Korean American Fiction

Rev. Manwoo A. Kim started writing poetry during his college days at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea. Reading this volume containing Rev. Kim's poems (translated from Korean by Onyoo Elizabeth Kim, Esq.), the reader will benefit from his many years of viewing the world through poetic lenses. Rev. Kim's poems reflecting on the grace of God inspire the reader to higher things, and his poems focusing on the suffering of Jesus Christ for His people will move the readers to tears.

Ian McAllister has searched the world over, hunting for that all-elusive perfect photograph. He finds it on a tourist trip to North Korea when he stumbles upon a young street kid foraging for roots. Unaware that this single act will brand him a spy and cost his freedom, Ian takes the shot. Now, he must pay the penalty.

Hope is not your typical teenage girl. After a tumultuous childhood, she is once again in a new town and a new school which her mother has dragged her to. As is often the case, she is one of the only Asian kids in an all-white school and is still dealing with family issues. Hope is struggling to adjust to her new environment as a freshman in high school, where she meets a school counselor who helps her wade through the entire school year as well as pushes her to explore her past.

Set against the backdrop of the 2002 World Cup and rising anti-American sentiment due to a deadly tank accident involving two young Korean girls, The Korean Word for Butterfly is told from three alternating points-of-view.

Seventeen-year-old Bucky Yi knows nothing about his birth country of South Korea or his bio-dad's disappearance; he can't even pronounce his Korean name correctly. Running through the woods of rural Washington State with a tire tied to his waist, his sights are set on one all-American goal: to become a college football player. So when a misadventure with his adoptive family leads the US government to deport him to South Korea, he's forced to navigate an entirely foreign version of his life.