The Trauma of Surviving: Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho
Amid all this survival, Cho carries the reader through with the comfort of food.
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Posts Tagged: Korea
This Week in Essays
A weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
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The Isolation of Millennial Life: Ancco’s Nineteen
Nineteen is a book that’s by turns smart, sad, and scathing.
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To Set Asunder: The Separation and Synthesis of Tiana Nobile’s Cleave
A word becomes a reckoning, a reconciling of contradiction.
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On Hauntings and Huntings: Talking with Jihyun Yun
Jihyun Yun discusses her debut poetry collection, SOME ARE ALWAYS HUNGRY.
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Writing What Bothers: A Conversation with Frances Cha
Frances Cha discusses her debut novel, IF I HAD YOUR FACE.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Mary-Kim Arnold
Mary-Kim Arnold discusses her new poetry collection, THE FISH & THE DOVE.
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A Space for Magnanimity: Talking with E. J. Koh
E. J. Koh discusses her debut memoir, THE MAGICAL LANGUAGE OF OTHERS.
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What Would a Woman of Color Do?
How do we transcend generations of trauma and let go of our burdensome past?
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My Mother’s Tongue
When I spoke Korean, I unearthed a hidden thread that bound us together.
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Free Indirect Suicide: An Unfinished Fugue in H Minor
I want a PhD in how to want, effortlessly, to be alive.
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The Loss of a Whole Korea
Only peace. Wholeness will not happen for our generation.
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Different Voices: A Conversation with Crystal Hana Kim
Crystal Hana Kim discusses her debut novel, IF YOU LEAVE ME.
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Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!
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In a Quicksand of Language: A Conversation with Krys Lee
Krys Lee discusses her debut novel, How I Became a North Korean, having empathy for people and characters, and finding the balance between real-world facts and imagination.
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What to Read When You Need to Know about Korea
A list of books about Korea (both North and South) and by Koreans that Rumpus editors have read and enjoyed.
...moreThis Week in Trumplandia
Welcome to This Week in Trumplandia. Check in with us every Thursday for a weekly roundup of the most pertinent content on our country, which is currently spiraling down a crappy toilet drain. You owe it to yourself, your community, and your humanity to contribute whatever you can, even if it is just awareness of […]
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Wanted/Needed/Loved: Weyes Blood’s Mysterious Kris
To this day no one really knows where my kris came from or whether or not it’s a significant part of my family history, if it’s a random object or an heirloom with an untold story.
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Revolution Books in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood is exploiting Trump’s election to raise money for a fight against fascism. People in Japan value neighborhood bookstores so much that local governments are opening government-run stores in an effort to keep community spaces flourishing. A fascist bookstore in Florence, Italy received a special delivery—a bomb. The […]
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Chicago’s bookstores, bracing against the looming arrival of a physical Amazon store, are stronger than ever. Check out this roundup of local indie stores. Fišer bookstore, a Prague institution since the 1930s, is closing. Korea’s oldest bookstore closed fourteen years ago, but Jongno Books is set to reopen in Seoul.
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The Read Along: Christina Nichol
Christina Nichol, author of Waiting for the Electricity, takes a deep dive into Korean literature and catches up on some classics of anthropology and psychology.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 7): “Facing It”
There should be no forgetting, much less forgiveness, of what happened during the Vietnam War.
...moreThe America We Live in Now
I don’t consider myself a political person. To me, there are no “wrong” political beliefs. I believe that democracy means respecting everyone’s right to her opinion. And if I were forced to declare my own political views, I would have to reluctantly admit that, out of cynicism and self-interest, I find myself increasingly leaning towards […]
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Chicago bookstores are worried about the arrival of a physical Amazon store. One bookstore is using clickbait tactics on social media to trick people into reading more books. Some people actually like airport bookstores. A rural Virginia bookstore has become wildly successful.
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The Name Before My Name
There are times when I must uncork the period, for Isabel only chases my given name.
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The Upper Far East
So much for the ‘glamour’ of selling pretty things to pretty people.
...moreWriting to Legitimize the Self
To research her book Without You, There Is No Us, Suki Kim worked undercover as an ESL teacher in North Korea. Kim was reluctant to call the work a memoir, believing that to do so “trivialized” her investigative reporting. The result was a backlash from critics, who called her undercover methods “dishonest.” At The New Republic, Kim responds to her critics: Here […]
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Go Boldly, Dear Dreamer
And while I understand the secrecy surrounding miscarriage—it is hard to quantify what’s been lost—because people don’t talk about it, I am lonely.
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The Rumpus Interview with Minsoo Kang
Writer and historian Minsoo Kang talks about his new translation of The Story of Hong Gildong, a touchstone novel of Korea written in the 19th century.
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