Description
Book SynopsisA collection of linked stories that follows four generations of the Songs, a Korean American family, beginning in 1924 just prior to the Immigration Act and extending to near the end of the century. Through this story cycle, patterns emerge as cultural identity and individuality, often in tension with one another, shape choices and outcomes.
Trade ReviewWaiting for Mr. Kim and Other Stories, Carol Roh-Spaulding’s uniquely linked collection of stories and one novella, follows three generations of the Song family, beginning with the family’s emigration from Korea to California shortly before the 1924 Immigration Act. Decade by decade, with shifting perspectives,
Waiting for Mr. Kim lays out what it means to be a daughter and what it means to be a mother, what it means to be an immigrant, what it means to be an Asian-American woman in this country. The reader first meets Grace—whose perspective threads through many of the stories—via her older sister, a ghost narrator who died tragically and whose death haunts these stories. In the novella that ends the collection, Grace is a grandmother caring for the son of her estranged daughter and is also an older woman embracing desire and love. Roh-Spaulding’s prose is gorgeous and lyrical, at other times quiet and restrained, always beautifully precise.
Waiting for Mr. Kim is the collection that we have been waiting for, whether we knew it or not." - Lori Ostlund author of
After the Parade
