By Aaron Hokanson
E.J. Koh’s book The Magical Language of Others (Tin House Books, 2019), is a memoir about what it means to be someone’s child, to have descended from a place and people. It is an exploration of love and belonging. It is about the distance—of time, an ocean, a language—whatever it is that stands between ourselves and others. The memoir grows from a time, in the writer’s teenage years, when her parents left her in the care of her older brother in the United States, while they returned to South Korea to pursue a lucrative job offer. Koh is both a poet and translator; the book is punctuated by a refrain created by Koh’s translations of letters written to her by her mother during this time (photo recreations of the original letters in the Korean language are also included). In the pages between these letters, the author writes of her family history and her own experiences as a child left behind in the United States, a student in Japan, visiting her parents in South Korea and as an adult discovering herself in poetry and language.
In the early days of this pandemic, I found strange comfort in this book. There are the moments where she goes back in time to the early days of the Korean war through the experiences of her grandparents: the slow extermination of the animals at the zoo, the massacre of neighbors. The slow and then sudden departure from what had been normal felt, but less than seeing similarities (I am certain that the differences are vast) between this global moment and a war on the other side of the world that started over half a century ago, the idea of belonging—to other people, to other times, to other languages—was fitting. As mentioned, the whole of the book revolves around selections from 49 letters that E.J. Koh received from her mother in a time when they were removed by ocean, culture, language. Koh mentions that a fellow translator (a reader of her thesis) explained to her that the number 49 coincided with the number of days a soul travels in the Buddhist tradition before reincarnation. While this moment of reincarnation is beautifully represented in the final moment of the book, in her exploration of a mother and daughter’s relationship, this book takes us through a very poetic journey of self-discovery, uncertainty, history and conflict, blurring the lines between all of these aspects of our own individual and shared humanity. While it is a story about all the things that make it difficult to understand each other, about the process of translation (represented here in language and story) and misunderstanding, it ultimately rests with an assurance that this is also precisely where we can most intimately discover each other. In a moment when we are all so removed from each other and yet need each other more than ever, this book offers a salve: if we take the time to explore that distance, we will also be finding the bridges across.
Editor’s note: E.J. Koh is this year’s judge for the -1000 Below: Flash Fiction and Poetry Contest for Saint Paul’s Midway Journal. We hope your days are filled with stories that you will share in solidarity and mutual help. Submissions are accepted through May 31.
Find Your Book!
Need to get your hands on a good book while doing your work to shelter in place? The library is closed in a response of solidarity amid the COVID-19 crisis, but here are some places where you can get your hands on all the great titles. Shop independent bookstores!
SubText Books: https://subtextbooks.com/books
Moon Palace Books: https://www.moonpalacebooks.com/
The Red Balloon Bookshop: https://www.redballoonbookshop.com/
Birchbark Books: https://birchbarkbooks.com
Magers & Quinn: https://www.magersandquinn.com/
Next Chapter Booksellers: https://www.nextchapterbooksellers.com/
Irreverent Bookworm: https://irrevbooks.com/
Or you could even consider the amazing Powell’s in Portland: https://www.powells.com/; Book Shop, https://bookshop.org/; AbeBooks https://www.abebooks.com/; or Indie Bound, https://www.indiebound.org/