Asian American Literature Fans

A Review of Paul Yoon’s Run me to Earth (Simon & Schuster, 2020).
By Stephen Hong Sohn

I’ve been a huge fan of Paul Yoon ever since his debut collection, Once the Shore, which came out of Sarabande Books many moons ago. I taught that collection a couple of times in a “transnational asia-pacific” course in which I focus on story cycles set in Asia. Yoon’s collection is always a big hit. In any case, I’ve was really excited to see that he’d come out with a new novel Run me to Earth (Simon & Schuster, 2020). I’ll admit I still have to catch up on his last effort, The Mountain: Stories, but there always seems too much to read.

In any case, let’s let the official page provide us with some key contexts: “Alisak, Prany, and Noi—three orphans united by devastating loss—must do what is necessary to survive the perilous landscape of 1960s Laos. When they take shelter in a bombed out field hospital, they meet Vang, a doctor dedicated to helping the wounded at all costs. Soon the teens are serving as motorcycle couriers, delicately navigating their bikes across the fields filled with unexploded bombs, beneath the indiscriminate barrage from the sky. In a world where the landscape and the roads have turned into an ocean of bombs, we follow their grueling days of rescuing civilians and searching for medical supplies, until Vang secures their evacuation on the last helicopters leaving the country. It’s a move with irrevocable consequences—and sets them on disparate and treacherous paths across the world. Spanning decades and magically weaving together storylines laced with beauty and cruelty, Paul Yoon crafts a gorgeous story that is a breathtaking historical feat and a fierce study of the powers of hope, perseverance, and grace.”

I started this novel on a night in which insomnia would feature heavily. I’m glad I had something to turn to, especially because this novel was so, so beautifully written. Yoon’s prose has always been sparkling, so I knew I was in for a treat, but as always, the pairing of such elegant writing with such devastating storylines still produces a kind of readerly exhaustion. In this case, the story of Alisak, Prany, and Noi is really about the different fates that befall these orphans once they are forced to evacuate the field hospital. The danger inherent in where they live is apparent in Yoon’s opening section: the field hospital is essentially surrounded by unexploded bombs, so they have to be careful. Every moment they make must be considered with respect to what might be in the field, the possibility of more detonations.

So, I’ll provide a brief spoiler warning here, so that you might turn away (especially if you don’t want to know about the varied fates of these characters). Of the three, only Alisak is able to evacuate Laos. Noi tragically dies when she loses control of her bicycle in a field filled with bombs. Prany and their caretaker Vang are unable to evacuate in the chaos of that time; they are instead taken into interrogation and tortured over a period of about seven years. Much of the novel details Prany and Vang’s lives during and after their imprisonment and reeducation. Prany still holds on to the possibility that Alisak is alive and thriving; it is this remaining and luminescent attachment that provides the one important thread of hope. When Prany is able to secure the passage of a young girl named Khit, who becomes a kind of replacement for Noi, Yoon is helping to stage an imperfect reunion by the novel’s end. Readers will want something to hold on to, given so much deprivation and destruction that pervades the novel. Fortunately, we will be buoyed for much of it with Yoon’s always crystalline prose, which acts as a salve against the heartrending circumstances of war. Yoon’s prose is most reminiscent of writers like Alexander Chee (in Edinburgh) and Julie Otsuka; there’s a poetic sparseness that is perfectly right and pristine. Scholars of refugee studies might find this novel a useful book to assign in classes on that topic.

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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