Helena Goos
‘Dancer Dawkins and the California Kid’ offers up high-stakes, romantic, queer Americana
Originally published in 1985, a speeding ticket and a blown-out car door bring together the titular Dancer Dawkins and the California Kid one fateful night on the California...
The story of Korea as told by a century-old trickster
The last time I visited Korea, I was maybe 7 years old, and I only remember bits and pieces of it. Flashes of Myeong-dong,...
‘I’ll Love You Forever’ spotlights K-pop through the author’s personal stories
In I’ll Love You Forever, through bite-sized chapters of her life, Giaae Kwon takes the stage like her favorite K-pop idols. Kwon’s in-depth knowledge...
In ‘Docile,’ Hyeseung Sung fumigates her life with forceful sincerity
Raw and articulate, Sung fumigates her life with forceful sincerity. I devoured her highs and lows, swept up into the story of her life...
North Korean defector Yeonmi Park’s new memoir is a fear-mongering polemic against the American...
It’s hard to talk about this book without being political. Despite Park’s insistence that she feels no allegiance to either Republicans or Democrats,...
‘Skull Water’ awakens us to the peace found in the repeating cycles of life
If you’re looking for a book dramatically grounded in land, culture, and people, Skull Water fits the bill. Set in South Korea 20 years...
‘Flawless’ uncovers the sinister real story of the Korean beauty industry
In grounded and humorous prose, Elise Hu tells the stunning (pun intended) and sinister story of the Korean beauty industry and its rise to...
E.J. Koh’s ‘The Liberators’ grapples with borders, real and imaginary
E.J. Koh’s style flirts with the boundary between stream of consciousness and internal monologue the same way her story flirts with hope and despair....
A Korean poet presents queerness as something natural, strange and assumed
Syntax that seems like mistranslation gives way to a psychedelic atmosphere, like a
queer Alice in Wonderland. Up is down, down is up, the Earth...
A valuable history of the Gwangju Uprising
There have been only a few times that I remember hearing about Korean politics in American media. The most recent was the North Korean...
