Skinship is a collection of eight short stories written by Yoon Choi and published on August 17, 2021 by Alfred A. Knopf.
[1] There is an excerpt in the beginning of the book giving a small biography of the author — "Yoon Choi was born in Korea and moved to the United States at the age of three.
In interviews by The Korea Society and Kirkus, Yoon Choi emphasized that she did not want to write about her experiences as a Korean immigrant after she finished college.
[3] It was only after stepping away from her writing efforts for a number of years that she returned to it to embrace her cultural experience after giving birth to her fourth child.
Due to the subject matter of these short stories, Yoon Choi had to make calculated decisions on how to illustrate language usage and differences caused from being bilingual.
In an interview with Katherine Jin, another Asian American writer, Choi talks about her language choices in great detail.
Their dynamic, as well as concepts of the future and regret, is further explored when an old friend of theirs from Korea is giving a church revival in their town.
Sae-ri carries this secret until her mother can no longer care for the child back home and she must admit to her husband the truth.
A young girl named So-hyun flees Korea with her brother, Ji-ho and their mother in an attempt to escape their abusive father.
An elderly man named Mo-sae struggles with the early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and his wife, Young-ja takes care of him.
A young Korean man named Happy Hyuk-jae was adopted by a white American woman and now shadows a nurse at a hospital because he cannot find a job.
Happy feels disconnected with his heritage due to being adopted but when the opportunity arises to learn more when taking care of Young-shik, he is preoccupied thinking about tattoos.
After suffering the loss of her mother, a woman attempts to make connection with her sister, Minji, and her teenage daughter, Charis.
The Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association commends Choi's work in their book review and focuses on the intricate familial bond, representation of the culture, her use of language.
The review states, "APALA members will appreciate Choi’s clear, inventive, and elegant prose, perfectly tailored to unveil the vast emotional depth and spectrum about the Korean American hardships and resilient dreams of immigrant families.
"But what lingers is not the prose but the weight of other worlds, absent ancestors, and the diaspora's awkward longing for a disappeared past and an unattainable future.