The Magical Language of Others
World of Books
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The Magical Language of Others by E J Koh
Winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and the Washington State Book Award in Biography/MemoirNamed One of the Best Books by Asian American Writers by Oprah Daily
Longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award
The Magical Language of Others is a powerful and aching love story in letters, from mother to daughter. After living in America for over a decade, Eun Ji Koh's parents return to South Korea for work, leaving fifteen-year-old Eun Ji and her brother behind in California. Overnight, Eun Ji finds herself abandoned and adrift in a world made strange by her mother's absence. Her mother writes letters in Korean over the years seeking forgiveness and love--letters Eun Ji cannot fully understand until she finds them years later hidden in a box.
As Eun Ji translates the letters, she looks to history--her grandmother Jun's years as a lovesick wife in Daejeon, the loss and destruction her grandmother Kumiko witnessed during the Jeju Island Massacre--and to poetry, as well as her own lived experience to answer questions inside all of us. Where 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 weaves a profound tale of hard-won selfhood and our deep bonds to family, place, and language, introducing--in Eun Ji Koh--a singular, incandescent voice.
E.J.Koh is the author of A Smaller Love, a poetry collection that won the Pleiades Press Editors Award. Her poetry, translations, and short stories have published in a variety of publications, including Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and World Literature Today. She graduated from Columbia University with an MFA in Literary Translation and Creative Writing and is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Kundiman Foundation.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781951142278 |
| ISBN 10 | 1951142276 |
| Title | The Magical Language of Others |
| Author | E J Koh |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Tin House Books |
| Year published | 2021-01-19 |
| Number of pages | 224 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |