Wednesday, March 14 - Krys Lee

Tonight on Bibliocracy, 8 PM on KPFK:  KRYS LEE.  Once in a while, and sometimes at exactly the right moment, a book arrives which so accurately locates, illustrates, describes and speaks to its time that the reader feels something like both baptism and drowning.  The short stories by my guest this week, Krys Lee, elevate character and observation, emotion and ideas to create an elegant and disturbing crisis of awareness.  The short stories in Drifting House, ostensibly about North and South Koreans, Korean immigrants to America, the conflicted loss and search for home and place, put what is contemporary and urgent about our political world immediately next to what is ancient, deep, and located in dream even while the flesh and bone stick out of the wounds.  In nine economically told, richly executed short stories we arrive in the world and experience the worldviews of Korean immigrants, immigrants’ children, orphans, an abandoned salary man, a lost mother, an artist and a pastor all struggling with duty and tradition and, subtly rendering perhaps that stark border which has defined the culture since at least the Korean War.  Krys Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, raised in California, and studied in the US and Korea.  Some of her stories, including some of these, originally appeared in The Kenyon Review, Narrative and California Quarterly.

Thanks for listening, on the radio or online.  Downloadable free for 90 days from the station archives.