The Liberators

I love a book that surprises me with beautiful writing, unexpected turns of phrases, and inventive storytelling. This short novel is one of those books. The story follows a South Korean family across thirty years, with backstories revealing the trauma of Korean history. It’s an emotional read.

Korea’s legacy of war, colonization, division, dictatorships, and missing persons has shattered the lives of the characters. Immigration to America does not fulfill their dreams. The Korean American community is still emotionally and culturally linked to the old country, and some dream of the reunification of their country which had been divided by America after the Korean war.

There are many memorable scenes, including the family watching the show more 2018 Olympics opening ceremony; during the traditional releasing of doves some landed on the Olympic cauldron; when it was lit, they were burned alive.

The Liberators is a fantastic read.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book. show less

A saga of two Korean families spanning four generations and continents.

THE LIBERATORS explores generational trauma, family, memory, and inheritance. Koh’s writing is poetic and poignant. There were times where I had to re-read sections as I was getting the characters confused, though overall, this was a great read.

This book is a surprisingly short and spare telling of 30+ years in the life of a woman, Insuk, who flees South Korea for California with her husband Sungho after her own father is arrested and disappears. There, they build a life with Sungho's mother and their own son Henry. We see their struggles with each other, with cultural expectations, work, with missing a united Korea.

Koh does this all in just over 200 pages--we get Korean history, a family's history, with activists and immigrants' frustrations, Henry's frustrations as first generation, and the DIL-MIL relationship.

LARB's Radio Hour has an interesting interview with EJ Koh about this book. I admit the history in it is sparse, but I have read a surprising amount of Korean and show more Korean diaspora lit in the last 10 years or so, so this fit right into a framework I already have (Pachinko, Crying in H Mart, When Spring Comes to the DMZ, The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness, Don Mee Choi's poetry, and more). show less