The Kinship of Secrets by Eugenia Kim

THE KINSHIP OF SECRETS by Eugenia Kim is a unique look at immigration and assimilation in American society.  Kim tells the story of two sisters.  Miran, adopted after being abandoned by her mother, was a sickly baby and is brought to the United States by her immigrant parents, Najin and Calvin Cho.  Intending to return after a few years, they have left their year-old biological daughter, Inja, in Seoul with her maternal grandparents and uncle. Instead the Korean War occurs and the family is separated for well over a decade. Kim explains in an author’s note that she based the novel partly on her own family’s experiences, especially that of an older sister, and she uses alternating chapters to allow readers to experience the emotions of both daughters, eventually reuniting them. The differences in attitudes towards family members, dress, food, and language are all explored. Plus, Kim addresses “how emptiness could feel so heavy” and the range of feelings (bewilderment, resentment, loyalty, guilt, sacrifice and love) of children, parents and grandparents: “The comfort of being home, her Korean home, came from fulfilling the drive to belong. But the drive also heightened the pain of division when a single small thing marked one as different, such as Inja having a mother, but not having a mother; for Uncle, having her as a daughter who was not his daughter; for Miran, being Korean, yet not being Korean; and for her parents, having the eldest who was not the firstborn blood child.”

THE KINSHIP OF SECRETS, a LibraryReads selection, received a starred review from Booklist and will be a popular addition to our Junior Theme selections like Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.  

Memoirs and more ...

Teachers have been asking us for ideas about memoirs recently.  Here are some comments about several life adventures that are newly published.

A DREAM CALLED HOME by Reyna Grande is a fascinating look at the life experience of a young girl who was left with her grandmothers in Mexico when her parents came to the United States in an effort to find a better life. Eventually, she was able to join them, but circumstances had dramatically changed for her and her siblings. The parents were no longer together and once again she struggled with abandonment issues while also trying to build a life for herself.  Hard work led Grande to college and she writes movingly about that experience and her subsequent jobs and life as a single mother. Though simply written, the book is sprinkled with photos and Grande is so honest that reading it feels like talking with a close friend. While it is sometimes difficult to reflect on the narrow choices she faced, it is certainly inspirational to share in the resilience which Grande exhibits. Highly relevant to events today, A DREAM CALLED HOME received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and praise from established writers like Sandra Cisneros and Luis Alberto Urrea. Grande is a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for her earlier work, The Distance Between Us; both titles will prompt much discussion.

THE WHITE DARKNESS is by David Grann who also wrote Killers of the Flower Moon, a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award. In this new book, Grann provides background on the Antarctic adventures of Ernest Shackleton and his early twentieth-century team while focusing on a descendant of one of those original explorers, Frank A. Worsley who was the captain of the H.M.S. Endurance. Henry Worsley was so invested in his ancestor and the events related to the search for the South Pole that he led subsequent treks in 2008 and 2015, successfully following Shackleton's routes across Antarctica. Grann’s non-fiction narrative is a relatively short (160 pages), but powerful account filled with dozens of images from both Shackleton’s and Worsley’s trips. For more on this topic, see also Alfred Lansing’s Endurance or Caroline Alexander’s The Endurance. And for more real life adventure happening right now, see this New York Times' article about how two men are each trying to cross Antarctica alone.

ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW by Nicole Chung is another memoir worth exploring.  It is on my “to be read pile” and tells the story of a transracial adoptee who was born in the Pacific Northwest, placed for adoption by her newly arrived Korean parents, and raised by a white family in Oregon. Like Reyna Grande, Nicole Chung struggles with discrimination and questions about her identity and belonging. ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW received starred reviews from School Library Journal (“Purchase this must-have title”), Library Journal (“highly recommended”) and Publishers Weekly (“stunning”).  

All three titles will be on our shelves soon. Have another memoir or adventure story to recommend? Please let us know.

Litttle Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Students have been reading Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You for their summer reading assignment and her newest, LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE, will be in our library soon.  Shaped by multiple narrators and filled with suspense, this new title received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal AND Publishers Weekly. The setting is the late 1990’s in an insular suburban community near Cleveland, Ohio called Shaker Heights where “there were rules, many rules, about what you could and could not do.” And the secrets abound, particularly amongst two sets of family members: Mia Warren and her teenage daughter, Pearl, newcomers who rent from society matron and investigative reporter wannabe, Elena Richardson. Elena and her lawyer husband have four teenage children: sons named Trip and Moody (both of whom are attracted to Pearl) and daughters Lexie and Izzy (both of whom turn to Mia as a confidante).

This is a book about dysfunctional family life and motherhood, about questionable decisions made for good reasons, about hasty assumptions, about privilege and getting what you want, about trust and betrayal, and about the many secrets we keep. Overall, readers (including teens) will find much to consider and debate, including the pros and cons of adoption for a baby with Asian heritage, the consequences of an abortion and premarital sex, and pressure from peers and parents. One character even explicitly reflects on the problem with rules: “they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things.  When, in fact, most of the time they were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on.” LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE is highly recommended.