Book Review: Kinda Korean by Joan Sung
Kinda Korean: Stories from an American Life by Joan Sung
Publisher: She Writes Press
Publication Date: February 25, 2025
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
In this courageous memoir of parental love, intergenerational trauma, and perseverance, Joan Sung breaks the generational silence that curses her family. By intentionally overcoming the stereotype that all Asians are quiet, Sung tells her stories of coming-of-age with a Tiger Mom who did not understand American society.
Torn between her two identities as a Korean woman and a first generation American, Sung bares her struggles in an honest and bare confessional. Sifting through her experiences with microaggressions to the over fetishization of Asian women, Sung connects the COVID pandemic with the decades of violence and racism experienced by Asian American communities.
Kinda Korean is Joan Sung’s memoir of growing up the daughter of Korean immigrants and navigating her identity as both Korean and American. Her mom was a domineering Tiger Mom who held on to the ways of Korea and did not want to assimilate into American culture. She didn’t learn to speak English very well and Sung didn’t speak Korean very well, adding to their disconnect. Sung is unflinchingly honest about her traumatic childhood, both inside and outside of her home.
She’s faced microaggressions throughout her life. After she joined the Air Force, the intersectionality of being Asian and a woman made her time in the service especially hard. Throughout the book, she dispels the myth of the model minority and how it not helpful and actually hurts Asian Americans. Asian women are also fetishized by white men because of they believe Asian women are exotic and submissive. Asian hate has grown exponentially since the COVID-19 pandemic. She writes about the presumption of many people that Asians aren’t doing anything to fight against this when in actuality they are.
I enjoyed Sung’s memoir and how she weaved what is going on in society as a whole into her own personal experience as a first generation Korean American. Her bravery in telling her story was amazing. Highly recommended.
(I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.)
