The Magical Language Of Others: A Memoir

The Magical Language of Others: A Memoir

Winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association AwardWe will look back at our time apart and laugh together and be sad, but we will have many stories. If you have no suffering, you have no story to tell?isn?t it true?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.Review"Koh?s book is a tremendous gift. . . . A wonder." ?The San Francisco Chronicle"A moving portrait of abandonment, forgiveness, and the strength of maternal love." ?TIME"Stunning." ?Alexander Chee, author of How To Write An Autobiographical Novel"A beautifully crafted saga." ?Nicole Chung, author of All You Can Ever Know"Indisputably brilliant." ?Jeannie Vanasco, author of Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl"Exquisite. . . . This memoir will pierce you." ?Crystal Hana Kim, author of If You Leave Me"Koh remarkably and beautifully translates the language of mothers as the language of survivors." ?Don Mee Choi, author of DMZ Colony"I could read this book a thousand times over." ?Sarah Blake, author of Naamah"A lyrical and profound personal excavation." ?Buzzfeed, Most Anticipated Book of the Year"Exquisite." ?Literary HubAbout the AuthorE. J. Koh is the author of the poetry collectionA Lesser Love, winner of the Pleiades Press Editors Prize, and co-translator of Yi Won?sThe World?s Lightest Motorcycle, forthcoming from Zephyr Press. Her poems, translations, and stories have appeared in