Clay Walls

I picked this book up off my shelf last week while I was sick...I wanted some fiction in English, and I actually have sadly little of that in actual physical form sitting around. This was a book from Korean civ in college. Rereading it, I found it interesting and a good way to spend an afternoon, bu......more

I picked this book out from my parent's bookshelf when my mom recommended it to me. I was intrigued by the online synopsis and gave it a shot, which I'm glad I did. Kim told a very informative story. I didn't know much about pre-WWII immigration, especially for Koreans in the U.S. Reading about the......more

Slow-moving but engrossing study of a Korean family gradually moving into the American mainstream. Interesting format in that the book switches narrators three times. The story begins through the eyes of Haesu, a young Korean woman who has emigrated to the U.S. after an arranged marriage to Chun, a......more

I taught this novel in Asian American Studies at UC Berkeley but I must be fair. The prose is poor. Second language interference may account for that or it may simply be that Kim isn't a very good writer. Nonetheless, it was a pioneering work, hence "teachable." See the documentary, "Korea: The Unen......more

Tracking a Korean wife and husband, and subsequent Korean American daughter, from the 1910s to late 1940s, Kim's novel is a fascinating study of how class expectations shape gender attitudes. We have an upper class woman resentful of her prone-to-gambling husband, which only exists because of her pa......more