Skinship: Stories

"Immigration is a popular literary subject, but it’s Yoon Choi’s approach – the way the eight stories in this debut collection splinter out to touch on decades of family history – that makes this special. Our narrator in the title story, for instance, is a 13-year-old Korean girl named So-hyun, who describes how she and her brother skip school one morning. What we learn is that they’re not cutting, but fleeing with their mother to an aunt’s house in Virginia because their father is abusive. So-hyun’s account of becoming dependent on her relatives’ “kindness” is a master class by Choi in the art of show, don’t tell."