Author Description

Review "A beautifully crafted saga...graceful and moving."-- "Nicole Chung, author of All You Can Ever Know""A haunting, gorgeous narrative...lushly told. Brilliant."-- "Minneapolis Star Tribune""A poignant transgenerational story of trauma and recovery in South Korea, Japan, and America."-- "Library Journal""An exquisite, challenging, and stunning memoir. E. J. Koh intricately melds her personal story with a broader view of Korean history. Through these pages, you are asked to experience one family's heartbreak, trauma, and complex love for each other. This memoir will pierce you."-- "Crystal Hana Kim, author of If You Leave Me""Both creative tribute and personal reckoning, this is a finely wrought, linguistically rich, provocative memoir."-- "Booklist""Broke my heart...I could read this book a thousand times over."-- "Sarah Blake, author of Naamah""E.J. Koh writes of the boundary, between anonymity and naming, between absence and abandonment, between cruelty and safety for four generations of mothers and daughters, each speaking with an occupied heart and crossing narrative borders between Korea, Japan, and America. As a reader, you give yourself over to her narrative territory and the resetting of the borders of lineage, language, and lives lost."-- "Shawn Wong, author of Homebase""Give yourself over to her narrative territory and the resetting of the borders of lineage, language, and lives lost."-- "Shawn Wong, author of Homebase and American Knees""Indisputably brilliant...a densely layered, lyrical exploration of the bonds between generations of daughters and mothers."-- "Jeannie Vanasco, author of Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl ""Intimate, subtle insights about a unique mother-daughter relationship."-- "Kirkus Reviews""J. Koh's memoir The Magical Language of Others floats stunningly through the abandonment she experienced as a teenager...[and] talks about living while excavating the troubled past and writing difficult love letters." -- "El