Skinship by Yoon Choi
Review of Skinship by Yoon Choi
“It came to her that he was ashamed. Only then did she begin to sense the enormity of the thing she had so simply agreed to. Moving to America. Leaving her family. Starting an unknown and difficult life. Thinking it was all an adventure.”
Skinship by Yoon Choi (2021). Published by Knopf.
I don’t know how I found this book originally. I found out about it after it had been released, like months after, and I know that it was through Goodreads. But how I landed on this book specifically is truly a mystery, especially because I had never heard of the author before.
Yoon Choi, however, has had an impressive fiction career so far, and it shows in this short story collection. She’s been published in big-name literary magazines for her short stories and was a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. She also got her MFA from Johns Hopkins, which is known for having a very good writing program within its walls.
Skinship is a collection of short stories focusing on Korean-Americans, specifically ones who seemingly have recently immigrated. Pennsylvania tends to be a common setting, as well as New York City mentioned in passing. A lot of our characters tend to have this American Dream installed inside of them, of having a better life in this new country, but also missing a part of Korean behind.
We see this in the short story where the two children and their mother immigrate into their aunt’s home in Fairfax, Virginia, and the other side of their family seems so much less Korean than they are. The daughter eats more American food, while the husband cannot seem to handle any sort of spicy Korean food at all. The children struggle with their social lives at school, while the mother’s English is too poor to get a good job outside of cleaning.
That’s only just one of the stories in this collection. I’ve said a lot already, so let’s get into this review!
Book Blurb
An exquisite collection from a breathtakingly new voice--centered on a constellation of Korean American families, these stories announce the debut of a master of short fiction.
A long-married couple is forced to confront their friend's painful past when a church revival comes to a nearby town . . . A woman in an arranged marriage struggles to connect with the son she hid from her husband for years . . . A well-meaning sister unwittingly reunites an abuser with his victims . . .
Through the lives of an indelible array of individuals--musicians, housewives and pastors, children and grandparents, the men and women who own the dry cleaners and the mini-marts--Yoon Choi explores the Korean American experience at its interstices: where first and second generations either clash or find common ground; where meaning falls in the cracks between languages; where relationships bend under the weight of tenderness and disappointment; where displacement turns to heartbreak. Suffused with a profound understanding of humanity, Skinship is, ultimately, a searing look at the failure of intimacy to show us who the people we love truly are.
Content
My opening statement for this section is that all of these stories tend to be quiet, often the way I notice immigrant Koreans I’ve known have been in public.
Having lived in Seoul and then moved to New York City immediately after, then coming home to Baltimore, which is next to a huge Korean enclave, I’ve noticed this difference between native Korean culture and diaspora Korean culture. Particularly among women, who tend to have a heavier burden than men in all diaspora communities.
Choi’s stories tend to have female narrators, which probably enhances this effect. Men tend to be a more domineering force in some of these stories, such as the first one. In the first story our main narrator has just arrived from Korea to Lancaster, where her husband owns a convenience store. And suddenly everything is unfamiliar, even her husband.
He speaks Spanish to the Puerto Ricans and all he talks about is money and capitalism. When the husband's best friend from college, who is now a famous pastor, comes to Columbia, Maryland, the wife wants to see him but the husband seems to be in denial of the fact they were ever friends.
I read this book in one setting, but I think I’m going to have to return to it eventually to truly understood the complexities and the nuances of the characters contained within it. There’s so many layers to these stories. Even in the first story, when the wife runs into the wife of the pastor, it’s implied that the pastor and his wife lost their kids in the Sampoong Department Store collapse.
A lot of the narrators are older and the stories set in an earlier time, so there’s an even closer connection to the tragedy of colonialism, poverty, and the Korean War instilled in these characters. At one point in the novel, one of the characters is mentioned to have left his dying father behind in North Korea to live in Busan. It’s mentioned so normally, which is the truly sad aspect of Korean history. This was normal to so many people still living.
I also appreciate the details that went into these stories. While they are distinctly Korean, they’re something many immigrant communities can relate to. In one story, an immigrant child becomes best friends with an Indian girl in her elementary school, but her mother makes racist remarks about the girl’s skin color. And the girl ends up becoming the same way, willingly passing on the torch of discrimination and colorism just so she can go to an Ivy League. A lot of characters in these are dissatisfied with their lives, often stuck in-between places. And perhaps that’s what makes them more human to us as readers.
Overall Thoughts
I think this is a good primer for someone looking to read more Asian-American stories, particularly if you’re into recent immigration. There’s a wide cast of characters, from the piano prodigy who may have a disability, to women old and young, or even across social classes. The stories feel very real and authentic, the writing simple. And that’s why I think I like it so much.
Because I could imagine these characters as very real people I’d pass on the streets of Virginia or Washington D.C.. I also lived right next to a good chunk of the cities and locations mentioned in these stories, and so it really hits close to home physically. It’s a lovely collection and I truly do recommend it for everyone though, but it might interest more people than others.
