Skinship
by Yoon Choi
What It’s About
A quiet, thoughtful collection of short stories exploring the lives of Korean-American families across generations, between languages, and within the silences that hold both love and loss. Choi leans into the small details: a child’s quiet observation, a parent’s unspoken grief, the way intimacy can live inside tension.
Each story feels like a still frame, soft-spoken but emotionally dense. From caretakers to immigrants, from aging parents to drifting children, Skinship is about the distances between people who love each other but don’t always know how to say it.
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My Take
Tender. Quiet. Lingering.
Choi doesn’t push drama. She lets you sit with the ache, subtle, familiar, sometimes uncomfortably close. Not every story hit equally hard for me, but the ones that did left something behind. This is the kind of writing that listens more than it speaks.
If You Liked This, You Might Also Like:
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yōko Ogawa
My Brilliant Life by Kim Ae-ran
Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin
I Went to See My Father by Kyung-Sook Shin
Where to Find It:
Buy on Amazon • Bookshop.org • Maybe at your local library (WorldCat.org)
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My Asian Era is where literature meets culture — thoughtful reviews, quiet voices, and stories worth slowing down for.
