Belonging: Kim Sagwa at Litquake
Swedish American Hall | 2174 Market Street | San Francisco, California
Award-winning Korean author Kim Sagwa and memoirist Sisonke Msimang discuss the complexities of young girls on the path to womanhood, from South Korea to South Africa, Canada, and beyond.
About Mina
Crystal toils day and night to earn top grades at her cram school. She’s also endlessly texting, shopping, drinking, vexing her boyfriends, cranking up her mp3s, and fantasizing about her next slice of cheesecake. Her non-stop frenzy never quite manages the one thing that might calm her down: opening up about the pressures that are driving her to the edge. She certainly hasn’t talked with her best friend, Mina, nor Mina’s brother, whom she’s developing a serious crush on. And Crystal’s starting to lose her grip.
In this shocking English debut translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton, award-winning Korean author Kim Sagwa delivers an astonishingly complex portrait of modern-day adolescence. With pitch-perfect dialogue and a precise eye for detail, Kim creates a piercingly real teen protagonist–at once powerful, vulnerable, and utterly confused. As one bad decision leads to another, this promising life spirals to a devastating climax.
Kim Sagwa is one of South Korea’s most acclaimed emerging writers. She is the author of several novels, story collections, and works of nonfiction, and has been shortlisted for several major South Korean awards, including the Munji Prize and the Young Writers Award. Kim contributes columns to two major Seoul newspapers, and she co-translated John Freeman’s book How to Read a Novelist into Korean.