Asian American Literature Fans

By Stephen Hong Sohn

I absolutely ADORED this memoir, and I will be teaching it probably over and over again. First, THERE ARE ACTUAL PAGE NUMBERS! THANK THE GODS! After the trauma of reading Jeremy Jusay’s astounding, brilliant The Strange Ones, all I could think about when I opened this book was: “please, please let this book have page numbers so I can teach it.” There, those beautiful page numbers appeared like a miracle from the print production gods. Let’s let the official page at HarperCollins tell us what is going on with this equally astounding, brilliant book: “A powerful and moving teen graphic novel memoir about immigration, belonging, and how arts can save a life—perfect for fans of American Born Chinese and Hey, Kiddo. For as long as she can remember, it’s been Robin and her mom against the world. Growing up as the only child of a single mother in Seoul, Korea, wasn’t always easy, but it has bonded them fiercely together. So when a vacation to visit friends in Huntsville, Alabama, unexpectedly becomes a permanent relocation—following her mother’s announcement that she’s getting married—Robin is devastated. Overnight, her life changes. She is dropped into a new school where she doesn’t understand the language and struggles to keep up. She is completely cut off from her friends in Seoul and has no access to her beloved comics. At home, she doesn’t fit in with her new stepfamily, and worst of all, she is furious with the one person she is closest to—her mother. Then one day Robin’s mother enrolls her in a local comic drawing class, which opens the window to a future Robin could never have imagined.”

Wow, this memoir was just absolutely mind-bogglingly wonderful. I had intended only to crack it open, then finished it. I was so hyped up after I completed it, I cracked open another novel and almost finished that one too. Reading addiction is terrible, especially when it falls on “spring forward” of daylight savings. What you appreciate are the flourishes of the migrant experience that clarify how isolating and devastating it can be. Chuna is bookish, a little gender nonconforming, and introverted, so going to Hunstville, where she does not know the language, does not know any other Koreans than the family that she’s living with, and does not have many allies is a brutal transition. Chuna is re-christened Robin, but a change of the name does not necessarily make things easier. A Halloween venture is full of silences, as Robin struggles to understand her trick-or-treating partner’s monologues. Her new family has its own peculiar dynamics, with cousins and stepsiblings who do not work very hard to include her. Her own mother’s new relationship is soon on the rocks, and Robin cannot understand why they would give up their lives in Korea, when her mother had opened up a successful beauty salon, and they were living independently. Ultimately, what becomes clear is that this story is one about a mother’s fierce love for her daughter, one that also comes in the form of Western ideals of independent womanhood.

In Korea, still today, there are deep social stigmas attached to single mothers, so the graphic memoir ultimately details the kind of struggles that Robin’s mother had to negotiate just to get to the point where she was respected in her own community. A new life in the United States surely would have seemed ideal, even as it meant potentially giving up financial independence, if only for the possibility that they could live as a “normative” family unit. This message is one that Ha’s memoir makes clear. Even as the family dynamics that Robin’s mother pursues begins to crumble, Ha never falters in understanding why her mother made the choices she felt she had to. An extraordinary work.

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Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Leslie J. Fernandez, PhD Student in English, at lfern010@ucr.edu