{"id":46487,"date":"2020-02-12T11:12:20","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T16:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=46487"},"modified":"2020-02-12T10:21:22","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T15:21:22","slug":"five-more-to-go-kim-sagwas-b-book-and-me-in-the-booklist-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/five-more-to-go-kim-sagwas-b-book-and-me-in-the-booklist-reader\/","title":{"rendered":"Five More to Go: Kim Sagwa\u2019s b, Book, and Me [in The Booklist Reader]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"b, Book, and Me<\/a><\/strong> by Kim Sagwa and translated by Sunhee Jeong<\/p>\n

Although this book is set in a coastal suburb outside Seoul, the cycle of neglect by stressed or careless adults can and does happen anywhere. In such an all-too-familiarly indifferent environment, lauded Korean writer Kim introduces three misfits, each struggling for their very existence: two teen girls and a socially outcast, self-isolated young man. The titular \u201cMe\u201d is Rang, whose disengaged parents provide financial privilege but care little about her actual well-being. Her only friend is \u201cb,\u201d whose family\u2019s poverty keeps her trapped \u201cwhere people who are ruined live.\u201d In a downtown caf\u00e9 ironically named Alone, they meet \u201ca strange guy\u201d named Book \u2013 who does nothing but, well, read books. Abuse and power shifts prove inevitable. At turns raw and piercing, dreamy and surreal, Kim\u2019s latest import \u2013 urgently translated by Sunhee Jeong \u2013 is a pressing indictment of today\u2019s too-often onerous transition toward uncertain adulthood.<\/p>\n

Difficult coming-of-age novels are, alas, a global staple. Neglected children and missing adults \u2013 by choice or circumstance \u2013 populate these five notable titles. Surviving childhood is too often more miraculous than guaranteed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Bad Friends<\/a><\/strong> by Ancco and translated by Janet Hong<\/p>\n

Only the back, front, and inside covers show color here, in muted pastels. Within are black-and-white panels so disturbing and brutal that any further vibrancy might prove overwhelming. And yet, despite the horrifying, can\u2019t-turn-away abuse, Korean comics creator Ancco manages to infuse her extraordinary portrait-of-an-artist-as-a-young-teen narrative with redemption, contentment, and \u2013 yes \u2013 even happiness. \u200b\u200bMaking her English-language debut by way of award-winning Canadian translator Hong, Ancco uncompromisingly exposes societal dysfunction and punitive exploitation, especially of young women, while acknowledging and memorializing the saving power (for some) of devoted friendship.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"A Girl Returned<\/a><\/strong> by Donatella Di Pietrantonio and translated by Ann Goldstein<\/p>\n

The unnamed narrator is 13, raised by two affectionate parents in a comfortable city home where she has her own room. School, swim and dance lessons, a nearby best friend, and a house a short walk away from the sea are the life she\u2019s known. And then, one August afternoon in 1975, she\u2019s driven to an apartment in a small village and abandoned there to become the \u201carminuta<\/em>, the one who was returned.\u201d The mother she\u2019s always known is sick, perhaps dying. Her father won\u2019t raise her alone. She\u2019s told, \u201cmy real parents wanted me back.\u201d She\u2019s now one of five children in a family who has no room for her, reduced to neglect, hunger, and occasional abuse. As she navigates her new life, she will need to learn acceptance and practice rejection in order to survive. Italian author Di Pietrantonio makes her English-language debut, thanks to Elena Ferrante translator Goldstein.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Educated<\/a><\/strong> by Tara Westover<\/p>\n

As the youngest of seven children born to a junkyard-tending father and midwife-herbalist mother in remote Idaho, Westover realizes at seven the single fact \u201cthat makes [her] family different: we don\u2019t go to school.\u201d Her family espouses Mormonism, although their practices tend toward isolated fundamentalism. Her father\u2019s distrust of government, doctors, and education left Westover without a birth certificate or medical and school records. Neglect and abuse were common. Encouraged by a brother who left, Westover began the process of getting \u201ceducated\u201d when she entered her first-ever classroom at 17 as a Brigham Young University freshman. Basic history \u2013 the Holocaust, civil rights movement \u2013 was yet unknown to her. She progresses to Cambridge, Harvard, and back to Cambridge, where she earns a history PhD. With steely, almost detached resolve, Westover endures and escapes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"GO<\/a><\/strong> by Kazuki Kaneshiro and translated by Takami Nieda<\/p>\n

Japan and Korea\u2019s centuries-long, combative history has long made Koreans in Japan second-class citizens. Kaneshiro, who is Korean Japanese, channels his own experiences into his teenage protagonist, Sugihara, a Japan-born-and-raised ethnic Korean. Sugihara decides to transfer into a Japanese high school after attending only Korean schools. Three years later, he\u2019s still plagued with violent rejection, and his only Japanese friend is another pariah, a yakuza\u2019s son. And then he meets a girl, and the deeper their love, the harder it becomes to reveal his secret. The title is a homophone in Japanese for language, an honorific prefix, the number five, the strategic game, and more; these several meanings constitute a pointed reminder of the complexity of people, relationships, and identity. Translator Nieda provides gratifying Anglophone access to Kaneshiro\u2019s searing ruminations \u2013 heightened by Malcolm X and Bruce Lee, softened by Miles Davis and Brahms \u2013 on history, xenophobia, and, of course, love.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All<\/a><\/strong> by Laura Ruby<\/p>\n

Ruby\u2019s narrator \u2013 her name eventually revealed as Pearl \u2013 is dead. Pearl\u2019s primary object of attention is not; Frankie, who\u2019s 14 in 1941, is a \u201chalf orphan\u201d relegated to a Chicago orphanage with her siblings by their living Italian immigrant father, who (relatively) lavishes his three children with gifts during visits \u2013 but claims he\u2019s financially unable to bring them home. When he remarries, he further deserts his family and heads to Colorado with his shrewish new wife and her children. Disappointment, even abuse, looms for Frankie, alleviated by rare moments of mischievous fun, surprising bonds, and maybe a chance at first love. While Pearl observes others, she intertwines glimpses of her own corporeal life of victimization and abandonment. \u201cThree or ten or thirteen doorways, there are wolves behind them all,\u201d one of Pearl\u2019s ghost friends intones, but resilience and strength will propel both teens to open the doorways and confront the necessary challenges to move forward toward freedom.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: “Five More to Go: Kim Sagwa\u2019s B, BOOK, AND ME,” The Booklist Reader<\/em>, February 11, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b, Book, and Me by Kim Sagwa and translated by Sunhee Jeong Although this book is set in a coastal suburb outside Seoul, the cycle of neglect by stressed or careless adults can and does happen anywhere. In such an all-too-familiarly indifferent environment, lauded Korean…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,23,6,76,37,7243,107,60,6535,66,31],"tags":[8190,8532,8797,8191,6608,6668,7235,22,58,8533,7923,10,11,8534,7753,242,51,7238,7754,8606,6607,13,129,39,29,55,44,8796,7755,7924,8929],"class_list":["post-46487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-european","category-fiction","category-japanese","category-korean","category-lists","category-memoir","category-nonethnic-specific","category-repost","category-translation","category-young-adult-readers","tag-ancco","tag-ann-goldstein","tag-b-book-and-me","tag-bad-friends","tag-bookdragon","tag-booklist","tag-booklist-reader","tag-civil-rights","tag-coming-of-age","tag-donatella-di-pietrantonio","tag-educated","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-girl-returned","tag-go","tag-horror-ghost-story","tag-identity","tag-janet-hong","tag-kazuki-kaneshiro","tag-kim-sagwa","tag-laura-ruby","tag-love","tag-mother-daughter-relationship","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-race-racism","tag-religious-differences","tag-siblings","tag-sunhee-jeong","tag-takami-nieda","tag-tara-westover","tag-thirteen-doorways-wolves-behind-them-all"],"yoast_head":"\nFive More to Go: Kim Sagwa\u2019s b, Book, and Me [in The Booklist Reader] - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/five-more-to-go-kim-sagwas-b-book-and-me-in-the-booklist-reader\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Five More to Go: Kim Sagwa\u2019s b, Book, and Me [in The Booklist Reader] - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"b, Book, and Me by Kim Sagwa and translated by Sunhee Jeong Although this book is set in a coastal suburb outside Seoul, the cycle of neglect by stressed or careless adults can and does happen anywhere. 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