Dear readers, I am Tom Cruise-on-Oprah’s-couch crazy about “American Han,” Lisa Lee’s debut novel, which comes out on Tuesday and is one of the best things I’ve read in ages. It opens with an irresistible hook: Jane Kim’s semi-estranged mother shows up unannounced, her mink coat swishing uncomfortably close to the piles of human filth outside Jane’s apartment in a pre-gentrified San Francisco, with a rabid desire to acquire some real estate. The mink coat is a feint — economic security has always eluded the Kims — and now, well into middle age, Jane’s parents have separated without a clear plan for what’s next. Jane’s mom is one of the great immigrant mothers of recent fiction. She has inscrutable dreams, like trying to plunge porcupines out of toilets; is loyal to her fortuneteller; dispenses ludicrously offensive morsels of maternal guilt. Really, the whole Kim family is why I fell for the book. As one of the few Korean American families in Napa, Calif., in the 1980s and ’90s, they endured all manner of bewildering experiences, and that was before Jane’s dad became an enthusiastic trucker. By the time she enrolls in law school, which is where we meet her, Jane is beginning to understand the toll of her upbringing. Spending time with her mother leaves her “adrift and disoriented, as if I’d survived a game show were the losers had all died.” Her brother, Kevin, is a cop who’s distanced himself from the family, and eventually commits a heinous act of violence that forces the Kims to confront the simmering resentment and anger they’ve avoided for years. I realize that describing a novel as having a soulful yet screwball sensibility sounds close to insane, but it’s the truth; “American Han” has a fierce emotional intelligence that also feels hard-won. Over fried chicken in Los Angeles last month, at one of Koreatown’s more atmospheric restaurants, Lee and I talked about the book. Originally she “wanted to write a ‘Harold and Kumar’ adventure,” Lee told me. “I didn’t want to write something that people would think was based on me, and I didn’t want my family to read it and get mad.” After completing her M.F.A., she decided to pursue a Ph.D. in creative writing at U.S.C. to force herself to finish a manuscript. She worked with Percival Everett and Viet Thanh Nguyen in her program, which also required her to complete a critical dissertation. Lee wrote hers on han — a term that, in Korean, refers to “the sorrow and anger that grow from repeated experiences of oppression,” she said. The Kims all grapple with han in their own way — “hopeless, crippling sadness combined with anger at an unjust world.” With that at its core, it’s nothing short of miraculous that “American Han” avoids melodrama, and is often very funny. As she worked on the book during the pandemic, Lee was struck by issues of police brutality — particularly the presence of an Asian police officer at the scene of George Floyd’s killing. “So many people think of cops as bad and then they picture white cops, because they think of racist cops and you automatically think of white racist cops,” Lee said. But looking at Floyd’s death and thinking about an Asian officer, she wondered: “What is that like? What is going on in your head?” Lee had a baby while she was finishing “American Han" — the book took over a decade to complete — and in her acknowledgments she describes how motherhood impacted her writing life. As her daughter got older she’d slide notes to Lee under the door while she worked. “I love you,” her daughter wrote in cartoonish, misspelled scrawl. “I wish that I could be with you.” Can you blame her? After all, as Lee writes about mothers in “American Han”: “They’re as close to God as you can get.” See you next week. Like this email? We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
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