About the Book
A tale of deep bonds to family, place, language―of hard-won selfhood told by a singular, incandescent voice.
After living in America for over a decade, Eun Ji's parents return to Korea for work, leaving fifteen-year-old Eun Ji and her brother behind in the family's new California home. Overnight, Eun Ji finds herself in a world made strange in her mother's absence. Her mother writes letters over the years seeking forgiveness and love―letters Eun Ji cannot understand until she finds them years later hidden in a box.
The letters lay bare the impact of her mother's departure, as Eun Ji gets to know the woman who raised her and left her behind. Eun Ji is a student, a traveler, a dancer, a poet, and a daughter coming to terms not only with her parents' prolonged absence, but her family's history: her grandmother's Jun's years as a lovesick wife in Daejeon, the horrors her grandmother Kumiko witnessed during the Jeju Island Massacre. Where, Koh asks, do the stories of our mothers and grandmothers end and ours begin? How do we find words―in Korean, Japanese, English, or any language―to articulate the profound ways that distance can shape love?
The Magical Language of Others is a fearless and poetic mind grappling with forgiveness, reconciliation, legacy, and intergenerational trauma―conjuring an epic saga and love story between mothers and daughters spanning four generations.
About the Author :
E. J. Koh is the author of the poetry collection A Lesser Love, winner of the Pleiades Press Editors Prize. Her poems, translations, and stories have appeared in Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and World Literature Today, among others. She earned her MFA in Literary Translation and Creative Writing from Columbia University, and is completing the PhD program at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is a recipient of the MacDowell Colony and Kundiman fellowships.
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."
-- "Electric Literature"
"Koh remarkably and beautifully translates the language of mothers as the language of survivors."
-- "Don Mee Choi, author of Hardly War"
"Koh's book is a tremendous gift. We're so fortunate to have this literary reckoning from a tremendously talented writer. The Magical Language of Others is a wonder."
-- "San Francisco Chronicle"
"Stunning...This memoir will pierce you."
-- "Crystal Hana Kim, author of If You Leave Me"
"This memoir broke my heart. The tragedies that filled the lives of Koh's mother and grandmothers are woven into mythic, magic tales in Koh's hands. Only by Koh's grace and mastery are we not crushed by the stories within The Magical Language of Others. I could read this book a thousand times over."
-- "Sarah Blake, author of Naamah"
