Min Jin Lee’s new novel, American Hagwonhas been in the works for almost 10 years; if it had taken 20, I would still wonder how she kept all these stories, these lives, so much pain and love in her imagination for the time it took her to find the words to embody them on the page.
This novel is the third in a series of four novels about the Korean diaspora. Pachinko, the second in the series was a finalist for the National Book Award.
A radical yet intimate novel about the complexities of immigration, the fragile promise of America, and the purpose of education, American Hagwon is also a classic page-turner populated with characters that are difficult to leave behind at the end of more than 600 pages. It’s a moving reading experience that appeals to both the head and the heart.
The Koh family is at the center of this rich narrative, which spans the years 1992 to 2007. When we meet them, John and Helen Koh have just returned to Seoul, South Korea, after six years in Sydney, Australia, where John, a senior executive at a Korean conglomerate, was stationed.
Before Australia, the Kohs lived in the United States – their three now-teenage children, Bo, DH and Mido, were born in Paramus, New Jersey. But with their family life on the move, Korea no longer feels like home, and her 13-year-old daughter Mido, the shy youngest child, is having a particularly difficult time at school.
Korea, however, will prove to be another temporary posting, thanks to a cowardly betrayal on the part of John’s oldest friend and superior at his company. Taehun Shin, we are told, was a man “clear in his professional goals and confused in his private life.”
Shin, a married man and exuberant cheater, became infatuated with a beautiful, sexually adventurous young employee named Danbi. Because Danbi is pressuring him to leave his wife, Shin orders John to make Danbi fail in the business and then fire her. John, a man of integrity, objects, but ultimately must obey his best friend’s orders. That’s when Danbi, a femme fatale to the fullest, turns the tables and sets John up for a fall.
The novel soon shifts to 1997, when the Asian financial crisis is wreaking even greater havoc. Most of the Koh family, along with a host of other fully realized characters, end up in Southern California. Even Shin and Donbi end up there.
A family network, as well as friends from school and the Korean church, help keep newcomers from sinking, even if the Kohs have to settle for less. John finds work in the kitchen at Shrimp Castle, a fish restaurant in a Korean mall. At the end of a long day, “her hair was matted with sweat and oil under the netting” and her “spotless white apron from the morning was stained with oil and soapy disinfectant.”
Almost everyone we meet is working to the bone. At the end of the novel, our omniscient narrator surprisingly introduces another key character: Shin’s ex-wife, Mary, who works at a florist in New Jersey. Mary reflects this clearly: “Over the years in her church, poor men and women her age had died of various cancers, and sometimes Mary wondered if hard work alone could kill people. »
Koh’s descendants, in whom all hopes for a better future lie, also work: all three, at one time or another, are employed by a hagwon, a private after-school preparation academy. Most hagwons – in Korea and here in America – prepare their students to excel academically and, preferably, to continue their education at Ivy League schools; but the hagwon where Koh’s children work is run by an idealistic Korean-American nicknamed Lion who thinks differently. The bittersweet setting near the end of this novel, where Lion addresses a gymnasium full of some 500 parents, all of Korean descent, and tells them that education must be transformative, not just transactional, is so powerful that it should be read by anyone called to advocate for a liberal arts education.
Lee’s style everywhere American Hagwon is striking in that it goes against the old written adage “show, don’t tell”: instead, there is a lot of exposition in this novel and, yet, not a single page is true to reality. In fact, Lee is so skillful that she conjures epiphanies from the simplest material. I wish I could read you the very last sentence of American Hagwon to demonstrate mastery, but, instead, I will simply say that the simple possessive pronoun “his” appears unexpectedly in this sentence and its effect is spiritually redemptive and emotionally overwhelming. What a novel.
Gn entert
