LOVE, LOSS, & LIBERATION

IN POETRY, MEMOIR, AND NOW HER NOVEL, THE LIBERATORS, FORTHCOMING IN NOVEMBER FROM TIN HOUSE, E. J. KOH BREAKS NEW GROUND IN UNDERSTANDING THE KOREAN DIASPORA AND THE EMANCIPATING POWER OF LOVE.

BRIAN GRESKO

E. J. KOH wants to talk about love. Not in a corny or cheeseball way but rather in a deep and challenging sense. Real love. Hard-won love. The love of mothers and daughters. The love of romantic partners raising children in a new country. The love of a people and a place divided by foreign occupiers. The love of language and how, though words may not heal us, they can deliver us to recognize and respect one another’s pain and history. This use of the word love is challenging because it requires that we face love’s opposite, and it demands a deep vulnerability that the forces of power in our culture encourage us to see as shameful or weak. Even printing the word like this again and again might be…

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Poets & Writers (Digital) - 1 Issue, November/December 2023

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