The Magical Language of Others: A Memoir

by E. J. Koh Narrated by E. J. Koh

Overview

A tale of deep bonds to family, place, language?of hard-won selfhood told by a singular, incandescent voice.

After living in America for over a decade, Eun Ji's parents return to Korea for work, leaving fifteen-year-old Eun Ji and her brother behind in the family's new California home. Overnight, Eun Ji finds herself in a world made strange in her mother's absence. Her mother writes letters over the years seeking forgiveness and love?letters Eun Ji cannot understand until she finds them years later hidden in a box.

The letters lay bare the impact of her mother's departure, as Eun Ji gets to know the woman who raised her and left her behind. Eun Ji is a student, a traveler, a dancer, a poet, and a daughter coming to terms not only with her parents' prolonged absence, but her family's history: her grandmother's Jun's years as a lovesick wife in Daejeon, the horrors her grandmother Kumiko witnessed during the Jeju Island Massacre. Where, Koh asks, do the stories of our mothers and grandmothers end and ours begin? How do we find words?in Korean, Japanese, English, or any language?to articulate the profound ways that distance can shape love?

The Magical Language of Others is a fearless and poetic mind grappling with forgiveness, reconciliation, legacy, and intergenerational trauma?conjuring an epic saga and love story between mothers and daughters spanning four generations.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Koh’s book is a tremendous gift. . . . A wonder."— The San Francisco Chronicle

"A moving portrait of abandonment, forgiveness, and the strength of maternal love."— TIME

"Poignant…. Koh writes beautifully of the sacrifices made for love and of the intergenerational tensions between a mother and daughter. "— Oprah Daily

"Stunning."— Alexander Chee, author of How To Write An Autobiographical Novel

"A beautifully crafted saga."— Nicole Chung, author of All You Can Ever Know

"Indisputably brilliant."— Jeannie Vanasco, author of Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl

"Exquisite. . . . This memoir will pierce you."— Crystal Hana Kim, author of If You Leave Me

"Koh remarkably and beautifully translates the language of mothers as the language of survivors."— Don Mee Choi, author of DMZ Colony

"I could read this book a thousand times over."— Sarah Blake, author of Naamah

"A lyrical and profound personal excavation."— Buzzfeed, Most Anticipated Book of the Year

"Exquisite."— Literary Hub

"Powerful. . . . Koh’s success as a poet shines through in the beauty and delicacy of her prose."— Book Riot

"A cinematic and multigenerational saga."— The Stranger

"Magnificent. . . . This is a memoir that needs to be read more than once."— International Examiner

"A haunting, gorgeous narrative that is lonely but lushly told. . . . Brilliant."— The Star Tribune

"A beautiful, scorching memoir."— Chicago Review of Books

"Weaving the handwritten Korean letters, the English translations and longer chapters recounting her own story intertwined with those of the women who came before her, Koh (who is now based in Seattle) renders a uniquely beautiful work of literature."— The Seattle Times

"Powerful…. [Koh] fearlessly grapples with forgiveness, reconciliation, legacy and intergenerational trauma."— Net-A-Porter

"A masterpiece, a love letter to mothers and daughters everywhere."— Shelf Awareness, Starred Review

"A coming-of-age story, a family story, and a meditation on language and translation, with an emotional range to match."— Caitlin Horrocks, author of The Vexations

"Give yourself over to her narrative territory and the resetting of the borders of lineage, language, and lives lost."— Shawn Wong, author of American Knees

"It’s really beautiful. . . . A compassionate, vulnerable, sad, and loving book about mother-daughter relationships. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I read it."— Amanda Toronto, WORD Bookstore, as heard on Minneapolis Public Radio

"Fascinating."— Book Riot

Kirkus Reviews

2019-09-29
How a series of letters helped the author understand why her parents left when she was a teenager.

When Koh (A Lesser Love: Poems, 2017) was 15, her mother and father left her and her older brother in California to move back to Korea, where Koh's father had been offered a lucrative job. "It was the kind of opportunity," she writes, "others might envy or criticize….Both position and pay left a knot of amazement on my parents' faces." The position was supposed to last three years, after which they would return to their children. But then the contract kept getting extended, leaving the author feeling abandoned. Her mother wrote letters and called home on a regular basis, but Koh struggled with her absence. Years later, she rediscovered the box of tear-stained letters written primarily in Korean and set about translating them. In the process, she began to see her mother in a more rounded, fleshed-out form and to fully comprehend the love transmitted through her mother's words and her ongoing pleas for forgiveness for leaving her daughter at such a pivotal age. Koh was also able to understand more about her grandmother, who witnessed the terrible 1948 massacre on Jeju Island, and what it means to be a mixture of Korean, Japanese, and American. The author includes her translations of some of her mother's letters as well as the originals. Her bewilderment regarding her mother's decision is deeply evident, as are her gradual perceptions about how the move affected her mother. Koh also provides information on her travels to Japan, where she studied, and her brief stint as a dancer in Korea, and she explains how she eventually found her way into a poetry writing program in college and how that further helped her grasp the feelings embedded in her mother's letters.

Intimate, subtle insights about a unique mother-daughter relationship.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177845319
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	04/06/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

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