last year, I decided to be more focused with my writing, and because of that I decided to reread this book with that newfound intention. That shift resulted in a profound reading experience that led me to reread this book, twice. First and foremost, there was and is always the emotional resonance, a kinship I feel to a writer who shares my heritage. But with Chee, it’s really the way he writes. His words seem… alive. They pull and push me in ways that are surprising and moving and really just makes me wonder. When I read this book, I grow curious about what a writer’s life, my writer’s life would look like. While I don’t think I can ever be like a writer like him (nor do I want to because I’m old enough and gone through enhough therapy to know that my voice is mine, and just as important), when I read this book I grow curious about what my honest and practiced writing could look like. This is one of the books that I pick up and just hold in my hands whenever I feel stuck in my writing or have doubts about writing at all. Truly, one of my favorite books of all-time.

There seems to be a recurring theme with my top three favorite nonfiction books of 2025: I’ve read all of them twice last year. And as someone who rarely rereads, this stood out to me. It told me that rereads are valuable and each experience can elicit a different reaction. And if you’ve made it this far, let this be a sign to you to pick up an old favorite and reread it. You might find something new or something old that you needed to be reminded of.

If you’ve read any of these, let me know what you thought.

Until next time,

helen

This post is a month late because it’s January and here I am talking about books that came out in December, but it is what it is. Now that my kids are back in school, I have more time to dedicate to writing, reading, and talking about books. December was a slow month in term so new releases, but there were two that caught my eye that I’m really excited to read.

The Lord by Soraya Antonius takes place in Palestine during the 1936 Arab Revolt and is about a young man name Tareq who seems to be performing Christ-like miracles. He leaves school to travel and perform his tricks, each performance becoming more defiant against British rule. The book shows us a glimpse into Palestinian life before and leading up to the Nakba, as well commentary about life under colonial rule. A timely and important read that I’m desperate to read. While many Americans are enraged with what’s happening in the U.S. right now (and rightfully so), what’s happening here is connected to what’s happened in the past and what’s been happening not just in Palestine, but all around the world. I’ll be continuing to read about Palestine and books by Palestinian authors, and this is at the top of my list.

Hwang Bo-Reum is the author of the international bestseller Welcome to Hyunam-dong Bookshop and she is back with a nonfiction book about a topic I can absolutely relate to: reading. In this book, she provides 53 ways to get closer to books and reading. If you’re a reader or want to read more, this one seems like a great one to pick up. I really enjoyed her fiction book, so I’m excited to read Every Day I Read.

Are either of these on your radar?

Here is the full list of books that came out this month that I’m aware of (with affiliate links for US releases):

• Dawn of the Firebird by Sarah Mughal Rana (out 12/2)

• Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books by Hwang Bo-Reum, tr. by Shanna Tan (out 12/2)

• The Lord by Soraya Antonius (out 12/2)

• Crime Rangoon by Vivien Chien (out 12/30)

• Leave a comment

  Thanks for reading Manse! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Happy new year, friends. It’s 2026 and while I am so glad 2025 is over, I am not ready to start this year. I am still recovering from the last two weeks of 2025, which I spent with my two children attending all the holiday gatherings around town.

My kids are young, they are four years old. I have twins and everyone who hears that loves to mention how lucky I am because I got one of each (a boy and a girl). While I do consider myself very lucky, especially given my fertility journey and their traumatic birth (a story for another time, an essay in the works actually), I didn’t care about their gender. I just wanted a healthy baby. To my surprise, I got two. Usually with twins, you don’t carry them full term. At my 32-week check-up, my doctor and I talked about scheduling a c-section when I was 37 weeks. I never made it. I had an emergency c-section the very next day. Despite the drama and trauma of their birth, my kids are healthy, rambunctious, and what you would call “thriving”. (I use quotations here because WTF is considered “thriving” in today’s state of the world.) I am lucky. I am grateful. I love my children more than anything and anyone in this entire universe.

But, damn, the past two weeks were hard.

The holiday season can be and is difficult for many people, kids or not, for a variety of reasons. For me, I am an extroverted people-pleasing eldest daughter, so I shine during the holidays. Or, at least I used to. There was a point in my life when I would put up Christmas decorations right after Thanksgiving; mail holiday cards with a heartfelt handwritten note; order gifts for the entire family, friends, and coworkers in advance; have them all wrapped with extravagant beautiful bows I created and tied myself; arrange holiday plans for my immediate family, extended family, and friends including booking restaurant reservations and vacations that would fall all neatly on subsequent days because I would plan out every day of my holiday break. After I became a parent, though, that all changed. Gifts were bought last-minute, wrapped sloppily in brown butcher paper, and if I considered you a close friend, I sent a middle-of-the-night text sending you a generic holiday greeting. So now, for me, the holiday season is a reminder of all the little, and sometimes big, ways I am failing.

When I scroll through social media and see beautiful families in their best clothes in the best lighting on a beach, or a park, or a mountain trail, spinning, throwing leaves, jumping, smiling, laughing, making silly faces with beautifully written captions about what the family accomplished and endured the past year; I smile. I smile to hide the tightness in my throat and the sting in my eyes. I smile to distract from the smell of my unwashed hair, the stain of last night’s dinner on my pajamas, the piles of laundry on the floor, the dirty dishes in the sink, the toys that seem to double and reappear overnight no matter how many goddamn times I pick them up. I smile, hoping you do not smell my desperation of wanting.

I know this is all normal. I know it is. I also know what I see on social media is a well-curated moment. But, the want, my want, is real. My wanting of a semblance of a normal life is palpable, the air is thick with it. It travels with me. As I made plans over the winter break, I saw myself pretend everything is okay. I took the kids for a sleepover at my parent’s house, planned multiple play dates, went to my in-laws, my brother’s, my cousin’s, my other in-laws. I planned outing after outing because if I could not order gifts in time (I used Amazon once because I was so desperate) or send out Christmas cards (let’s be real, even writing any kind of card at all has disappeared from my priority list), I could and would plan fun things to do with my kids. That is how I can show that I am a good mother, that I was okay, that everything was fine. My wanting always hanging over me.

So, I planned and went out and did all the things. I put on a happy but not too happy face because social interaction requires a certain façade of “life is hard but I’m grateful” stance for others to find you relatable, and drove hundreds of miles around Southern California with my kids, all in the name of love and the holiday spirit.

You’re doing too much, he said. My husband had warned me. He did. It was clear I was burning out, but I refused to admit defeat. Until I found myself screaming at the top of my lungs at my two young children over bedtime. My kids, who had napped earlier that day and had a “special treat” (our term for anything sweet or sugary) for dessert were bundles of energy. “Bouncing off the walls” is a common figurative saying amongst parents with young children, and this time, it was literal. Trying to jump off the walls to do flips on their beds while I, at first sternly, then loudly, then at an octave only the neighborhood dogs could hear yelled at them to stop and GO TO FUCKING SLEEP!!!!!!! And I couldn’t stop. I yelled and yelled and yelled. My kids sat there, stunned. My husband rushed in to figure out what happened within the last ten minutes he was gone taking our dog out. After my intense, over-the-top, completely unwarranted overreaction, I ran into my closet and wept.

I tried to calm down, but my rage was so overwhelming I was having a hard time just to breathe. My nerves were shot. I was exhausted. I could not think or see straight. I was gasping for air with snot and spit spilling out of me in the dark on the floor of my closet mouthing soundless: WHAT THE FUCK WAS WRONG WITH ME.

In hindsight, there were a lot of things that contributed and triggered this “breakdown” that had nothing but also everything to do with my kids. I’ve been worried about our finances, family health, and my job—all issues I pretended didn’t exist during my performance at a “normal” life. If there was one time when I had to put on a show, it was now. I had to show everyone and myself that I was not struggling to make ends meet, that I was not unhappy at my job, that I definitely knew how to parent my children while trying to re-parent myself, that I did not hate who I became to be: a middle-aged ahjumma who compares her life with others and who can’t appreciate what she has.

Four years into parenthood and I am still learning how to navigate this enormous responsibility and privilege of raising my beautiful children while unlearning a lot of toxic and harmful ways I was parented and taught by those around me. But, four years in, I now know that I can’t pretend everything is fine when it’s not, that I can’t try to “keep up with the Joneses” at the cost of my mental and physical health. Something has to give. And something had. This time, it was my nerves, a little bit of my sanity, and my biggest regret, my relationship with my children.

Luckily, therapy taught me to repair and notice. After I calmed down and regulated myself (which took some time, honestly), I immediately sought to repair what I had done. I also took time to notice, observe, and question what happened and what’s been happening. While I will always be the extroverted, social person that I am, I now know that my mental and emotional capacity for social interactions and obligations are not what they used to be. I also know that I need to continue to do the work on deconstructing why I feel the need to do all things I need to do. As someone who is still processing the last two weeks, the last four years, the last almost forty-three years of my life, I don’t have a neat resolution or profound revelation to close this experience with. And that’s okay. It’s okay to be a work in progress.

There are times I feel extremely lucky. But at the same time, I feel intense rage, shame, and guilt. It’s a constant cycle. Rinse and repeat. I’m sure many of you can relate.

And that’s okay. I’m okay. I’ll be okay.

Until next time,

helen

Subscribe now

I first came across Yun Ko-Eun when I read her climate fiction, Disaster Tourist, back in 2020 when it was released. I was pleasantly surprised by her satirical commentary on climate change and environmental tourism. That book was slim but wild—it’s one I really enjoyed and recommend often.

Art on Fire is a very different book but has similar satirical and witty tone with Disaster Tourist specifically around the commentary for climate change and public consumption. In Disaster Tourist, Yun explores the fascination, exploitation and ultimately, destruction of nations existing on the periphery of the imperial core due to ecotourism and the public’s role as complicit spectators and tourists. In Art on Fire, she both expands and narrows in on the idea of public consumption and engagement through an artist and her patron.

An Yiji makes ends meet by working as a food delivery person. She doesn’t own a car, so she delivers food by foot. She’s long abandoned her dreams of making a living as an artist, so when she is recruited and accepted into an all-expenses paid artist’s residency at the Robert Foundation in Palm Springs, she knows it is an opportunity she cannot pass up. Still, she is apprehensive. After all, the head and patron of the foundation is a discerning and eccentric photographer who just happens to be a dog, a papillon named Robert. She’s also uneasy about the fact that one of her works, chosen by Robert, will be incinerated at the end of her residency per the rules of the Foundation. But knowing this residency has launched the careers of many famous artists, she sees no other option but to accept.

When she lands in Los Angeles, the city and surrounding areas are ravaged by wildfires—a reality many of us Angelenos are familiar with. She ends up at a run down hotel in Hollywood as she waits for word from the Foundation on further directions on how to get to Palm Springs. There, tired of waiting around and the lack of communication from the Foundation, she finds her own ride to Palm Springs.

But once she’s there, she is treated like an “uninvited guest” and basically scolded for finding her own way. Things fare better at her first dinner with Robert, though she has to communicate with him through multiple interpreters including a black box.

Our conversation was made possible by four separate stages of translation: Robert → black box → Danny → English-English interpreter → English-Korean interpreter → me. Even if I spoke English completely fluently, Sam later told me, they would have hired an interpreter. Interpreters considered more than just the flow of language; they provided a certain security. For safety reasons, Robert’s words passed through several checkpoints before reaching me. If I were a native English speaker, that would have removed only one of the checkpoints. Multiple stops existed between artist and patron.

As you can imagine, the multiple levels of translations can and do lead to many misinterpretations, which become a recurring frustration for the artist. But dismay for the main character proved to be a delight for me as a reader as these interactions acted as an obvious but humorous reminder of the absurdity of it all—that the secluded and exclusive art world is at the beck and call of a dog.

Many of the interpretations are decided on what words Robert likes best, regardless of the original intent, as with all the other decisions made at the Foundation. From their shared, hours-long meals to the random timing of their walks, and of course, the cruel and final decision of which artwork must burn, Robert’s reign runs wide and deep. This dog dictatorship as a critique of the elitist art world was both brilliant and hilarious in its explicitness and surrealism. And with the most important and lauded artwork being a work of literal shit, Yun reminds us that as the art world deliberately cultivates an exclusivity to uphold the status quo they will celebrate even feces if it means they remain in the realm of power. And the public have and always will remain complicit and believe unquestioningly.

Yun’s commentary on cultural elitism of the art world is magnified when set against the ravages of climate change. As temperatures hit record-breaking heat in Los Angeles and wildfires rage on outside, the Robert Foundation compound uses “two thousand tons of water each day” and still insists that An Yiji’s artwork must burn—a hypocrisy familiar with the rich. The way Yun poses nature and art, and how they impact one another is really interesting, especially when set against capitalism as driving force. While nature usually serves as inspiration for art, in Art of Fire it also plays a role as a barrier to the public consumption and commodification of art.

A lot happens in this book with a lot of themes being explored, and it’s done with humor and wit. I did struggle with the pace in the middle—like the main character, I was also bored with Robert’s endless monologues and dinners, which I gather was precisely the point—and wanted more focus look at critique of the intersectionality of cultural elitism and climate change. Still, similar to Disaster Tourist, I thought this was a very unique premise and overall, a really entertaining read. And I am continually impressed with the seamless translation of Lizzie Buehler. I would definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys surrealist fiction, especially to those who want to explore more Korean translated books.

Happy reading,

helen

Leave a comment

Happy November, friends. We are already thriteen days in and so much has happened in the first week of November, ranging from the great (Mandani’s win) to the aggravating (eight spineless Dems who broke party line). And while this post is super late, new books are always a reason to celebrate, so I’m back with new books that are coming out this month by authors who are from the entire continent of Asia or the Pacific Islands. As per usual, you’ll find the books I’m most excited about below.

Books written by Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander authors are not nearly as published as much as they should be, and why I am always looking to read more books by Native Hawaiian and indigenous Pacific Islander authors. So, when I saw Bitter Over Sweet by Melissa Llanes Brownlee, a native Hawaiian author, I had to put it on my list. This collection of short stories feature native Hawaiian women surviving life on the island under the burdens of tourism, poverty and abuse. So often we, mainlanders and tourists, picture Hawaii as paradise. I love that this book essentially pulls back the curtain to highlight real Hawaiian stories, and not just what is sold to us in a travel magazine.

Tareq Baconi is a queer Palestinian scholar and his new memoir, Fire in Every Direction, spans decades and continents as he revisits his own childhood as well as his family’s history as they flee form their homeland of Palestine to Lebanon and then to Jordan. A book that reckons with his queer and Palestinian identity, this one feels urgent and necessary more than ever.

The Bridegroom Was a Dog by Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani is a collection of three short stories that, if you didn’t already deduce from the title, are weird and fantastical. The title story, which won the author the highest literary award in Japan, is about a princess who is promised to marry a dog as a reward for the dog licking her bottom clean. The other two stories are just as, if not more, bizarre—one is about a mail order bride with a not-so-human husband who is also missing one of her heels; and the other is about a woman who pretends to be a writer who is writing about the Gotthard Railway and is fascinated with tunnels. I love weird books, so I’m really excited about this one.

Which November releases are you most excited for?

Here is the full list of books that came out this month that I’m aware of (with affiliate links for US releases):

• Bitter Over Sweet by Melissa Llanes Brownlee (out 11/4)

• Coldwire by Chloe Gong (out 11/4)

• Fire in Every Direction by Tareq Baconi (out 11/4)

• The Body Digital: A Brief History of Humans and Machines by Vanessa Chang (out 11/4)

• With Friends Like These by Alissa Lee (out 11/4)

• The Moon Glow Bookshop by Dongwon Seo, translated by Shanna Tan (out 11/6 in UK only)

• The Amberglow Candy Store by Hiyoko Kurisu, tr. by Matt Treyvaud (out 11/11)

• Lucky Seed by Justinian Huang (out 11/11)

• Next Time Will Be Our Turn by Jesse Q. Sutanto (out 11/11)

• Petty Lies by Sulmi Bak, translated by Sarah Lyo (out 11/11)

• You Had Me at Hello World by Rona Wong (out 11/11)

• A Midnight Pastry Shop Called Hwawoldang by Lee Onhwa, tr. by Slin Jung (out 11/13 in UK/Europe, out Jan 2026 in US)

• I’ll Find You Where the Timeline Ends by Kylie Lee Baker (out 11/18)

• Wheel of Wrath by A.A. Vora (out 11/18)

• Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino (out 11/25)

• The Bridegroom Was a Dog by Yoko Tawada, tr. by Margaret Mitsutani (out 11/25)

Leave a comment

I am in first grade—I know this because it was the only grade I went to a private school—and instead of my usual school uniform, I am wearing my hanbok, specifically the one I wear for my Korean traditional dance performances. I am standing, along with the other children, outside in an all-school assembly. I don’t remember much about the actual assembly, but I do remember staring at the other children and their costumes. Ghosts. Witches. Pumpkins. Superheroes. Princesses. And then there was me in a brightly colored and oddly-shaped dress, somehow out-of-place and unnerving even amongst the monsters usually reserved for our wildest imagination, nightmares and all.

The realization that my costume wasn’t a real costume was both slow and sudden. Slow in that the dawning of this recognition could be seen dancing on my face, each turn revealing the truth that I was the only one who wasn’t pretending to be someone else. And sudden in that I immediately took this opportunity to distance myself from my hanbok, in my mind this garment was no longer a part of who I was but only what I wore, what I performed in. I, too, could pretend. The shift was easy and, at the time, imperceptible.

The director of the Korean traditional dance team constantly told my mother how talented I was. How I should continue to dance as I got older. Sometimes, as she said this, she would grip my hands in her hands with such strength she would leave marks, evidence of her sincerity. My hands in hers, but her eyes on my mother’s. Whether it was my talent she was after or my mother’s money, I do not know. But regardless whether her declarations were true or not, I remember feeling like I was good at what I did. I practiced and practiced, and I genuinely enjoyed performing. Until I didn’t. As is usually the case with any interest that of a child’s, though this would become a common recurrence in my life, I probably wanted to do other things and be with my friends. None of my school friends were part of this world, and I wasn’t close to the other girls on the dance team. In fact, I remember the older girls purposely being nice to the other younger girls and icing me out. I fear my need to be liked was too palpable for them, a feeling I understand too well now—that desperation repels.

On that day of the Halloween assembly, I decided I could pretend. I could pretend and perform. Just like I had in front of the audiences of the concerts and parades I danced in, I could also easily perform for my school. The school with students who were very white. To my younger self’s credit, I wasn’t particularly heartbroken about it. I didn’t even bat an eye. It was understood, as keen as children can be, that this is what I had to do. As teachers and students came up to me and asked what I was, I smiled and “performed”.

This is what we wear in Korea. It’s called a hanbok. I dance in it. I also have fans and drums!

It was probably one of the first instances in my life where I performed a part of my identity for a white audience. I know that sounds a bit grim and over-reaching for a childhood memory, but now as a 42 year-old mom, these are the realizations I have on a daily basis. It seems that as I parent my children, I am also parenting my inner child as well.

In my memory, whether I am filling in the blanks with my flawed assumptions or by actual recollection, I picture my mom frantically trying to figure out a last-minute costume because she realizes it is Halloween and my school has requested the kids attend school in costume. I picture her dressing me in the hanbok, applying her blue eye shadow and red lipstick on me, and pulling my hair tight in a low bun adorned on top with a jokduri—a traditional Korean crown usually worn for special occasions. I imagine her giving me a weak but encouraging smile, hoping I wouldn’t complain too much, that I would give her some grace because she worked 12 hours on her feet all day, all week and completely forgot to get me a real American costume. And I do. Of course, I do. Because I am the eldest daughter, I see the lines creasing my mother’s brow and hear the desperation in her voice. I acquiesce.

Since my own children turned into very opinionated preschoolers, they have had demands and this is the first Halloween they requested specific costumes. I now find my own self frantically trying to figure out their last-minute costumes. Minds, feelings, and alliances change. No more Bluey, definitely K-pop Demon Hunters. Maybe T-Rex. Yes to fake swords. And absolutely nothing that is scratchy or scary. Hanboks were obviously not an option.

This morning, I change my daughter out of her pink pajamas to a blue Cinderella dress. She wanted to be a princess for her school’s Halloween party. (She is saving her Rumi from K-pop Demon Hunters costume for tomorrow’s trick-or-treating with her bestie and cousin.) As I’m doing her hair, I pick out a couple of barrette options to use. My heart is set on the one with white pearls and gems to match her dress. But she has other plans. She wants to wear the one with the purple and yellow flowers. I try to convince her to wear the one I picked because it matches the dress better. In my mind, I need to accessorize her so she looks like the part, especially because we don’t have a crown or any other princess-like accessories.. She cries. I try again. I can feel myself becoming mean, a bully, almost threatening her to wear the barrette I want her to wear. I walk away frustrated, thinking to myself, can’t she see the lines in my brow, the desperation in my voice? Can’t she see this is the better choice? Doesn’t she understand I’m doing this for her?

And if she did, then what? What what what…

What am I doing?

I realize, under the guise of “doing this for her”, I was projecting my own insecurities and really just doing it for me. Not her. Desperate to heal a wounded part of my younger self around feeling inadequate especially around this holiday, I was asking my daughter to change her desires and feelings… for me. Essentially, I was asking her to perform for me and on my behalf.

I recognized what I am doing. I decided today will not be the day she has to perform for me or anyone else. Today she can wear her blue dress with her purple and yellow barrette because she wants to, and not because she has to, which is what she would’ve felt if I forced her to wear my barrette choice.

Me letting my daughter wear the barrette she wanted today was not a big revelation or a celebratory event. It was an easy choice for me as it would’ve been for any parent. It was a small moment, absolutely insignificant in the grand scheme of things. As I go deeper in my “self” work, I find many of these trivial moments of my life that are deeply entangled with my childhood, and in turn with my mother and her childhood. It is the recognition of this entanglement that I am proud of, not the compliance of the barrette. For so long, I could not see through the trees nor understand that what lay underneath—roots of my heritage and identity—was what anchored me against storm after storm. Sometimes, I still just see knots that need clearing, roots that removing so I can start anew. But, today was not that day. Today, I had a glimmer of clarity. Today I saw the forest.

I know my mother would’ve gladly given me all the costumes and dresses that I asked for, if she could. And I don’t blame her or my dad for putting me in a hanbok as a costume, a relatively common experience amongst diaspora children. I understand they did the best they could. I also know her parenting experience and my parenting experience are different just like my childhood and my daughter’s childhood will be different.

But I’m certain, and I say this with joy, that the hanbok was and continue to be a cornerstone in each of our lives—as it was for my halmoni, my umma, and me, I hope it will be for my daughter as well. To the other students at the Halloween assembly, my hanbok was another ethnic costume, but for me, it was much more than that. It is memory and history and identity. Every significant moment in my life, I wore a hanbok. I wore one for my dohl, my first birthday. I wore it for every New Year’s Day as a child when we would all meet at my keun appa’s house to celebrate the new year. I wore one to my maternal grandparents’ 70th birthday in Korea, finally seeing them after a decade of separation. I wore one on my wedding day for paebaek, a Korean wedding ceremony, and again for my own childrens’ dohl. And I will continue to wear it every chance I get.

And as my daughter, in her Rumi costume, is singing all the songs from K-pop Demon Hunters while trick-or-treating this Halloween, I will know that this performance will be for her and no one else.

Happy Halloween. Stay Safe, everyone.

-helen

Leave a comment

As a teen, I always romanticized about my first kiss, my first love. I wanted it to be just like in the books and movies—sweet, awkward, but most of all, one that I would remember for the rest of my life.

In reality, my first love was nothing like what I saw portrayed in media. Sure, sometimes it was sweet, but mostly it was toxic and dysfunctional—a clear sign of my tenuous relationship with myself and my father. The relationship was rocky from the start. My close friend at the time thought he was cute but found out he liked me and therefore became very adamant about setting us up. This would’ve been a nice gesture had I actually been interested in him. But I was a little afraid of this friend. She was emotionally manipulative, controlling, and had a bad temper. So I usually just went along with what she wanted. After we became “official”, I did fall in love, as so many girls do, by proximity and convenience. I also used this newfound love to distance myself from my friend, because at the time I could not fully comprehend why she was mean to me sometimes and communicate to her that she was hurtful. But this is not about my friend.

He became my first boyfriend, and the first of several emotionally unavailable and unstable boyfriends to come. We did love each other, though. We both were broken in the exact ways that we hoped the other would fix. Him with a distant mother, me with a distant father, both seeking repair with no tools or plan in place—we were in a lot of ways mirrors of one another.

I have not seen or talked to him after our final break-up (I say final because the actual breaking up lasted months). I hadn’t even thought about him or our relationship in a very, very long time. Until I read Heart the Lover by Lily King.

In the book, our narrator, who is about to graduate college, meets two friends—Sam and Yash. Both are smart and intimidating, and invite her into their world of high-brow lit discourse, wacky card games, and benefits the two are afforded as brilliant male students, including free lodging and utilities at a professor’s empty house who is on sabbatical. She starts dating Sam, but as graduation approaches she finds herself romantically entangled between the two. As one relationship ends and another blossoms, our narrator falls in love with Yash, the intense, devastating, life-changing kind synonymous with youth. We follow our narrator—nicknamed Jordan by the other two— throughout different stages of her life at which she crosses paths with her past. But what follows is not an epic love story, at least not in the way you imagine, but rather an exploration of the impact of life choices, and the reverberations of those choices felt by those around us.

While I have not seen my first love in decades, I did think about him while reading this book. How could I not when so much of both Jordan and Yash’s actions resembled ours—foolishness of believing first loves last and can protect us from the realities of the world only to realize we are nothing if not our choices, even if they were mistakes. But, I do not regret the choices I made back then, even though some still pains me to this day (which have to do with me and not him). The choices I made back then led me to my life now with a man I love with an intensity that can only come with the knowledge of feeling safe and loved so completely that I can finally be me. It is the kind of love I wish I could tell my younger self is coming, if only to spare her some heartache, not about him, but about her worth.

King paints a beautifully aching and relatable portrait of youth and its angst, yearning and desire that envelopes us during this time. And as we move through the years, King guides us from one heartbreak to another that life delivers time and time again as if we’ve subscribed to it. There is a gentleness in the delivery, though. Intertwined with the grief and loss, there is also joy and peace—the complex and nuanced layers of emotions that King excels at, and what kept me reading this book cover to cover in one sitting.

Towards the end of our relationship, things were tumultuous. There was a lot of emotions, but a lot of it was unsaid. We both acted out our feelings but never named them, as if naming them meant they were real and if they were real then the failure of “us” would be real. I had been grieving the loss of “us” for awhile, but I did not know how to end it. It did, eventually, end and it was this memory—the actual dissolution of my first relationship—that I now saw differently. Like Jordan, I was forced to make impossible and painful choices in my youth, and only in hindsight now after reading this book, did I realize how beautiful and necessary they were. It was the end of one relationship, but it was a threshold I had crossed, no, I had to cross to start the journey to my life now. As a a middle-aged wife and mother with forty years of life experience, I understand the saying “hindsight is 20/20” a little bit more. And we see that Jordan does too.

In Heart the Lover, King reminds us that love and loss are both sides of the same coin. And if we’re lucky, we’ll get to experience both.

I am one of the lucky ones.

If you want a book about love and all that comes with it, including its loss, I highly recommend this one. And if you read and enjoyed King’s Writers and Lovers, the ending will bring a smile to your tear-streaked face.

Leave a comment

Share

October is here and I am in disbelief. I believe for many of us, once October hits the rest of the year comes crashing like water out of a fire hose. It quickly becomes overwhelming and I am already feeling its effect.

But a new month means new books, so I am back with books coming out this month by authors who are from and/or identify by ethnicity with any country within the entire continent of Asia and who are indigenous to the Pacific Islands, including Hawaii. Below is a list of new books that I am most excited for and think you should also have on your radar. Why? Because all of these are books that seem incredibly relevant in our current times. I know for many people reading is a form of escape. It definitely is. But it’s also a vehicle for us to make sense of what is happening in the world. And for me, the books below seem like they can do just that.

Capitalists Must Starve (체공녀 강주령) by Park Seolyeon and translated by Anton Hur takes place in a Japan-occupied Korea and is a fictional account of a Korean labor activist, Kang Ju Ryong (강주령). As a “modern woman” working at a rubber factory, she witnesses the abuse endured by her colleagues and decides to join a union. She leads a strike and a legendary rooftop protest that will be etched in Korean history. A feminist novel set in historical Korea, I can’t think of a better book to channel my current rage. May this book provide me with the inspiration, hope, and drive so I can continue to fight and stand up for what is right in the ways that I can.

I don’t know about you, but I spent the last few days glued to the livestream of Global Sumud Flotilla’s attempt to break Israel’s siege on Gaza. My eyes could not look away and I felt, feel, absolutely helpless. Like many of you, I teeter between feeling numb and outraged to what is happening to Gaza. Honestly, I haven’t picked up a book by a Palestinian author in awhile—a fact I need to change immediately—and it’s mostly because of exhaustion. Admitting that is hard because of it’s inherent privilege. But emotional exhaustion is real and I want to be strategic in how I can manage my own health while showing up in ways I can and not forgetting the end goal: liberation. Letters from a Living Utopia: Reclaiming Liberation from Palestine to the World by Yaffa AS is a reminder of that goal—liberation through solidarity and connection. It is a reminder that now more than ever, we need to stay connected.

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction, A Guardian And a Thief by Megha Majumdar is high on my list to read this month. Set in a future Kolkata, India that is ravaged by climate change, the book follows two families whose very survival are at odds with one another as they try to secure a safe future for their children. What intrigues me most about this book is the study of our humanity at the crossroads of our survival. How far would we go to ensure the survival of our family? What would we do in the name of love? I haven’t read her debut, A Burning, though I do have it on my shelf, but I just *know* I’ll love this one. Or, at least i hope.

Qing Yuan is a morgue keeper at a Beijing hospital who cleans countless corpses night after night. But when he comes across an unidentified woman who is brutalized beyond recognition, he becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her. The Morgue Keeper by Ruyan Meng is a book that is based on historical true events but rings so true today as the rise of authoritarianism, state control, and political persecution is seen all around the world, including here at home in the U.S. This feels like an urgent and necessary read.

You see what I mean? Hope you’ll pick up any one of these books. And if you do, please let me know what you thought.

Here is the full list of books that came out this month that I’m aware of (with affiliate links for US releases):

• And the River Drags Her Down by Jihyun Yun (out 10/7)

• Capitalists Must Starve by Park Seolyeon, translated by Anton Hur (out 10/7)

• For No Mortal Creator by Keshe Chow (out 10/7)

• Good Old-Fashioned Korean Spirit by Kim Hyun Sook and Ryan Estrada (out 10/7)

• Soyangri Book Kitchen by Kim Jee Hye, translated by Shanna Tan (out 10/7)

• Letters from a Living Utopia: Reclaiming Liberation from Palestine to the World by Yaffa AS (out 10/7)

• A Guardian And a Thief by Megha Majumdar (out 10/14)

• All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu (out 10/14)

• Art on Fire by Yun Ko-Eun, translated by Lizzie Buehler (out 10/14)

• Flatfish: Poems by Moon Tae-jun, translated by Brandon Joseph Park (out 10/14)

• How to Be Less Miserable by Lybi Ma (out 10/14)

• Local Heavens by K.M. Fajardo (out 10/14)

• No Hand Held Mine by Kim Soon, translated by Joon-Li Kim and Doo-Sun Ryu (out 10/14)

• Red City by Marie Lu (out 10/14)

• Yun Dong-Ju: A Critical Biography by Song WooHye, translated by Flora M. Kim (out 10/14)

• The Morgue Keeper by Ruyan Meng (out 10/15)

• Alien Gods by Lee Soo-Hyun, translated by Anton Hur (out 10/17 in UK only)

• Come Down to a Lower Place by Lee So-Young, translated by Janet Hong (out 10/17 in UK only)

• The Call of the Friend by Choi Jae-Hoon, translated by Janet Hong (out 10/17 in UK only)

• Bad Bad Girl by Gish Jen (out 10/21)

• Patch Work: A Sewist’s Diary by Maddie Ballard (out 10/21)

• The Broken Ring, Volume I by Chacha Kim, illustrated by Cheong-Gwa (out 10/21)

• The Demon and the Light by Axie Oh (out 10/21)

• The Third Love by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Ted Goossen (out 10/21)

• When They Burned the Butterfly by Wen-Yi Lee (out 10/21)

• Blood for the Undying Throne by Kim Sung-il, translated by by Anton Hur (out 10/28)

• Julia Song is Undateable by Susan Lee (out 10/28)

• Reaping What She Sows: How Women Are Rebuilding Our Broken Food System by Nancy Matsumoto (out 10/28)

• Hail, Che! By Pak Jeong-de, translated by Ed Bok Lee and Eun-Mi Yang (out 10/28)

• Never Ever After by Sue Lynn Tan (out 10/28)

• Red Threads by Ila Nguyen-Hayama (out 10/28)

• Tempest’s Queen by Tiffany Wang (out 10/28)

Until next time, happy reading.

- helen

Leave a comment

It’s been three months since K-pop Demon Hunters started streaming on Netflix and their popularity doesn’t seem to be slowing down. As a child of Korean immigrant parents raised in the U.S., the immense popularity of this film has been healing but also emotionally exhausting. The rise in popularity of K-pop, K-dramas and just all around being “Korean” over the past decades has been surreal but it wasn’t until 케데헌 (kaedaehun - short for K-pop Demon Hunters in Korean)—the first animated film set in Korea about K-pop that was catered to a Western, non-Korean audience—that I understood its direct impact on me as a 1st-gen K-pop fan and Korean diaspora raising Korean children in the States.

My first foray into K-pop music was Seo Taeji and Boys (서태지와 아이들)—South Korea’s first hip hop group, with their debut single 난 알아요 (I Know) in 1992. I saw them perform on a Korean 가요 (gayo/music) program, which my parents regularly borrowed on VHS along with numerous other dramas and shows from our local Korean video rental store, Express Video on Western Avenue. In 1992, I was in elementary school, still discovering my identity and what I liked. At the time, I listened to what my parents listened to, a lot of 트로트 (trot) the popular music genre of my parents’ generation; and watched what my parents watched, a lot of Korean dramas, the most famous in 1992 being 질투 (Jealousy)—their main OST song is one that my husband and I still sing with each other to this day.

I was still discovering what my music taste was. I knew I liked Boyz II Men and TLC, but I craved seeing people that looked like me and sounded like me on “real” TV, not just in the Korean VHS tapes we borrowed. After seeing Seo Taiji and Boys, I was introduced to music that sounded like what I was hearing on American radio and TV but in Korean. I didn’t know at the time, but that introduction to K-pop helped shape and form my understanding of my own identity—that I was Korean but I wasn’t Korean Korean like my parents, and I craved music that reflected this idea that I couldn’t yet name.

If Seo Taiji and Boys was my introduction into understanding my Korean diaspora identity, then Roo’Ra (룰라), a co-ed hip-hop/pop group, was my entryway into K-pop fandom. I saw them in concert at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, California, my very first concert. I went with my mom and best friend, but we saw a lot of our friends, family, and neighbors there. In my pre-teen mind, it felt like all of Koreatown (and beyond) came out for this concert. Halmonis, teens, and entire families were singing along to 날게 잃은 천사 while slapping the side of their hips—the song’s choreo that everyone knew. It was the first time in my life where I felt like, as cliché as this sounds, I was where I was supposed to be. It was the first time I encountered a transcendent experience with hundreds of other people with music as its sole vehicle. I felt the collective strength of my community and my culture, and as a young girl on the cusp of becoming a young woman, this would prove to be a profound and memorable experience.

Growing up in Los Angeles, I was often ridiculed for my smelly lunches or the shape of my eyes, which is wild to say because LA is a very diverse city with one of the largest population of Koreans outside of Korea. I went to schools that were considered “diverse” with plenty of other Asian children around me. Still, there were those who pinched their noses and scooted away from me during lunchtime, those who made faces and called me names. I quickly learned that the food I ate was stinky, my last name wasn’t a real last name but a first name, and that I looked funny or “chinky”. Basically, who I was and what I looked like was something to be ashamed of. So when I was in a place full of hundreds of other Korean kids and adults singing the same songs, I felt… safe.

I say Roo’Ra was my gateway into K-pop fandom, and it’s true but H.O.T. was my first real K-pop obsession. When H.O.T. debuted in 1996 with 전사의 후예 (Warrior’s Descendant), still one of my favorite songs of theirs, I was immediately obsessed. I borrowed every VHS possible with Korean programs that they were a part of—music charts and variety shows. I memorized the lyrics to every song as well as the dance choreography, rewinding my VHS tapes over and over again to make sure I got each move right. Whenever they came to L.A., I would try to figure out their promotional schedule.

Were they going to be at Radio Korea? Were they going to be staying at the Wilshire Plaza Hotel? Which restaurant would they go to?

Looking back, I am amazed at my younger self’s determination and fervor. (Oh, how I wish I could borrow some of that energy now…)

I did eventually get to meet them in person one day. It was a very quick meet and greet with myself, a few other fans and our parents. I honestly have no idea how I got included, but I imagine my dad pulled some strings to get me in (he was and still is involved in the Koreatown community). I remember waiting for them to arrive under a gazebo in an open area between two buildings on Wilshire Blvd. I didn’t wait too long, but I do remember feeling impatient, wondering if this was too good to be true and therefore, would not be. When they finally arrived, things moved pretty quickly. They walked towards us and my eyes narrowed in on Kang-Ta, which what the kids now would call my bias. Each member held out their hand shaking ours, the fans, while bowing in greeting to the adults, our parents.

During this meet, I gave Kang-Ta the one thousand origami cranes I folded, many Precious Moments “Love Is” newspaper clippings I had saved, and a letter declaring my love for him. I shook his hand and he said 감사합니다 (gamshahamnida). I wanted to tell him how much I loved him, but I honestly don’t remember if I did, let alone if anything came out of my mouth at all. I do remember posing for a photo but I honestly don’t remember where that photo is. (Note to self: look for this photo next time I visit my parents.)

Looking back, I’m grateful that my parents didn’t shame or criticize me for my obsession with H.O.T. My mom borrowed every single VHS program that they appeared in. She bought me every single issue of Korean music magazines that came with all kinds of merch, including posters, keychains, stationaries—some I still have at my parents’ house. She happily nurtured and encouraged my fandom hoping it would keep me away from the real boys just a little bit longer. And it did, for a bit. Until it didn’t, but that’s a story for another time.

My K-pop fandom ended with H.O.T., though I still remained a fan of the music. I will continue to remain a fan on the periphery over the years as the Hallyu Wave sweeps Asia, the world, and eventually landing in the U.S. But I will also grow jaded and cynical of this sudden Western obsession with K-pop. I will be bitter, am still bitter, about all the times when I was told to open my eyes, when I had to pretend to hate kimchi, when I told my mom to stop speaking to me in Korean, when I had to watch my parents being spoken to like they were a child, when I had to correct my teachers that my name was Helen and not Kim. I learned to rearrange myself in order to fit inside the boxes they gave me. I will continue to shuffle around the pieces of me to placate, to appease, to survive for many, many years. And only now, I am learning how to let these pieces fall and put myself together the way I was and am supposed to be.

When I became pregnant with my twins I started listening to 90s Korean ballads again. As I planned for my new future and life as a mother, I longed for music that I listened to when I was a girl becoming a young woman, when the only worries I had were my grades and my first heartbreak. Now, worries of not only motherhood but our livelihood were playing incessantly in my mind.

How many months of maternity leave can I get? How the hell do I breastfeed? How many diapers do I need? Where will they sleep? Where will we sleep? Who would be willing to fly out and help us? How are we supposed to raise twins all alone away from family?

Change by 조장혁, 보고십다 by 김범수, and 시련 by 구본승 were on heavy rotation taking me back to a place when life was a little less complicated. It helped quiet the noise in my head, the doubt and questions were still there but they seemed manageable whenever I listened to my 90s Korean ballads.

After K-pop Demon Hunters movie released, my house has been filled with songs from the album on repeat, per request by my kids, especially my daughter. We’ve always listened to Korean children’s songs since they were born but this is the first time—along with IU’s Never Ending Story, a cover of one of my favorite songs—when my daughter would specifically request pop Korean songs that she can sing and dance to. It’s been a joy to see my Korean kids singing lyrics in both Korean and English that they not only can pronounce and understand but are also sung by everyone around them. Watching them be unapologetically themselves without looking over their shoulders healed a part of me that I long thought I buried.

While “Takedown”, “How It’s Done”, and “Golden” reign supreme in our house, it’s “This is What It Sounds Like” that leaves me in tears. Every single time I try to sing it, my kids always stop and ask “엄마, are you sad?” and I tell them, no I’m not sad, I’m happy. These are happy tears. And they are. But, honestly, they are also sad tears. They are tears for my younger self who felt the need to change who she was to fit in, to assimilate, to survive. They are tears for myself now who only started discovering her true worth as a Korean woman after forty years of wandering and searching for purpose. I’m still on this journey, but at least now, I feel a little less lonely.

And I wonder if how many others felt this way. I assume, many.

If that’s you, I see you.

helen

Leave a comment

The Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell is another book I would shelve under the self-imposed category of “books that enraged me”, living in good company with Liars by Sarah Manguso and Apartment Women by Gu Byeong-Mo. Though, I want to be clear that this categorization does not mean these books share any similarities except for their ability to absolutely enrage me—and enrage me they did on the mere account of: this is how some women, many women, live.

Ciara is a mother of two young daughters with a third on the way, who decides, instantly but really slowly over time, to leave her husband. This decision, made in the spur of the moment while her husband is in the shower, catapults her into action of pulling clothes off the line, packing whatever she can grab, and ushering her two children into the car before she has a chance to realize she has no job, no savings, and nowhere to go. If that prospect terrifies you, it should. I was. The idea of leaving the home my children have only known without a plan or resources in place absolutely terrified me. But as O’Donnell unravels this almost thriller-like story, I quickly learned that the reality of staying would be much, much worse.

But Ciara does leave. And this time—this was in fact her second try—she is determined to stay away. She finds temporary shelter at a hotel through city services that help those who are homeless. There, she looks for teaching jobs (she was a teacher before she married Ryan) and waits for subsidized housing (which would take months to secure)—all while trying to figure out a routine, care, and food for her children. Sure, she considered, even contested that going back would be easier. And yes, there would be the emotional, sexual, and financial abuse, but there would also be a warm bed and food for the girls, and even the happy memories with Ryan she just can’t seem to forget.

O’Donnell paints a terrifying picture of Ciara’s life, unveiling layer by layer the extent of Ryan’s gaslighting, manipulation, and abuse. Though, he was never physical—an excuse she told herself and others to minimize his abuse and help her cope with her isolated reality—she knew she had to leave. What ensues is a roller coaster of Ryan’s narcissistic attempt at winning her back—from telling her he can’t live without her to calling her short from crazy.

While I did find some of the plot and writing to be predictable (who am I go to judge, really), this book left a profound impression on me. As a woman who is married (not to a narcissist, thank goodness), I could imagine her plight with such vividness that I had to take breaks reading this. This book challenges mainstream thinking on abuse—the belief that if it’s not physical it does not worth merit—and the urgent need to reframe the narrative around abuse as whole. And, to end this review, I’ll quote the autohor directly from her acknowledgements: “To anyone trapped in a place that does not feel like home, and anyone who has ever been asked the question 'why don't you just leave?', this book is for you.”

For people who want a glimpse into domestic abuse that is not “physical” (though there is sexual) and for women who need and want community in any way a book can offer, this is for you. If any of this is and could be triggering for you, please take care of yourself before and while reading it. Actually, even if you are a woman without any of these triggers, take care of yourself before and while reading it.

Until next time, stay safe and trust yourself.

Leave a comment