Crystal Hana Kim is the author of If You Leave Me.From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: You note that in writing this novel, you “wanted to skew from the traditional male-centered war narrative and focus on what happened to the women left behind.” How did you come up with your character Haemi?Visit Crystal Hana Kim's website.
A: All four of my grandparents survived the Korean War, so I grew up learning bits and pieces about this terrible history.
I’m particularly close with my maternal grandmother, who had to flee her home with her widowed mother at the start of the war. I always loved how loud, independent, and unrelenting she was, so when I began writing, I wanted to have a similarly fierce heroine as the central figure of my novel.
I’m also deeply interested in gender, femininity, and society, so I wanted to investigate these constructs while also considering the trauma of war for...[read on]
--Marshal Zeringue