Skinship

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.