And when their father is diagnosed with advanced cancer and he and Janie's mother return to Korea to undergo experimental treatment, it is Janie's responsibility to round up the prodigal daughter and join them. When Hannah abruptly moves and cuts off all ties to the family, their parents are devastated. Unable to socialize easily like her younger sister, Hannah, Janie settles into a life of academics and filial duty.

They make a home in Michigan, but bullying at school and casual racial antipathy never let them forget they are 'the other.' When Janie is very young, her family leaves South Korea after their father publishes an incendiary political pamphlet unfavorable to South Korea's repressive military regime. Generations of suffering are revealed and reconsidered, and Chung, using clear prose and a gently melodramatic tone suitable for this heart-rending tale, pulls the reader into both the family's pain and its ironclad bonds of love. When Janie, a Korean-American woman, is dealt the twin blows of estrangement from her younger sister - her only sibling - and her father's grave health crisis, she is forced to confront both her sister's childhood trauma and the reality of her parents' early life. This moving debut novel by Catherine Chung is set at that point in young adulthood when worldly wisdom opens the closet door and shines light on a child's life as seen through adult eyes. Secrets are stored in families like prescription drugs and Drano: out of sight, but right there to find as soon as one is tall enough to reach the shelf.

Forgotten country by catherine chung