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The Radio 2 Book Club with Catherine Chung

Catherine Chung joins Jo for the latest edition of the Radio 2 Book Club to discuss Forgotten Country.

Catherine Chung joins Jo for the latest edition of the Radio 2 Book Club to discuss Forgotten Country.

On the night Janie waits for her sister, Hannah, to be born, her grandmother tells her a story: Since the Japanese occupation of Korea, their family has lost a daughter in every generation, so Janie is charged with keeping Hannah safe. As time passes, Janie hears more stories, while facts remain unspoken. Her father tells tales about numbers, and in his stories everything works out. In her mother鈥檚 stories, deer explode in fields, frogs bury their loved ones in the ocean, and girls jump from cliffs and fall like flowers into the sea. Within all these stories are warnings.

Years later, when Hannah inexplicably cuts all ties and disappears, Janie embarks on a mission to find her sister and finally uncover the truth beneath her family鈥檚 silence. To do so, she must confront their history, the reason for her parents鈥� sudden move to America twenty years earlier, and ultimately her conflicted feelings toward her sister and her own role in the betrayal behind their estrangement.

Weaving Korean folklore within a modern narrative of immigration and identity, Forgotten Country is a fierce exploration of the inevitability of loss, the conflict between obligation and freedom, and a family struggling to find its way out of silence and back to one another.

Catherine Chung was born in Evanston, Illinois, and grew up in New York, New Jersey, and Michigan. She studied mathematics at the University of Chicago and received her MFA from Cornell University. Chung is one of Granta鈥檚 New Voices. She lives in Brooklyn.

1 hour, 57 minutes

Last on

Mon 7 Sep 2020 19:00
大象传媒 Radio 2

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Music Played

  • Jet

    Are You Gonna Be My Girl

    • Hits 60 (Various Artists).
    • Sony Music TV.

  • 顿惭础鈥檚

    The Glow

    • The Glow.
    • Infectious Music.

  • Charli xcx

    Boom Clap

  • The Go! Team

    Cookie Scene

    • Memphis Industries.

  • Declan McKenna

    Rapture

  • The Flirtations

    Nothing But A Heartache

    • 60's Soul Mix 2 (Various Artists).
    • Decca.
    • 1.

  • Poppy Ajudha

    BLACK JOY. BLACK PEACE. BLACK JUSTICE

  • Jeff Buckley

    Lilac Wine

  • hard life

    Nightmares

  • Regina Spektor

    Fidelity

  • George Ezra

    Shotgun

    • Staying At Tamara's.
    • Columbia.

  • Rihanna, Ye & Paul McCartney

    FourFiveSeconds

    • (CD Single).
    • Roc Nation.

  • Toots & The Maytals

    54-46 Was My Number

  • Gizmo Varillas

    One Day At A Time

    • Out Of The Darkness.
    • Muisca Records.

  • Jo Harrop and Jamie McCredie

    Guilty

  • The Wonder Stuff

    A Wish Away

    • The Eight Legged Groove Machine.
    • Polydor.
    • 8.

  • Paul Weller

    Gravity (Sofa Session, 03 September 2020)

  • Mabes

    Danny

    • Danny.
    • 1.

  • Nat King Cole

    Smile

    • The Nat King Cole Story (Disc 2).
    • Capitol.

  • Saint Saviour

    Taurus

    • Tomorrow Again.
    • 10.

  • Paul Simon

    Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes

    • The Paul Simon Anthology (Disc 2).
    • Warner Bros.
    • 2.

  • The Paper Kites

    For All You Give (feat. Lucy Rose)

  • Alexander Ebert

    Truth

    • Alexander.
    • 3.

  • Cliff Edwards

    When You Wish Upon a Star

    • Classic Disney Volume II (Various Artists).
    • Walt Disney Records.

Broadcast

  • Mon 7 Sep 2020 19:00
    大象传媒 Radio 2