Crystal Hana Kim says the Korean War is so deeply ingrained in her family’s history–but so remote for Americans today–that it became the driving force for her to become a writer. “I wanted to force it into our cultural consciousness because it’s known as the Forgotten War,” Kim tells Joe Tirella on this episode of CUNY Book Beat. “I went to public school [in New York] and I think the Korean War was one paragraph sandwiched between World War Two and the Vietnam War. And I found that really frustrating as a child because my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, all of my family experienced it.”
The Korean War is the backdrop of Kim’s widely hailed 2018 debut novel, If You Leave Me, in which she digs into her cultural roots to tell the story of a young woman’s life-altering choices as she and her family struggle to survive the war. Now a visiting assistant professor at Queens College, Kim was named to the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 list in 2022, and her second novel, The Stone Home, will be published next year.

* More about Crystal Hana Kim and If You Leave Me