My Mother Called Me Unni

"A fascinating and admirable history. The detailed and descriptive chapters in this book create entire cultural worlds for readers to learn from, enjoy, and remember." -Chitra Divakaruni, international award-winning and bestselling author, Houston, TX.*** “An inspiring story, a wonderful saga of a migrant in America.” —Tom Reid, Mayor of Pearland, TX.*** “An engaging memoir of a doctor, an Indian American.” —Aseem Chhabra, columnist for India Abroad, NY.*** “Provides an interesting reading of a diasporic longing for home.” —Professor Sanoo Master, writer, critic, humanist, Kerala, India.*** “Unbelievable…interesting and fascinating reading.” —Padma Shri Dr. Vyjayanthimala Bali, dancer, actress, former MP, Chennai, India.*** “Remarkable journey from his native land of India to America.” —John K. Graham, MD, D. Min, President/CEO, ISH., Houston, TX.*** “Enjoyable and authentic descriptions; touching; impressive.” —Padma Vibhushan, professor, physicist, Dr. E.C.G. Sudarshan, Austin, TX.***

Winner of the 2019 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction A beautiful and haunting memoir of kinship and culture rediscovered. Jenny Heijun Wills was born in Korea and adopted as an infant into a white family in small-town Canada. In her late twenties, she reconnected with her first family and returned to Seoul where she spent four months getting to know other adoptees, as well as her Korean mother, father, siblings, and extended family. At the guesthouse for transnational adoptees where she lived, alliances were troubled by violence and fraught with the trauma of separation and of cultural illiteracy. Unsurprisingly, heartbreakingly, Wills found that her nascent relationships with her family were similarly fraught. Ten years later, Wills sustains close ties with her Korean family. Her Korean parents and her younger sister attended her wedding in Montreal, and that same sister now lives in Canada. Remarkably, meeting Jenny caused her birth parents to reunite after having been estranged since her adoption. Little by little, Jenny Heijun Wills is learning and relearning her stories and those of her biological kin, piecing together a fragmented life into something resembling a whole. Delving into gender, class, racial, and ethnic complexities, as well as into the complex relationships between Korean women--sisters, mothers and daughters, grandmothers and grandchildren, aunts and nieces--Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related. describes in visceral, lyrical prose the painful ripple effects that follow a child's removal from a family, and the rewards that can flow from both struggle and forgiveness.

Kim Jai Sook Martin entered the world in 1935, during the Japanese occupation of her native Korea. She was the second daughter of an ordinary family, born to parents who had hoped for a boy; they dressed her as one until she was three, when her brother was born. By the age of six, she had already learned the price of her fierce independence: refusing to acknowledge the Japanese flag as the Korean national flag, she was denied entrance to her first year of school. This early conflict set Kim Jai Sook on a lifetime quest to understand her obligations to her family, her culture, her country, herself, and, ultimately, to God. Hers is a story of perseverance, turmoil, and love, as she fought to maintain balance between duty and her own desires. She set her goals high. As the survivor of Japanese subjugation and two wars, she committed herself to living as a responsible and worthy person. As an adult, in pursuit of her deep desire to become a teacher, she left Korea and built a new life in Canada, where her father’s advice on dealing with people became her guiding principles. This is her story.

Blood Sisters tells the story of Jeong Yeoul, a young Korean college student in the 1980's, when the memory of President Chun Doohwan's violent suppression of student demonstrations against martial law was still fresh. Yideum captures with raw honesty the sense of dread felt by many Korean women during this time as Jeong struggles in a swirl of misguided desires and hopelessness against a society distorted by competing ideologies, sexual violence, and cultural conservatism. Facing this helplessness, her impulse is to escape into the world of art. Blood Sisters is a vivid, powerful portrayal of a woman’s efforts to live an authentic life in the face of injustice.

Juniper Song—an unforgettable new crime heroine hailed as "young, sharp, and worldly-wise" by New York Times bestselling author Meg Gardiner—returns in this smart, fast-paced follow-up to Steph Cha's critically acclaimed debut Follow Her Home Working as an apprentice at a P.I. firm, Juniper Song finds herself nose deep in a Hollywood murder scandal where the lies may be more glamorous than most, but the truths they cover are just as ugly. When a young woman named Daphne Freamon calls looking for an eye on her boyfriend, her boss punts the client to Song. Daphne is an independently wealthy painter living in New York, and her boyfriend Jamie Landon is a freelance screenwriter in Los Angeles, ghostwriting a vanity project for aging movie star Joe Tilley. Song quickly learns that there's more to this case than a simple tail, and her suspicions are confirmed when Tilley winds up dead in a hotel room. Nonetheless, when Jamie becomes the prime suspect in the movie star's murder, she agrees to help the charismatic couple discover the truth, even as the police build their case against Jamie. As she chases leads and questions grieving Hollywood insiders, she uncovers a sordid layer of blackmail and hidden identities, of a history of violence that leaves no one—not even Song—safe from judgment. An edgy, gorgeously written read, Beware Beware is perfect for fans of Megan Abbott and Tana French. It's a tale that twists around the lies we tell ourselves and others, that examines the ugliness under the skin-deep glamor of L.A. Praise for Follow Her Home "[Song] is a compelling and original protagonist... One only hopes that Cha and her driven, neo-noir detective have more opportunities to explore those troubling intersections over many books to come." –LA Times "Engrossing... Steph Cha's intriguing debut Follow Her Home works as a testament to the power of storytelling and a cautionary tale against forsaking reality for fiction...Cha elevates Follow Her Home with glimpses at the culture of Korean-American families." –Oline Cogdill, Tulsa World "Stephanie Cha's brilliant debut is as Noir as Old Nick's sense of humour. Compelling from first to last page, she takes on contemporary L.A., sweeping the reader through Chandler's twilight, heartbroken city from mansions to faux K-town hostess bars. L.A. Noir at its finest." -- Denise Mina, author of The Dead Hour

An instant bestseller in Korea and the follow up to the international bestseller, Please Look After Mom; centering on a woman’s efforts to reconnect with her aging father, uncovering long-held family secrets. Two years after losing her daughter in a tragic accident, Hon finally returns to her home in the countryside to take care of her father. At first, her father only appears withdrawn and fragile, an aging man, awkward but kind around his own daughter. Then, after stumbling upon a chest of letters, Hon discovers the truth of her father’s past and reconstructs her own family history. Consumed with her own grief, Hon had been blind to her father’s vulnerability and her family’s fragility. Unraveling secret after secret and thanks to conversations with loving family and friends, Hon grows closer to her father, who proves to be more complex than she ever gave him credit for. After living through one of the most tumultuous times in Korean history, her father’s life was once vibrant and ambitious, but spiraled during the postwar years. Now, after years of emotional isolation, Hon learns the whole truth, from her father’s affair and involvement in a religious sect, to the dynamic lives of her own siblings, to her family’s financial hardships. What Hon uncovers about her father builds towards her understanding of the great scope of his sacrifice and heroism, and of his generation as a whole. More than just the portrait of a single man, I Went to See My Father opens a window onto humankind, family, loss, and war. With this long-awaited follow-up to Please Look After Mom—flawlessly rendered by award-winning translator Anton Hur—Kyung-Sook Shin has crafted an ambitious, global, epic, and lasting novel.

More Than The Eye Can See tells the story of Gopinath Pillai, a Singaporean businessman and diplomat who served as Singapore's Non-Resident Ambassador to Iran (1989-2008) and High Commissioner to Pakistan (1994-2001). Alongside working with prominent members of Singapore's pioneering generation to strengthen the country's manufacturing profile and international trade during the Cold War, he broke into liberalising India as a trailblazing entrepreneur and contributed to the nation's public life as the first Chairman of NTUC Fairprice and Founder Chairman of the Institute of South Asian Studies.A self-described 'Jack of All Trades', Gopi's memoirs frame episodes of personal struggle against milestones in the progress of the nation. Born in Singapore to Malayalee parents in 1937, Gopi spent his early childhood in India throughout the Japanese Occupation, where he witnessed the Communist Movement in Kerala first-hand. When he returned to Singapore in 1946, Gopi grew up in a multi-racial society taking its fledgling steps as a democracy. His career took him all over — to Thailand and Malaysia as an economist and journalist and the Middle East and America as a manager — reflecting Singapore's early industrialisation and the pursuit of its values and interests abroad and at home.Co-written with John Vater, More Than The Eye Can See offers a panorama of a man and his century.

This poignant short novel follows North Korean refugee Loh Kiwan to a place where he doesn’t speak the language or understand the customs. His story of hardship and determination is gradually revealed in flashbacks by the narrator, Kim, a writer for a South Korean TV show, who learned about Loh from a news report. She traces his progress from North Korea to Brussels to London as he struggles to make his way and find a home in an unfamiliar world. Readers come to see that Kim, too, has embarked on a journey, one driven by her need to understand what drives people to live, even thrive, despite tremendous loss and despair. Her own conflicted feelings of personal and professional guilt are mirrored in the novel’s other characters: Jae, Kim’s romantic interest and producer of the TV show she once wrote for; Yunju, a young cancer victim whose illness she now regrets exploiting; Pak, a doctor who helped Loh in Brussels, yet suffers deep remorse over the many life and death decisions he has made for his patients. Cho Haejin weaves these characters into a story of hope and trust, one that asks basic questions about what it means to be human and humane. First published in 2011 in South Korea, this timely book won the 2013 Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature.