Yoon Choi Books In Order

Publication Order of Collections

Yoon Choi is a published American author.

She was born in Seoul, Korea. Her family moved to the United States when she was three years old. Yoon Choi grew up in Long Island, New York. She attended Johns Hopkins University, where she graduated with her BA and her MA. She then attended Stanford University, where she graduated with her MA.

She has written stories and essays that have been published in such places as Narrative Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, and The Best American Short Stories 2018.

Yoon Choi resides with her husband. They have four children together and reside in Anaheim, California.

Her writing has also been entered and recognize in contests that have been run by Narrative Magazine as well as Glimmer Train Press.

Yoon Choi is a former Stegner Fellow from Stanford.

She was awarded the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize in 2022 for Debut Fiction for her book Skinship.

Skinship is the debut book from author Yoon Choi. It is a collection of short stories, eight in total, written by Choi. The book came out in 2021 and gives an insight into the experience of life as a Korean-American, as told through different immigrant generations.

The book has a small biography of the author. Choi said in interviews with Kirkus and The Korea Society that after college, she didn’t want to write about her experiences in her life as a Korean immigrant. She felt compelled to make her stories more western and European. This thinking led her to write nothing, and she couldn’t come up with character names. She stepped away from writing for some years to come back to it after embracing her cultural experience.

The word is used in the Japanese culture to denominate physical affection between family or friends that is nonsexual. It can be for a mother giving affection to her children, but is not just in that scenario. It combines the words ‘skin’ and ‘kinship’ and has been used for a long time by the Japanese and made it to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2021.

One of the stories included is titled Skinship. It is also much of the theme that runs throughout all the stories. It shows the relationships between the characters, how complex they are, and if the skinship is shown in different ways.

The author said that she grew up hearing her mother use the word. She says that Koreans are ‘deeply emotional’, and they have a sense of affection not only physically but nationally too. It is part of why it reflects the culture of Korea so deeply.

In America, Korean culture has not always been represented until recent years. This is perhaps due to the wave of immigrants coming in the sixties to the nineties, so there was less time for the integration of culture. However, these days and in books like Skinship there is increasing representation of Koreans in popular culture in the United States.

Yoon has had to make specific choices on how to show language uses as well as differences due to being bilingual. Choi says that she tried to stay true to Korean people and how they speak in English without contributing to a negative stereotype of something as such.

Skinship is the first book from Yoon Choi. There are eight stories in this book for the readers to take on, each reflecting the theme of ‘skinship’ in some way.

There is ‘The Church of Abundant Life’. This is a story where a married couple coming from Korea own their own convenience store in Philadelphia. It is told from the point of view of Soo-ah, the wife. Her husband Jae-woo is obsessed with the American dream and fights with her when she doesn’t agree with his business decisions.

Another story that is included is ‘First Language’. This is when a woman named Sae-Ri is Korean and set up with a matchmaker with an American man after having a kid out of wedlock as a teen with her English tutor. When her mother can no longer take care of the child, she has to tell the truth to her husband. She shows how they integrated the son into their lives together and shows the differences culturally between a Korean marriage and an American one.

‘A Map of the Simplified World’ is also included in this book of stories. Ji-won is a third grader from Korea who came to America the year previous. Her teacher has a map of the origins of everyone in the class to celebrate the diversity, but it only points out their differences. Ji-won makes friends with an Indian named Anjali. They find a common shared ground that may be turned upside down suddenly with an unexpected outbreak of lice.

‘Solo Works for Piano’ is another story from Yoon Choi in this collection. It focuses on Albert, a middle-aged man who has undiagnosed autism. He is a trained pianist and has tons of memories from the past when a student in his college class looks for him to teach piano to her daughter. Sasha assumed that Albert knew he has autism, just like her daughter. But it becomes apparent that he has not realized this. To understand how he looks at the world, he must look inside.

‘Skinship’ is the story that the book is named for. To get away from an abusive father, a young girl makes her way with her mother and brother to Korea. So-hyun will be staying with her mother’s sister and Susie, the cousin of the girl. The girls are the same age, twelve, but the cousin tells Susie that her family isn’t welcome. Her mother is treated like a maid. Years down the line, the transformation of the dynamic within the family is finally shown and the reader gets to see how much things have changed.

‘The Art of Losing’ is a short story by Yoon Choi included in this book. Mo-sae is an older man, and he is contending with early Alzheimer’s disease. His wife is trying to take care of him, and Mo-sae is trying to hold onto memories as they fade. He does his best to try and remind himself of all the things that he has to remember. His wife is also dealing with her own secret illness as they try to find balance in life.

‘The Loved Ones’ is yet another short story in this book, the seventh. Happy Hyuk-jae is a Korean man who was adopted by a white woman in America. He can’t find a job and shadows after a nurse at the hospital. The patient is a dying Korean war hero. This story showcases the different experiences of two characters with their own culture.

‘Song and Song’ is the final story in this collection. A woman tries to connect with her sister and her teen daughter after the loss of her mother. The sister has a different personality from her and they don’t speak until it’s been a decade after the passing of their mother. The woman tries to get her family back together with a trip to Europe, with all of the complications of their relationship on display. Read Skinship by Yoon Choi to experience each of these wonderful stories for yourself!