The Foreign Student by Susan Choi

Set in Sewanee, Tennessee in 1955, the foreign student of the title is Chang Ahn fleeing from recurring nightmares of his life in Korea during the war. He meets Sewanee resident, Katherine Monroe--definitely not a Southern belle--who lives alone in her family's former summer home. Katherine is isolated from the community because of her troubled past, and she struggles with its effects and a strange but growing affinity to Chang. Their unlikely friendship becomes a mutual attraction, but they will have to confront their painful memories before they can embrace the future. Susan Choi has given us an excellent plot with description that immerses the reader in the lives of her characters and the places they inhabit. Chang's Korean background and the politics in wartime Korea provide an unusual dimension. As their past lives are slowly revealed, Katherine and Chang find healing and mutual understanding.

Read-alikes:

         Amy Tan

        Chang-rae Lee

        Steven Lo

Grace O'Connor - West Islip Public Library

 

 

Scandal by Susaku Endo

An aging writer and a professed Christian realizes that there are elements in his personality heretofore suppressed and he must deal with this shadow side of his nature. We follow his thought processes from complete denial, the suspicion that he has a double, to the realization that, if not physically responsible for the acts of sexual perversion described in his forays into the underbelly of the city, in his heart and mind he has committed them. One is never sure whether he is the doer or the observer and to the author the difference appears meaningless. The reader realizes early on that the author is not writing a story about an aging Japanese writer but attempting to express a universal truth about human nature. A disturbing book presenting disturbing ideas but well-written and worth reading.

Rhea Pollock - Brentwood Public Library

 

In Full Bloom by Caroline Hwang

Ginger Lee is a fashion assistant at A la Mode magazine. Her life is complicated when her mother appears at her New York City apartment determined to find her a proper Korean husband. Various gentlemen callers are tossed in--including the son of an old friend, who just happens to be engaged. The cast of characters includes the fiancee of said son, Ginger's boss and former roommate, other employees of A la Mode magazine- -some engaged in various struggles for promotion and more recognition. The heroine jumps on this struggle as a possibility to advance herself and show her mother the importance of a career that leaves no room for a husband. Ginger is a likeable young woman and readers will enjoy many engaging moments and arch humor. Ms. Hwang shows promise.

Read-a-likes:

        Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller

        Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson

        Glass Lake by Maeve Binchey

        Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee

        The Peppered Moth by Margaret Drabble

        Shopaholic Ties the Knotby Sophie Kinsella

        A Step From Heaven by An Na

        The Works of Amy Tan

Marie T. Horney - Cold Spring Harbor Library

 

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro uses the writing technique of memory to unfold the story of Masuji Ono's life in post and pre-World War II Japan. Ono, the elderly narrator of the story, was once an artist of the "floating world," a pleasure-filled period of geishas, gardens and teahouses. The onus for Ono's reflection on his past is his youngest daughter's engagement, which involves an investigation into his family's background. Ono, though once well respected for his teachings and artistic propaganda for imperialistic Japan, fears that he has no place in modern Japan and has become a detriment to his family. The reader may begin to question the validity of Ono's memories and wonder how much Ono was really involved in the war effort, based on the reactions of his family and former colleagues. This story would appeal to readers of historical and multi-cultural fiction.

 Ilana Beckerman - West Babylon Public Library

 

Waiting by Ha Jin

Lin, an army physician in Communist China, is forced by his parents to marry Shuyu. She will remain in the country to care for them in their old age. Lin falls in love with a nurse, Manna, who he sees everyday in the city hospital where he works. He waits eighteen years to divorce Shuyu and marry Manna, thus the title Waiting. While this is a story of a love triangle, it also paints a powerful picture of life under communism. Waiting would be a good choice for a book discussion. Readers who liked Memoirs of a Geisha would also enjoy it.

Karen Jaffe - Comsewogue Public Library

The Poet by Yi Mun-Yol

First published in Korean as Shiin in 1992, and in English translation in 1995, The Poet is a work by South Korea's leading writer. Yi-Mun-Yol has published more than 300 books; so far, only The Poet and Our Twisted Hero have been translated into English. The novel is a fictionalized account of the life of an actual historical figure named Kim Pyong-yon who lived from 1807-1863. Kim Pyong-yon, whose pen name was Kim Sakkat for the huge paper hat he adopted, is acknowledged to be one of Korea's finest poets. Kim's entire family was disgraced after his grandfather, an aristocratic general, is executed for siding with rebel forces. They are plunged into the rigidly stratified life of ordinary Korean society and, eventually, Kim chooses to live the life of a wandering scholar-poet, a life that is described in this beautifully written book. The Poet can be recommended for its portrait of 19th century Korean society. Poetry lovers will admire Yi-Mun-yol's depiction of the poetic process. It is a deceptively simple book which will reward the reader with these tastes.

Suzanne McGuire - Commack Public Library

 

The Unwanted: a Memoir by Kien Mguyen

The Unwanted is a cathartic memoir that reads like a novel. A life which is a testament to survival, Kien and his family are left in Saigon's political chaos when the last helicopter departs. Kien and his brother, prior to the fall of Saigon, live an idyllic though isolated existence within the walls of his family's compound, a world his mother creates because Kien is Amerasian. (She inherited money from an American soldier who may have been Kien's father.) It is not until the fall of Saigon that Kien realizes there is extreme poverty right outside the compound wall. Due to their sudden reversal of fortune, Kien is transformed from a spoiled, sheltered boy to a self-sufficient survivor. His mother is at once totally self-absorbed and then manically concerned with the children's safety. Kien's grandparents provide the only constancy in their lives. In a recent interview Kien fondly remembers his grandfather as a gifted storyteller. Kien's story is simply told and all the more emotionally jarring as we learn of the horrors of war, imprisonment and sexual abuse, through a child's eyes.

Read-alikes:

    Fiction

The Gangster We Are All Looking For by Thi Diem Thuy Le

        Land of Smiles by T.C. Huo

        Pushed to Shore by Kate Gadbow

        Saviors by Paul Eggers

    Nonfiction

        When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peaceby Lehy Hayslip

Peggy McCarthy - Smithtown Public Library

 

Nip the buds, shoot the kids by Kenzaburo Oe

Nip the buds, shoot the kids, is a good example of the qualities that distinguish Oe's writing: his anger (particularly about the wrong-mindedness of war), his humanism, his merging of myth and realism, and an extraordinary poetic style that comes through even in translation, this seeming to be a pretty good translation. A vast range of influences can be discerned, from Mark Twain (whose books he read as a child) and William Golding (Lord of the Flies is certainly evoked) to Norman Mailer and Albert Camus. Oe studied French literature and its influence on him is clear. In this book, the nameless village is as symbolic as Camus' Oran or Golding's desert island. There are only a handful of proper names in the book and there is virtually no identifiable reference to any actual time or place. It occupies a generalized realm of the mythic imagination and burns with the agony of an existential hero in a time and place where any deviancy meets with savage retribution. Betrayed even by his comrades at the end and bereft of all human accommodation, with the idyll of freedom ended by the tragic resurgence of death which snatches away his lover and his brother, the narrator runs blindly off into the dark void. There is much for discussion groups here, such as the meaning of life, Western influences on writers of other cultures, translation of books in other languages; and the book would appeal to those who relate to works like Lord of the Fliesand the works of authors like Sartre and Camus, from teenagers to adults. Since the book contains some grittily realistic details, it should not be recommended to the squeamish.

Arlene Leventhal - Half Hollow Hills Community Library

 

Invisible Gardens by Julie Shigekuni 

Lily Soto, a thirty five year old Japanese American women has the perfect life. She's a college professor married to a successful pathologist, has two beautiful children, and a new home yet somehow she is discontent. Her midlife crisis results in an affair with a colleague which nearly destroys her family. Luckily, at the end, she approaches her life with greater insight. Fans of Elizabeth Berg, Cathleen Schine and Ruth Ozeki might enjoy this novel. This might also appeal to children of interred Japanese during World War II as well as children of Holocaust survivors.

 

Karen Jaffe - Comsewogue Public Library

 

One Hundred and One Ways  by Mako Yoshikawa 

This novel centers on Kiki Takehashi, a student in New York City, of Japanese descent. She is awaiting the arrival of her grandmother (Obaasma), a former geisha, to visit the United States and meet her granddaughter for the first time. Kiki is close to her divorced mother, who lives in the family home in New Jersey, but leads an independent life in NYC, going to school. This visit becomes the outward focus of Kiki's life, as she tries to understand her recent engagement to Eric, a Jewish lawyer, and her true-love's, Philip, sudden death in an avalanche over 18 months ago. Philip's ghost still haunts her, silently, as she lives her daily life. The author interweaves the search for true, meaningful, lasting love as seen through the lives of a geisha, her daughter, and her granddaughter. The author uses symbols (i.e., moths, balloons) to express the emotional state of certain characters. There are gratuitous sex scenes, and one very disturbing episode of self-mutilation, that can be difficult to appreciate.

Read-alikes: Once Removed by Mako Yoshikawa

                    The Laws of Evening By Mary Yukari Waters

                    Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur S. Golden

Janet Mancuso-Rucker, Babylon Public Library

 

Kitchen by Yoshimoto Banana

Kitchen is a novella with a bonus short story included titled Moonlight Shadow. Both stories are told from the perspective of a young Japanese woman making the transition from girl to young woman in contemporary Japan. Each story deals with the themes of family relationships, love, tragedy and death. Yoshimoto has written a moving book filled with unique characters and themes.

 Rosalie Toja - Brentwood Public Library