Wednesday, April 14, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur

 


Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on April 27, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.       

Folklorn is a novel by Angela Mi Young Hur from publisher Erewhon Books, which as a new publisher of off-beat SF/F and magical realism has really been putting out a ton of great stuff.  So I was already going to be interested in Folklorn anyway but I've also seen some high praise for it on twitter by a few writers I follow.  So yeah, I was really excited to pick up this one to see it for myself.

And Folklorn is like few novels I've read honestly, but it is absolutely tremendous.  A story of magical realism following a first generation Korean-American physicist feeling torn between worlds, between the stories of her seemingly gone-mad mother and the abuse of her now aged father, the racism and prejudice she has felt all over the world, and how all of those things seem to haunt her wherever she goes - literally perhaps as she begins to see her childhood imaginary friend guiding her toward...something. Don't get me wrong, it's not an American story really (it takes place as much in Sweden and also begins in Antarctica), but it absolutely the story of a woman, due to her Korean heritage and family, always seemingly out of place no matter where she goes, and it's utterly fascinating and compelling from beginning to end, even as it's often difficult to read.  

Trigger Warning:  The story features an abusive (physical) father and what can arguably be considered an abusive (verbally) mother, although such scenes are more often described than actually seen in the physical violence sense.  

-----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Elsa Park is an experimental physicist nearing the end of her time at a station for particle measuring in the Antarctic.  Seemingly on the path to potential scientific greatness, Elsa finds herself filled with unease over family tradition she has long fled - a family of Korean immigrants to America who have always been haunted by their past. Elsa's father is haunted by the inheritance he felt he ought to have had in Korea and responded with anger and violence, while her mother was seemingly haunted by a daughter stillborn in Korea until she had a mental breakdown and became catatonic.  Elsa's brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia in college, believing himself Jesus' brother but helped Elsa flee to boarding school at 14 and then to college in Sweden, far away from the family seemingly falling apart.  

But even getting away from her family couldn't stop Elsa from noticing how people first in America, and then in Sweden and even Antarctica reacted to the clear outsider Korean face among them. And when she begins seeing her old imaginary friend in the Antarctic and hears of her mother suddenly speaking again of old stories and Elsa's long lost sister, Elsa finds herself seemingly lost in both past and future. Soon she finds herself hunting down not just hypothetical subatomic particles, but the stories of her family and heritage, seeking answers to transform her life out of the depths of her past.
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Folklorn is a hell of a book, one which is hard to explain or review or even talk about without verging into literary and worldly criticism.  At one point the protagonist thinks to herself: "I'd grown up thinking of my life as some immigrants kid bildungsroman, but then things took a sci-fi supernatural turn in Antarctica with some recent feathery flourishes of gothic horror.  Now I'm tripping into a rom-com set-up."  And yeah all those things are there, although the book settles quite clearly after that point into magical realism, in the form of an imaginary friend from Elsa's childhood returning to haunt her at various points to push her forward in some unclear direction.  

It's an unclear direction because Elsa's whole life has been moving in an unclear direction, pushed by her constant feeling of outsiderness due to her race, her heritage, and her family.  Elsa has lived in the US, then in Sweden, and then in Antarctica, and has always felt on the outside in large part due to her race and the different stereotypes those played into - stereotypes that she even sometimes internalizes (especially in the beginning, where she in a state of insomniac-looniness begins seeing a Mongolian graduate student as a replacement for herself). Whether she was expected to be the brilliant one in the US despite a blue collar family or expected to be a sex worker by racist assholes in Sweden muttering things as she passed by, she has never stopped feeling like an Other.  And so she always feels without a home - as she's never been to Korea, and would immediately be exposed as an Other there as well - despite having spent years in these places.  These experiences of course are not limited to Elsa - a similar experience is felt by another Swedish Academic she begins a relationship with, Oskar, a Korean adoptee by a Swedish family from a foster mother who couldn't understand what she was doing wrong in taking unwanted Korean children away from Korea and trying to raise them color-blind in Sweden.  

Elsa however adds to this all with her tragic family history that she can never escape.  Her father and mother left a war-torn Korea (sorta) and always acted like things were on the verge of disaster in various different ways.  For her father, who felt cheated out of his inheritance, and then suffered physical violence from a robber, he became abusive towards his wife and kids, even if more verbally than physically towards the kids, never being able to understand his kids potential wants for a different future.  For her mother, it led her to act dangerously, even becoming a prominent loan shark, even as she spun Korean folktales for her kids, folktales that never quite seemed to make sense....up until the one day when Elsa was 14 where her mother claimed her family was haunted by their ancestors tragedies and that Elsa had a long lost sister her mother left behind in Korea instead of actually being stillborn.  After that day, Elsa's mother became catatonic, and the pressure of Elsa's mother and father led her brother seemingly to have his own mental breakdown and diagnosis of schizophrenia, leaving him to leave college and come back home.  

For Elsa,, these family tragedies leave her adrift, and her attempt to escape it fails at the start of this story when her imaginary friend from way back when returns and her mother wakes up from her catatonia for one last comment about Elsa's supposed sister.  Indeed, there are clear parallels in her shift in research to focus on a hypothetical and perhaps long-shot particle and her attempt to discover truth and meaning in her family heritage, the heritage she can't escape, and the stories based upon Korean myth that her mother tried forcing on her before breaking down. It doesn't help that all these stories seem to feature tragedies being inflicted upon the Korean girls who are the subject of them, and that she can't quite remember the last of these stories.  

Over the course of the novel, Elsa struggles to put this all together, falling between worlds and seemingly being unable to put them all together - Elsa the brilliant scientist, Elsa the Korean-American girl in a White world, Elsa the girl from a family filled with mental health problems, - all at the same time.  It all leads to a fascinating conclusion where Elsa, through discovering the past - and how it fits in with others like Oskar and her brother - comes to a realization about transformation for both herself and her theorizing.  

I'm not sure if I'm making much sense in the above, and really the only solution is to suggest you read Folklorn, a tale of science, of history, of the influence of race - especially the influence of race - and how it all ties together. This is very much a book for power in this regard, especially as an answer for anyone who claims race doesn't matter, because for Elsa, it and her family heritage and history - and for Oskar with the same - it cannot be escaped.  And Elsa - and Oskar - won't escape it by the end, but they may come together with conclusions that will allow them to move forward despite it, by not simply running away from it as Elsa did for so long, but by trying to put it together - and perhaps more interesting, trying to put together what they are NOT - with who they actually are.

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