Skinship

Skinship: Stories is a collection of eight short stories by Yoon Choi, each centering on Korean American characters as they navigate immigration, family bonds, cultural identity, and loss. The stories span decades and settings, from a convenience store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to a hospice room in Simi Valley, California.

In "The Church of Abundant Life," Soo and Jae, a Korean immigrant couple, run a convenience store in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Lancaster. When Jae brings home a Korean newspaper advertising a revival led by Reverend Hong Ki-tae, Soo recognizes Ki-tae from their youth: He was her English tutor and quietly loved her, but she fell for his army friend, the bold but poor Jae. Ki-tae married a woman named Chun-ja, and their twin boys were killed in the 1995 Sampoong Department Store collapse in Seoul; Chun-ja survived but lost part of her left arm. Ki-tae's grief sermon, Take This Cup, made him famous. Soo attends the revival and finds Ki-tae's performance sincere but incomplete. In the lobby, she encounters Chun-ja staffing the book table, and they share a warm reunion. Chun-ja asks about Soo's children; Soo admits she has none. Outside, Soo reflects on how choices made in love or pride devised the sorrows of a lifetime.

"First Language" is narrated in broken, accented English by Sae-ri, a Korean immigrant, as she and her husband, James, a Korean American police officer, drive to Second Chance Ranch, a Christian reform program in Pennsylvania. In flashbacks, Sae-ri reveals that as a teenager in Korea she had a son, Min-soo, whom she left behind when a relative arranged her marriage to James. Years later, she confessed and James agreed to bring the boy to America. Min-soo arrived at age seven and struggled to adjust. The family sent him to the ranch, but through recalled conversations with a pastor, it emerges that Min-soo has been writing love letters to another boy and is being expelled. Sae-ri has not told James. At the ranch, she finds Min-soo, hugs him despite his resistance, and grinds her knuckles into his head, an act of fierce maternal love. They walk toward the car where James is waiting.

"A Map of the Simplified World" follows Ji-won Li, a Korean immigrant girl in third grade in Rego Park, Queens, who befriends Anjali Anand, a new Indian American student. They bond over shared immigrant sensibilities and a tacit agreement not to discuss their home lives. During a school lice check, Ji-won is found to have lice. Most students return quickly, but Anjali is absent for days. When she returns, her waist-length braid has been cut to her ears. A cruel note mocking Anjali circulates through the class, and when it reaches Ji-won, she reads it and passes it on. The narrative jumps forward to Ji-won's senior year: Writing college essays, she recognizes her capacity for both solidarity and complicity, and that with every gain comes a small renunciation.

"Solo Works for Piano" centers on Albert Uhm, a former bronze medalist at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition who teaches at Hofstra University. Albert lives alone, governed by rigid routines, divorced after a brief marriage marked by his aversion to physical intimacy. A voicemail from his old conservatory friend Sasha Silber, now Sasha Moore, revives memories of a rooftop encounter years ago: Physical contact escalated, but Albert was overwhelmed by sensory revulsion and vomited. They never spoke again. Sasha now wants Albert to teach her 10-year-old daughter, Alisa, who played "Frère Jacques" at age two but did not speak until five and has been through 17 teachers. At the lesson, Alisa refuses the assigned piece and launches into brilliant variations on "Hot Cross Buns." When Albert tries to join in, Alisa stops, kicks the piano, and begins hitting herself. Sasha restrains her, but Alisa runs. When Albert asks what is wrong, Sasha replies: "Don't you know? Can't you tell?" Albert does not call back, but he memorizes her number, wondering whether he can let them into his life.

The title story, "Skinship," is narrated by So-hyun. She, her younger brother Ji-ho, and their mother flee their abusive father in Korea and emigrate to Annandale, Virginia, moving in with their mother's sister and her husband. So-hyun makes a private pact: She will observe, endure, and reveal nothing. Their grandmother dies, and the aunt returns from the funeral having met So-hyun's father and given him money, invoking the Korean-English word skinship, meaning physical closeness, as essential to family life. Their father arrives, charming but diminished. When Ji-ho is suspended from school, their mother beats him with a badminton racket, then turns it on herself. Their father closes the door, addresses their mother tenderly as ja-gi-ya, a Korean term of endearment husbands use for their wives, and draws his belt to discipline Ji-ho. The narration shifts forward: The family leaves the aunt's house, the father finds work, and the children go to college. So-hyun reflects that absolution is probably common in families.

"The Art of Losing" follows Han Mo-sae, an elderly man with advancing dementia, and his wife, Young-ja, as they care for their grandson Jonathan. Mo-sae's memories surface unpredictably: his failed engineering degree, meeting Young-ja through a Korean church, her stew that smelled of home. Young-ja has atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart condition she keeps secret. When Mo-sae rejoins the church choir for a Christmas cantata, he walks to the front of the stage during Handel's Messiah and attempts to sing alongside the soloist, exposing his condition publicly. Young-ja collapses and is later hospitalized. Alone with the sleeping grandson, Mo-sae hears organ music and memory floods back. He recalls his father teaching him to swim, saying it is like singing: a scary moment of trust, then lightness. He turns on every light, covers the boy, and sits by the door, watching so he will not forget.

"The Loved Ones" takes place in a hospice where Young-shik Kwon lies dying. Happy Hyukjae Anderson, a 19-year-old Korean adoptee, serves as an aide to Geneva Williams, a veteran hospice nurse. Young-shik's daughter Sook-hee, a professor of East Asian Studies, arrives and clashes with her sister-in-law over the administration of morphine. Hannah, Young-shik's granddaughter, arrives from UC Berkeley and sits with Happy on the front step. She notices his hibiscus tattoo and asks if it is a mugunghwa, the Korean national flower; he reveals he is adopted and Korean. She writes haeng-bok, meaning "happiness," in Korean on his arm; he writes her palindromic name on hers. The story ends with Geneva driving Happy home, singing Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road," both suddenly aware of the other's separate, unknowable existence.

The final story, "Song and Song," is narrated by Minyoung Song from a hospital waiting room as her mother is dying, intercut with a trip to England years later with her teenage daughter, Charis. In the hospital, Minyoung sits among ajummas, older Korean women who are the church elders' wives, while her sister Minji texts from inside. Minji returned from Europe to become their mother's primary caretaker while Minyoung, busy with a baby, felt peripheral. Their mother pressed a Bible containing cash on the nonbelieving Minji and asked her to promise they would meet in heaven. After the death, their father remarried quickly and Minji returned to Europe, angry. Years later, Minyoung's husband, Winston, proposes that Minyoung and Charis visit Minji in England, partly to mend their relationship after Charis characterized Minyoung as lacking ambition in a school speech. In Minji's London flat, Charis is enchanted by her aunt's bohemian life. After Charis storms out, the sisters drink vodka from their mother's butterfly-patterned mugs, dye each other's hair, and reconnect. Minyoung reconsiders the cash in the Bible, once dismissed as contradictory, now understood as the wholeness of their mother's love. Minji offers a consoling lie: The mess can wait until morning.