Skinship

An exquisite collection from a breathtakingly new voice—centered on a constellation of Korean American families, these stories announce the debut of a master of short fiction.

A long-married couple is forced to confront their friend's painful past when a church revival comes to a nearby town . . . A woman in an arranged marriage struggles to connect with the son she hid from her husband for years . . . A well-meaning sister unwittingly reunites an abuser with his victims . . . Through the lives of an indelible array of individuals—musicians, housewives and pastors, children and grandparents, the men and women who own the dry cleaners and the mini-marts—Yoon Choi explores the Korean American experience at its interstices: where first and second generations either clash or find common ground; where meaning falls in the cracks between languages; where relationships bend under the weight of tenderness and disappointment; where displacement turns to heartbreak. Suffused with a profound understanding of humanity, Skinship is, ultimately, a searing look at the failure of intimacy to show us who the people we love truly are.