Summer is the best season to catch up on all of the reading you might have missed out on during the craze of the chillier months. And to help you enjoy the extra sun hours, we’ve compiled a list of summer-perfect reads!

Below is the first of a two-part series of suggested reading comprised of, either books penned by Korean American authors, or stories featuring Korean American characters. So, browse our picks, book a story (or two) and get reading!

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The Martyred by Richard E. Kim | Buy

Nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969, The Martyred is a classic that should be read and re-read.

Back cover: During the early weeks of the Korean War, Captain Lee, a young South Korean officer, is ordered to investigate the kidnapping and mass murder of North Korean ministers by Communist forces. For propaganda purposes, the priests are declared martyrs, but as he delves into the crime, Lee finds himself asking: What if they were not martyrs? What if they renounced their faith in the face of death, failing both God and country? Should the people be fed this lie? Part thriller, part mystery, part existential treatise, The Martyred is a stunning meditation on truth, religion, and faith in times of crisis.

Richard E. Kim (1932-2009) was born in Hamheung, Korea. After an honorable discharge from the Republic of South Korea’s army, he immigrated to the US, where he rose to prominence as an academic and a writer of many acclaimed novels.

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Edinburgh by Alexander Chee  | Buy

Chee’s award-winning debut novel is a bildungsroman that is both monstrous and beautiful.

Back cover: Set in Maine, twelve-year-old Fee is a gifted Korean American soprano in a boys’ choir whose choir director reveals himself to be a serial pedophile. Fee and his friends are forced to bear grief, shame, and pain that endure long after the director is imprisoned. Fee survives even as his friends do not, but a deep-seated horror and dread accompany him through his self-destructive college days and after, until the day he meets a beautiful young student named Warden and is forced to confront the demons of his brutal past.

Alexander Chee lives in NYC and blogs at Koreanish. His second novel, The Queen of the Night, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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Yellow: Stories by Don Lee | Buy

Featuring the voices of second- and third-generation Asian immigrants, Lee calls this a “post-immigrant examination” of identity.

Back cover: Set in the fictional California town of Rosarita Bay, Yellow features such memorable characters as Patrick and Brian Fenny, two mixed-blooded boys deserted by their golfer dad, and Marcella Ahn and Caroline Yip, engaged in a battle of wits for the attention of Dean Kaneshiro, whose handcrafted chairs are museum pieces. The title novella, which was a finalist for a National Magazine Award, spans twenty years, following Danny Kim from his disastrous foray into boxing as a teenager to his ascent into Boston society as a management consultant—poisoned not so much by racism as by his paranoid fear of it.

Don Lee is a third-generation Korean American author living in Philadelphia. He is a professor at Temple University’s graduate creative writing program.

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Happy Birthday or Whatever: Track Suits, Kim Chee, and Other Family Disasters by Annie Choi | Buy

If the title doesn’t grab you, we should add that Choi will charm you with her hilariously self-deprecating humor.

Back cover: Meet Annie Choi. She fears cable cars and refuses to eat anything that casts a shadow. Her brother thinks chicken is a vegetable. Her father occasionally starts fires at work. Her mother collects Jesus trading cards and wears plaid like it’s a job. No matter how hard Annie and her family try to understand one another, they often come up hilariously short.

But in the midst of a family crisis, Annie comes to realize that the only way to survive one another is to stick together . . . as difficult as that might be.

Born and raised in San Fernando Valley, CA, Annie Choi attended UC Berkeley and Columbia University. She lives in NYC and blogs at http://www.annietown.com/.

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The Eternal Smile: Three Stories by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim | Buy

We had to include this graphic novel gem.

Back cover: From two masters of the graphic novel, come three magical tales: the story of a prince who defeats his greatest enemy only to discover that maybe his world is not what it had seemed; the story of a frog who finds that just being a frog might be the way to go; and the story of a women who receives an e-mail from Prince Henry of Nigeria asking for a loan to help save his family – and gives it to him.

With vivid artwork and moving writing, Derek Kirk Kim and Gene Luen Yang test the boundaries between fantasy and reality, exploring the ways that the world of the imagination can affect real life.

- Gene Luen Yang is the author of American Born Chinese—finalist for the National Book Award. He teaches high school in San Francisco, CA and blogs at http://geneyang.com

- Derek Kirk Kim is the author of Same Difference and Other Stories, the winner of the trifecta of comics awards—the Eisner, the Ignatz, and the Harvey. He lives in Portland, OR and randomly blogs at http://lowbright.com

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Secondhand World by Katherine Min | Buy

A tale with tragic twists. A must-read.

Back cover: Isadora “Isa” Myung Hee Sohn has just spent ninety-five days in a pediatric burn unit in Albany, NY, recovering from the fire that burned her house and killed her parents. Moving back in time, Secondhand World casts a devastating spell, revealing the circumstances that led to the fire.

Growing up the daughter of Korean-born parents, Isa is bullied by American classmates and barely noticed at home. Seeking the company of another outsider, Isa falls in love with Hero, an albino boy. But what starts out as a small teenage rebellion sets in motion a series of events and revelations Isa never could have foreseen.

Katherine Min is currently a professor of creative writing at Plymouth State University. She lives in Plymouth, NH.

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The Language of Blood by Jane Jeong Trenka | Buy

In this powerfully written adoption narrative, Trenka explores and reflects on her layered and fragmented identity.

Back cover: Jane Jeong Trenka and her sister Carol were adopted by Frederick and Margaret Brauer and raised in the small, homogeneous town of Harlow, Minnesota—a place “where the sky touches the earth in uninterrupted horizon . . . where stoicism is stamped into the bones of each generation.” They were loved as American children without a past.

With inventive and radiant prose that includes real and imagined letters, a fairy tale, a one-act play, crossword puzzles, and child-welfare manuals, Trenka recounts a childhood of insecurity, a battle with a stalker that escalates to a plot for her murder, and an extraordinary trip to Seoul to meet her birth mother and siblings. Lost between two cultures for the majority of her life, it is in Korea that she begins to understand her past and the power of the unspoken language of blood.

Jane Jeong Trenka was born in South Korea and was adopted by a couple in rural Minnesota in 1972. She was able to reunite with her birth family in 1995 and is now an activist fighting to improve adoption practices. She occasionally blogs at http://jjtrenka.wordpress.com.

 

Part two comes out next Friday (5/24), so stay tuned, and happy reading!

Mindy Gee and Mink Choi contributed to this list.