The impossibility of fully knowing someone else, or indeed oneself (the inevitable lacunae!), is an eternal theme of fiction, framed in infinite ways. The immigrant experience, in which multicultural characters necessarily navigate these gaps, is one such frame, and Yoon Choi’s beautiful debut story collection Skinship (Knopf, $26) uses it to bring a rich and engaging new voice to contemporary American letters. With refreshing amplitude, patience, and (dare I say) wisdom, Choi’s stories explore the complexities of her characters’ diverse experiences ... In each story, Choi evokes a world entire, an endeavor that extends beyond content into form.
Believe the hype. Choi's collection of short stories is an inventive, dazzling work that probes the Korean-American experience from myriad angles and perspectives, wielding the double-edged sword of the hyphen to superb effect. Each piece is a banger ... She moves confidently between countries and decades, enriching her surfaces with details from the methods of Beethoven and Rachmaninoff to foods found in a Korean deli (beef leg bones and rainbow rice cakes) ... Choi brings not only a mastery of technique but also a wry humor to her characters ... She probes relationships — particularly marriage — with candor ... From its intricate architecture to its beautifully crafted sentences, Skinship is one of this year's literary triumphs.
... there is an element of affection, one that seeps through every page of Choi’s debut ... Choi’s characters live, forget, make bonds, break them, heal them or not. Their affections are no less deep for the circumstances that often separate them from one another.
The stories are given time and space to unfurl ... Choi’s writing is elegant, and there is a lacquered beauty to the tales. But what lingers is not the prose but the weight of other worlds, absent ancestors, and the diaspora’s awkward longing for a disappeared past and an unattainable future.
Once in a while, in the torpid weeks of late summer, a new writer appears whose voice has so much zest and authority, they pre-emptively steal some of the spotlight from the big Fall books. Skinship, a just-published short story collection by Yoon Choi, is in that magical category of debuts. Reading Choi's stories reminds me of how I felt when I first read the works of other singular sensations like Kevin Wilson or Karen Russell, writers who do things with language and storytelling that no one else has quite done before ... I know: immigration is hardly a fresh subject and it's especially popular in memoirs and fiction these days. But, it's Choi's approach, the way her stories unexpectedly splinter out from a single life to touch upon decades of family history shaped by immigration that make them something special ... All these stories are standouts, but the title story Skinship is in a class of its own ... Choi is the kind of writer whose work creates situations and emotions so complex, we don't even have the words for them, at least not in English. In this extraordinary collection, Choi nudges us readers into widening our vocabularies.
Choi tells eight tales of Korean Americans, skillfully highlighting both the particulars of their experience and also the extent to which they share challenges in common with other immigrants to the United States ... Most collections have one or two entries that don't quite measure up to the quality of the volume as a whole, but that's not the case here. Each of Choi's stories is distinguished by careful character development, patient exposition and an emotional effect that deepens as the story proceeds.
With fine attention to detail, Yoon Choi’s fictional debut Skinship welcomes readers into the lives of immigrant and first-generation Korean Americans ... each chapter is a different take on how life, culture and language interact as characters navigate unfamiliar places ... Each chapter takes on a distinct voice and perspective, highlighting the intimacies perhaps known only by those who straddle the fence of two worlds ... Choi’s writing closely details the emotions and inner lives of her characters; they feel real in a way that rings true, even when the truth is a little ugly. Choi does not shy away from depicting the colorism deeply rooted in Korean culture; the sometimes willful refusal to acknowledge problems; and the heavy emphasis on saving face and avoiding shame ... Her collection is a fresh take on the experience of newcomers to America — stories of love, disappointment and sacrifice.
The characters in Choi’s stories are caught in-between cultures, families, generations, even life and death. Especially stupendous are her Korean immigrant women-in-flux ... Rare is the impeccable first collection ... Multiple prestige outlets have previously published the Korean-born, Long Island-raised, Johns Hopkins/Stanford-educated Stegner Fellow, presciently aware that Choi’s debut would be a masterpiece.
The rare story collection that draws you in so completely that the pages turn themselves...That’s the happy experience of reading Choi’s debut book of eight luxuriously long stories ... Choi’s stories are both closely observed and expansive, a feat of narrative engineering that places her next to Alice Munro. Nearly every one builds to what feels like an epiphany, or a pearl of wisdom, only to rush on for more pages as though to remind us that life does not stand still, that flux is the normal state of things, and loss always lurks on love’s horizon ... An exceptional debut.
... poignant ... While Choi tends to lean on similar narrative elements, she handles them with skill and humanity, and succeeds in making every character complex. Each voice has something meaningful to say in this accomplished collection.
