Families, bloodlines, and ancestries have been prominent and complex subjects in Korean American literature. To take a look at how contemporary Korean American authors have both continued and transformed this tradition, this article will feature recent works of Korean American literature that examine kinship in its numerous forms.

The Magical Language of Others: A Memoir by E. J. Koh

In her memoir The Magical Language of Others, E. J. Koh journeys through languages, letters, and stories. Through this mélange, the author explores her own coming of age as it intertwines with her relationships with her mother and grandmothers.

Within the memoir we learn that when Koh is fifteen and her brother is in college, their parents follow a higher salary to South Korea. Koh and her brother are left behind in the US to live on their own. As Koh grows up in Davis, California, she struggles to care for herself and cope with mental health troubles without her parents’ support.

While Koh’s mother lives in Korea, she writes her daughter letters. Years later, Koh translates them. Translations of her mother’s letters as well as the originals are included in the memoir. These provide insights into her mother’s story that complicate Koh’s own experiences of abandonment.

Also tied into the memoir are the stories of Koh’s grandmothers. These stories take the author to scenes of trauma from Korea and Japan. The memoir’s meditation on intergenerational trauma further recontextualizes Koh’s mother’s life as well as Koh’s own.

The Magical Language of Others contains a rich narrative spanning three generations in Japan, Korea, and the US. Pick it up to read Koh’s insights into how different languages and identities can be harnessed to cope with and confront life’s challenges.

Cut to Bloom by Arhm Choi Wild

In Arhm Choi Wild’s poetry collection Cut to Bloom, the poet thinks through the challenging question of how to heal from family trauma and commit oneself to finding joy and love in life.   

The poems in Cut to Bloom express a wide range of emotions and do not simplify the messy ways they often mix together. Many of the included poems are moving personal testimonies of domestic abuse involving the poet’s parents. Wild delivers these poems with force and does not shy away from visceral images of violence both literal and metaphorical.

Yet Wild also writes love poems, and as they explain in an interview with Foglifter, the juxtaposition of violence and love in the collection “speak[s] to how…the ways that we are raised are, for better or worse, a part of how we love.” Wild carefully holds onto such integrative ambiguities throughout the collection, even as they examine themes like queerness, misogyny, Koreanness, and Asian American identity.

Across the poems, Wild’s lyrical language both pushes and pulls the reader. Expertly tuned images and syntax rhythmically push you to read on; along the way, emotional shocks and surprising double entendres pull you in to take a closer look at the language on the page.

For readers prepared for an emotionally wide-ranging journey, Cut to Bloom is a collection of poetry on trauma and healing with a powerful voice.

Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

In Jean Kyoung Frazier’s debut novel Pizza Girl, a pregnant 18-year-old (who isn’t named until the end of the novel) encounters an intriguing older woman when she delivers a pizza with pickles on it.

The setting is suburban LA. The narrator of Pizza Girl lives with her mother and her boyfriend, both of whom welcome the prospect of a baby. The narrator is, by contrast, not all that excited.

She is grieving the recent death of her father, and she struggles to envision a desirable future for herself. Details about the narrator’s life reveal mental health struggles that accompany her coming of age. Still, she hopes that something is out there for her, somewhere.

The novel isn’t afraid of exploring the narrator’s flaws and doesn’t offer any easy explanations for them, either. When the narrator meets Jenny (the customer who orders the pickle pizza), we watch as the narrator latches onto a stranger to get away. As the novel progresses, the narrator spirals deeply into her obsession with Jenny and makes some reckless decisions. 

Nevertheless, this pizza delivery girl is a narrator that will win over many readers. Throughout the novel, Frazier’s writing is attentive to the symbolic and emotional value of scenes of everyday life in LA. These moments of simply taking the time to look at the people and things around you bring out the humor and tragedy of not quite knowing where you are or where you’re going.

Made in Korea by Jeremy Holt and George Schall, with lettering by Adam Wollett

Made in Korea is a six-issue sci-fi comic set in a not-so-distant future. In this world, infertility problems prevent couples from conceiving, and androids called “Proxies” may be adopted as surrogate children.

The plot of Made in Korea revolves around Four-Five-Nine-Four/Jesse, a Proxy who is sent from Korea to suburban Texas. There she is to grow up with Suelynn and Bill, a married couple about to discover what it’s like to raise a special child like Jesse. Back in Korea, the series also follows Chul, a programmer who works on Proxy behavior. 

This is a world both familiar and strange. In the comic’s American and Korean settings, George Schall’s clean visual style communicates that we’re in the near future. Familiar domestic spaces come equipped with technological advances just beyond our own horizon.

The characters’ journeys in this slightly uncanny world allow Made in Korea to comment on contemporary life and politics even as it introduces twists into reality. For example, America in this world has enacted gun control. Made in Korea’s writer, Jeremy Holt, also mentions in an interview with The Beat that their identity as a transracial triplet adoptee inspired them to write a deliberately Asian American sci-fi.

From the visuals to the writing, this comic is full of subtle details for readers to discover on second or third reads. Read through all six issues to follow the surprising twists that develop around Jesse.

Mitochondrial Night by Ed Bok Lee

In Ed Bok Lee’s third poetry collection Mitochondrial Night, the poet looks inside our cells and outwards towards space to examine how the past and the future live in the present. 

In many poems, Lee reaches back into his family’s history to ponder what he’s inherited from his ancestors. This takes him to his parents’ specific trauma in Korea, but it also leads to more general considerations of trauma in Korean history. Through these poems, Lee explores how the effects of colonial and state violences can be passed down through generations.

Lee also considers his daughter and his own fatherhood, and when he does so, the past and present begin to blur with the future as well. He sees his ancestors within his daughter. He wonders what her future will hold. They live in an America under Trump, and Lee hears ominous echoes of Korean history in contemporary American politics. This translates into the poet’s commitment to and engagement with politics for his daughter’s future.

While Lee goes between the past and the future, he plays with questions of scale and poetic form. The world glimmers during these moments. He zooms into mitochondrial DNA and zooms out to consider the stars. Visual poems in the collection also call attention to the palpable separations between words on the page.

For readers interested in Lee’s interwoven commitments to politics, poetry, and history, Mitochondrial Night is a collection that explores what we receive from the past and what we can give to the future.