The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim
Review of The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim
“Every meal, even a somber one like this, was a celebration of what we had left, what remained on this earth to taste and feel and see.”
The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim (2020). Published by Park Row.
I’d always heard about this book, seen the cover across book YouTube and Instagram. I’d added it to my Goodreads “To Read” list awhile back, but, for some reason, my local library recently picked it up a year after it came out.
It was in the new section when I found it, and because I recognized the cover immediately, I immediately placed it into my tote bag to check out for my weekly reads. I had no idea what the plot was about until I cracked it open and started reading, but I was absorbed into the world of Margot and her mother.
As the title suggests, the main story in this is the story of her mother, Mina Lee. Although the narrative is split between past and present, Mina’s story is the centerpiece of this.
If you’re into Korean literature or Asian-American diaspora in the way that I am, you’re going to find this book absolutely fascinating.
I’m going to go more in-depth about this later, but the split narrative does absolute wonders in conveying the nuances between a first generation immigrant from the homeland and their American-raised kids. And for people like Mina Lee, who are single parents and immigrants, this life is extremely lonely and full of hardships. Under the Korean context, Mina Lee’s story is absolutely tragic.
Let’s dive into this review.
Book Blurb
Margot Lee's mother, Mina, isn't returning her calls. It's a mystery to twenty-six-year-old Margot, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unraveling the tenuous invisible strings that held together her single mother's life as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother.
Interwoven with Margot's present-day search is Mina's story of her first year in Los Angeles as she navigates the promises and perils of the American myth of reinvention. While she's barely earning a living by stocking shelves at a Korean grocery store, the last thing Mina ever expects is to fall in love. But that love story sets in motion a series of events that have consequences for years to come, leading up to the truth of what happened the night of her death.
Content
As seen in the book blurb, Margot is twenty-six-years old when she discovers she is now an orphan. Margot has come down from her job in Seattle with a friend Miguel, who is now moving to the area, and goes to her mother’s apartment, only to find her face-down on the floor dead.
Her mother was seventy, as she had Margot in her forties, and had been perfectly fine up until now. In Margot’s grief, she is convinced someone has murdered her mother and begins to uncover the truth behind her mother and her father.
The readers are informed of reality even before Margot is given it. In fact, we know more than Margot because of the nature of the split narrative. There’s a couple of chapters before the perspective switches back and forth between Margot and Mina.
We learn that Mina is an orphan from the Korean War, having fled the North and was left behind by her parents. Tragedy follows her throughout her life, as she lives a better life in Seoul as a fashion designer, her daughter and husband are struck down and killed by a car. This is the first story of Mina Lee, before she chooses to illegally immigrate to the United States and settles in the Los Angeles Koreatown.
Margot, however, does not understand her mother, which is relatable to so many immigrant kids. Margot can’t really speak or read Korean, and it seems like the distance between her mother and her was large.
There seemed to be stiffness, like they couldn’t understand each other, although Mina clearly saw her daughter as a reason to keep living. Margot was an accident; the mystery of who her birth father is slowly is revealed through the split narratives, as Margot finds her father’s obituary and then Mina’s narrative goes into detail about how the nature of their relationship progressed.
There are some absolutely beautiful descriptions and writing scattered throughout this novel. Some of my favorite descriptions have been about Korean food, the scent of Korean BBQ and jjigaes wafting up through the pages of the book. I got really hungry while reading this book, I will admit.
There’s also this absolutely beautiful scene where I believe Miguel and Margot are at the pier and Margot is just describing the carnival/festival scene, of the lights and the ferris wheel, and it’s so radiant and visually appealing that I found myself being absolutely sucked into the scene.
It’s also interesting how her mother, Mina, was an undocumented immigrant, and we see how this unfolds in her narrative. Because she is a Korean working at a Korean supermarket, she lays on a tentative good side with the owner, Mr. Park.
It is there she meets Margot’s father, but we see how the undocumented Mexican workers live in fear, are never promoted. Mina is so quiet and lonely in this life, especially after she gets pregnant, and it’s so sad to watch her narrative unfold. We also see the spiderweb connections between all of the characters, such as Mina’s housemate Ms. Baek and Mr. Park harassing her, as well as the underbelly of the female immigrant experience.
Overall Thoughts
It’s an interesting snapshot into a period of time that’s quickly slipping away from us. People like Mina Lee are dying off, the children of the Korean War, and with them we lose this sense of tragedy that permeates within an entire generation of people.
Heck, even Mina and Margot’s father initially bond over how they lost their parents during the war and in the North, which is such an interesting thing to read about because as a Westerner, you never would’ve thought people like this exist.
Reading truly does open you up to entirely new worlds. This book is really sad, but also quite slow moving—nothing really happens. If you can’t get invested into the characters and their stories, this isn’t going to be a fun read for you.
