JANUARY 2023
BOOK REVIEW SECTION
ASIA MEDIA INTERNATIONAL FROM LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY'S BELLARMINE COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS IN LOS ANGELES
Page 2
BOOK SECTION STAFF
Book Review Editor-in-Chief Ella Kelleher LMU '21
LMU English major graduate Ella Kelleher is the AMI Book Review Editor-in-Chief and a contributing staff writer for Asia Media International. She majored in English with a concentration in multi-ethnic literature.
Ellakelleher99@gmail.com
GABY RUSLI SARAH LOHMANN MEET THE REVIEWERS ANGELINE KEK
LMU graduate and reviewer, Gaby Rusli, is passionate about Indonesian and Southeast Asian political affairs.
Vietnamese literature specialist and AMI book reviewer, Angeline Kek, is an LMU graduate. She majored in English with a concentration in poetry and creative writing.
New film and book reviewer, Sarah Lohmann, lives in South Korea and graduated from Knox College with a B.A. in Creative Writing and Asian Studies.
Page 3
AMI: FICTION BOOK REVIEW SECTION
January 2023
I Want To Die But I Want To Eat Tteokbokki (2022) By Baek Sehee In times of darkness, when all seems hopeless and lackluster, South Korean author Baek-Sehee’s mind often conjures up countless questions to inspire faith: What about the people that love you? What about the millions of possibilities where things can get better? And perhaps most importantly, don’t you want to eat tteokbokki again?
Link to review
Watersong (2022) By Clarissa Goenawan
The world is so much more than black and white, for there are always things unknown to us — secrets. A person is not who you think they are unless you know what they hide from the world. Explore the fictional Japanese town of Akakawa and meet Shouji Arai, an “ear prostitute.” Arai is tasked with listening to the confessions and stories made (no matter how bizarre) by the town’s elite.
Link to review
Solo Dance (2022) By Li Kotomi
“Love conquers all” – we are often taught this maxim as children. We are persuaded to believe the very essence of love can solve all life’s problems. Yet, for those of us who do not fit the heteronormative ideal, individuals on the fringe of the already unstable fabric of modern society, love is not safe. On the contrary, it is dangerous, deadly, and can cost us our freedom and even our lives.
Link to review
Page 4 AMI: FICTION BOOK REVIEW SECTION
January 2023
Paper Boats (2017) By Dee Lestari
Sometimes in our younger, more vulnerable years, we find ourselves roaming the world, trying to find out who we are and what we are meant to do. Set between the Netherlands and Indonesia, Dee Lestari’s novel serves to remind younger Indonesian generations to march to the beat of their own drum regardless of parental demands and expectations.
Link to review
Dead-End Memories (2022) By Banana Yoshimoto
Why do people assume relationships could ever make logical sense? Legendary storyteller Banana Yoshimoto meditates on love and relationships in her latest collection of five short stories. The shimmering red strings that tie humans together are convoluted at best. At their most devastating, they are temporary and ephemeral, like the changing ginkgo leaves that pile on the streets during Japan’s fall season.
Link to review
Fish Swimming In Dappled Sunlight (2022) By Riku Onda Japanese suspense author, Riku Onda, presents us with a psychological thriller that spans the course of a single night. A man and woman decide to spend one final evening together in their shared Tokyo apartment before going their separate ways. Over the course of a shared convenience store meal and some drinks, they discuss the events that brought them to this moment, with both feeling together yet simultaneously apart.
Link to review
Page 5 AMI: FICTION BOOK REVIEW SECTION
January 2023
People From My Neighborhood (2020) By Hiromi Kawakami Hiromi Kawakami’s collection of vignettes details the individuals of her neighborhood in a brilliant piece of bite-sized fiction. In 120 pages, the reader is plunged into a lifetime of drama, secrets, and otherworldly quirkiness centered around a close- knit community in an outer ward of Tokyo. In each two or three- page close-ups, the reader begins to understand the expansive, tangled web of relationships that tie the townspeople together.
Link to review
The Plotters (2018) By Un-Su Kim
Government corruption. Political scandals. Contract killers. Disappearances. Set in contemporary Seoul, South Korea, the world within Kim Un-Su’s novel focuses on the deaths of random political figures as well as who is pulling the trigger. The shadowy figures responsible for the murders are known as “plotters” – faceless hired guns that shoot who they are told to shoot. Suspended on strings and manipulated by society’s wealthiest elites, these assassins are not meant to question their orders. Not until one of them decides to, that is.
Link to review
Aerial Concave Without Cloud (2022) By Sueyeun Juliette Lee Grief is a lonely process as much as it is all-encompassing. Like all pain, it takes away, gives back wisdom, and breaks people open. Author Sueyeun Juliette Lee peruses a poet’s journey to research light prompted by the passing of their mother. As they venture to the far-flung corners of Norway and Iceland to study the aurora borealis, the speaker confronts their family’s origin as orphaned immigrants of the Korean war. The deeper they dive into research, the more they find that human grief and light converge.
Link to review
Page 6 AMI: FICTION BOOK REVIEW SECTION
January 2023
At The Edge Of The Woods (2022) By Masatsugu Ono
Japanese author, Masatsugu Ono, writes about an unnamed country where a family of three settles into a creaking house at the edge of an ominous forest. The father cannot help but notice that something is quite off about this place. Are the trees coughing? No… laughing? As so many Japanese legends have it, fantastical creatures live in the depths of the woods where feudal lords of antiquity ruled and resistance fighters were defeated. The carcasses of their once beautiful creations have made wonderful castles for forest imps and ghouls.
Link to review
Longing And Other Stories (2022) By Jun'ichiro Tanizaki Originally published in Japanese during the literary reign of legendary Japanese writer, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (1910-1965), three famous short stories are finally accessible to an English-speaking audience in this new compilation. Through a vulnerable child’s eyes, parents represent stability, protection, and even eternity. What happens when eternity grows small and seemingly insignificant?
Link to review
Woman Running In The Mountians (2022) By Yuko Tsushima Yūko Tsushima’s novel follows society’s rejection of Takiko who is shunned because of her sudden pregnancy at the tender age of twenty-one. It is Takiko’s unfettered commitment to herself and her happiness that causes her family and Japanese society to ostracize and condemn her. Takiko’s self-conviction is almost supernatural. She will go on after her pregnancy. Such an unabashed belief in oneself lends a deeper understanding to the reader: single parenthood is its own form of heroism.
Link to review
Page 7 AMI: FICTION BOOK REVIEW SECTION
January 2023
My Annihilation (2022) By Fuminori Nakamura
What exactly is the "self," and how can it be defined? From modern psychology, we know that human minds can be usurped through drastic techniques such as brainwashing, manipulation, and even hypnosis. Elusive and slippery in nature, the malleable "self" forms and reforms in response to social interaction and individual encounters. The answer that enigmatic author Fuminori Nakamura offers in his latest novel is entirely unsettling: “Under a particular set of circumstances, it becomes impossible to tell.”
Link to review
The Color Of The Sky Is The Shape Of The Heart (2022) By Chesil Ginny Park, a teenage zainichi (Japan-born) Korean, is forced to come of age under the crushing weight of reality and the horrors of xenophobia, politics, and ethnic violence. Torn between her Korean heritage, her Japanese birthright, and her evolving contempt for both nations’ sociopolitical climates, she must make a fateful choice. Either bow down and lose her voice in the process or challenge the status quo and face the devastating consequences.
Link to review
If I Had Your Face (2020) By Frances Cha
South Korea, a place often nominated as the "plastic surgery capital of the world," is where it’s not only typical but expected for young women to have double eyelid surgery before they hit thirty. Author Frances Cha hides nothing in her boldly honest novel. Cha’s tale, deserving of all the international recognition it’s receiving, follows the stories of four women living in the same officetel, battling the impossibly restrictive and often lonely confines constructed for women in Korean society.
Link to review
Page 8 AMI: FICTION BOOK REVIEW SECTION
January 2023
The Old Woman With The Knife (2022) By Gu Byeong-Mo South Korean author Gu Byeong-Mo’s crime-thriller novel follows Hornclaw, a sixty-five-year-old woman who refers to herself as a “disease control specialist.” The so-called "vermin" she spends her time exterminating for high prices are humans with a certain rodent-like disposition. Never mind her age and perceived frailty – that is how she evades suspicion. Hornclaw is both fit and dangerous with absolutely no empathy for outsiders. The vulnerability of emotional uncertainty spirals her down a path of reckoning, where she must make a choice to either give into love, her greatest weakness, or shun it entirely.
Link to review
Scattered All Over The Earth (2022) By Yoko Tawada What would happen if your country sank into the ocean? Would you still have a claim to your “homeland”? What about the language you speak? Could it still be considered your “native language”? In Yoko Tawada’s latest release of dystopian fiction, the "land of sushi” (presumably Japan) disappears due to global warming and rising sea levels. As a result, the country lingers on only in its kitschy and most digestible form. While no one remembers the actual name of the disappeared land, people do reminisce on anime, miso soup, and cosplay.
Link to review
Counterfeit (2022) By Kirsten Chen
Kirsten Chen’s latest novel follows Ava Wong – a straight-edge Chinese-American lawyer shackled to an agonizingly mundane routine of house chores and caring for her maddening infant, Henri, who cannot seem to cease his daily tantrums. Ava is desperate for a change big enough to shake the foundations of her comfortable San Francisco suburban life. Change comes in the form of Winnie, a mainland Chinese woman and formerly Ava’s college roommate from her long-past Stanford days who now runs a counterfeit luxury handbag business.
Link to review
SPECIAL THANKS
LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY (LMU) in Los Angeles is a nationally ranked private university, historically Jesuit, and anchored by the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts. Its Department of Asian and Asian-American Studies is known for innovation, which includes LMU ’ s Asia Media International Center and its website (asiamedia.lmu.edu) which hosts the Fiction Book Review section.
PACIFIC CENTURY INSTITUTE Pacific Century Institute (PCI) is a non-profit 501 (c) (3) organization based in Los Angeles, California with a mission of "building bridges" between the countries and peoples of the Pacific Rim. PCI seeks to provide forums for outcome-oriented discussion of regional problems and global issues of regional relevance, promote cross-cultural communication, and foster greater understanding between the peoples living on the rim of the Pacific Ocean.
EXECUTIVE EDITOR CRISTINA PEDLER
Cristina Pedler earned her B.A. in International Relations from Loyola Marymount University (LMU) with minors in Public Relations and Spanish Literature. At Asia Media International Cristina serves as Executive Editor, supervising the editorial content of the website and managing the summer internship program. She is based in San Diego, California.
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9Made with FlippingBook. PDF to flipbook with ease