When We Fell Apart is an unusual book recommendation since the reader actually did not like the book itself. However, the reader did find value in reading the book because it draws attention to different perspectives on Korea – especially when read alongside books translated by Korean authors born and raised in Korea. About the South of Seoul Virtual Book Club Looking for book recommendations? Welcome to the South of Seoul book club. We recommend a book every month. Such recommended books explore topics like 1) South Korean history or culture, 2) the complexity of cross-cultural life, 4) the exploration of life within the diaspora experience, and 5) lenses on Korean culture around the world. Commitment to Accessibility South of Seoul volunteers take book accessibility into consideration when recommending titles. We consider: Commitment to Diverse Lived Experiences South of Seoul volunteers seek to put lived experiences at the forefront of their recommendation choices. When considering authors we look for such things as: Reading about Korean culture from a variety of perspectives may provide readers with a greater understanding of the country and culture. Commitment to Supporting Mental Health South of Seoul also includes book recommendations that support the lives and mental health of our community. This means that books may tackle the issues related to living between cultures. This may include topics such as culture shock, language, relationships, and more. Book Recommendation by Lanae Rivers-Woods February’s South of Seoul Book Club recommendation, When We Fell Apart, is brought to you by South of Seoul founder Lanae Rivers-Woods. Rivers-Woods founded South of Seoul in 2015 and has lived in South Korea since 2011. She launched the South of Seoul book club in 2022. This is her first book review for the South of Seoul Book Club. About The Author When We Fell Apart is Soon Wiley’s debut novel. Soon Wiley was born in Nyack, New York. He received his BA in English & Philosophy from Connecticut College and he earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Wichita State University. His writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and earned him fellowships in Wyoming and France. Mr. Wiley lives in Connecticut with his wife and their two cats. My Experience Reading the Novel When We Fell Apart When I read a book, I try reading the story with as little knowledge as possible about the author. I want to show up for the story without my mind clouded by preconceived ideas. I also don’t think that creative writing needs to be entrenched in reality. Authors should have some space to bend reality. Therefore, I had no idea of the author’s gender, nationality, or history when I started reading When We Fell Apart. In fact, I kind of just lazily assumed it was written by a Korean woman. However, after starting the book I immediately started to question my approach for the first time in my life. That’s because I immediately started wondering about the author’s gender. sexuality, and relationship to Korea. The author’s female characters and an odd portrait of life in Korea felt, for lack of a better term, ‘off’. For me, the story left me with a strong ‘uncanny valley’ feeling that I couldn’t ignore. In fact, I couldn’t pay attention to the story or plot. It just felt wrong. In the book, key social details about ex-pat life and Korean life were jarringly inaccurate, while others were correct but slightly odd. Every page I read left me feeling more and more like the author simply Googled “western stereotypes of Korean life” and based the plot on that. At times it felt like whiplash as we bounced between subtle accuracy and shocking inaccuracy. There were moments you felt the author may have some connection to Korean culture, but more times it felt like a person who had watched Korea from thousands of miles away through the lens of foreign moves about Korea. As the book moved forward, I quickly realized that Min – the male lead – existed as the most developed character so I guessed the author was likely a cis-gendered male trying to be modern and write a queer female character (Yu-jin). However, the female lead Yu-jin felt like someone who could never exist. She felt like a 2-dimensional queer Korean person written by an author who had Googled things written by Westerner people about Korea. Keep in mind, the above thoughts came before I knew anything about the author. After trudging through 10 chapters of When We Fell Apart, I needed to know more about the author in order to understand what sort of ‘uncanny valley’ I was walking through. Were my assumptions true? Was this book written by a man? Had the author spent almost no time in Korea? Was this book written by a very straight person writing a queer character of a different gender? Turns out I was right on all accounts. In fact, while researching the author I came across one of the most red-flag responses I have ever read to the question, “Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?” He is quoted as saying: By far the biggest surprise was that it was easier for me to write from the female perspective than the male. I wrote Min’s point of view first, and it took a long time to get the voice and tone right. During the revision process I really labored over his sections, whereas with Yu-jin’s chapters, the writing was almost effortless. It’s kind of counter-intuitive, but sometimes it’s easier to write characters that you have some distance from. Of course, as an author, it likely feels easier to write a character of a different gender, culture, and sexuality because you can just lean into your bias. When writing characters that look like them, an author often feels pressure for honesty and accuracy in the experience. In my opinion, if a character feels “easy” to write it might be a red flag that you need to dig deeper into their experience. … Continue reading SOS Book Club Pick: When We Fell Apart