What We Kept to Ourselves: A Novel

by Nancy Jooyoun Kim Narrated by Jennifer Kim

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

This domestic drama from the author of The Last Story of Mina Lee is a propulsive story of identity, family secrets, and the search for one's place in the world. Deft, gorgeous and surprising, you won't be able to put this one down.

This timely and surprising novel about a family's search for answers following the disappearance of their mother from the New York Times bestselling author Nancy Jooyoun Kim explores “immigration, identity, love, and loss. A gorgeous, thrilling read” (Jean Kwok, New York Times bestselling author).

1999: The Kim family is struggling to move on after their mother, Sunny, vanished a year ago. Sixty-one-year-old John Kim feels more isolated from his grown children than ever before. But one evening, their fragile lives are further upended when John finds the body of a stranger in the backyard, carrying a letter to Sunny, leaving the family with more questions than ever.

1977: Sunny is pregnant and has just moved to Los Angeles from Korea with her aloof and often-absent husband. America is not turning out the way she had dreamed it to be, and the loneliness and isolation are broken only by a fateful encounter at a bus stop. The unexpected connection spans the decades and echoes into the family's lives in the present as they uncover devastating secrets that put not only everything they thought they knew about their mother but their very lives at risk.

Both “an intricately crafted mystery and a heart-wrenching family saga” (Michelle Min Sterling, New York Times bestselling author), What We Kept to Ourselves masterfully explores what it means to dream in America.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

08/14/2023

Kim follows up The Last Story of Mina Lee with an ambitious if unwieldy look at the lives of the Korean-American Kim family: patriarch John; his wife, Sunny; and their children, college-age Ana and high school senior Ronald. The action kicks off in 1999 Los Angeles, a year after Sunny has left the family with little explanation. One afternoon, John discovers a body in the family’s backyard, and in the dead man’s hand is a letter addressed to Sunny. Police are quick to declare the death an accident and move on, but Ana and Ronald are eager to identify the deceased and find out what linked him to their mother. Flashbacks to the 1970s flesh out John and Sunny’s relationship, their early lives in Korea, and Sunny’s difficulty adjusting to America when she and John arrive in Los Angeles. Kim sets a laundry list of worthy themes in her crosshairs—including racial discrimination, police corruption, and the struggles of Asian women in and out of the family—and explores them sensitively, but sometimes stumbles in wedding those themes to the novel’s plot. The resulting speed bumps aren’t a deal-breaker, but they make it difficult to remain engaged in the central mystery. Still, strong prose and evident passion make this worthwhile. Agent: Amy Bishop, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Oct.)

From the Publisher

“What We Kept to Ourselves is both a suspenseful page-turner and a poignant family drama. Kim's beautiful, thoughtful prose illuminates themes of immigration, identity, love, and loss. A gorgeous, thrilling read!”—Jean Kwok, New York Times bestselling author of Girl In Translation

“Bursting with yearning, twists, and secrets, What We Kept to Ourselves is about the difficult questions that die in our throats when it comes to asking our loved ones. A triumph!”—Frances Cha, author of If I Had Your Face

“A gorgeous literary novel featuring poetic prose and a propulsive mystery. What We Kept to Ourselves is a moving story about immigration, family secrets, and human connection. Truly a masterpiece that I couldn’t put down.”—Emiko Jean, author of Mika in Real Life

"A powerful tribute to the bonds between the least privileged, each page of What We Kept to Ourselves pulses with stunning detail and deep insight. I couldn't put it down."—Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, bestselling author of On the Rooftop

“Kim's second novel is hard to put down, unique, haunting, and beautifully written, as the author slowly weaves layer upon layer in an intricate, mysterious web.”—Booklist, starred review

“Layers after layers of mystery are revealed with each chapter of this exquisitely written novel. What We Kept to Ourselves is a compelling, poetic, important, thought-provoking, and unforgettable read. Nancy Jooyoun Kim is a master storyteller who has the power to keep us spellbound and reminds us what we must do to make this world a better place.”—Nguyen Phan Que Mai, internationally bestselling author of The Mountains Sing and Dust Child

"Nancy Jooyoun Kim has crafted a moving, propulsive story about a family haunted by secrets. What We Kept To Ourselves spans the intimately personal to the urgently political to investigate how the traumas of the past shape the human experience. This is a probing, sharp novel about family, loss, desire, grief, the search for justice, and so much more."—Crystal Hana Kim, author of If You Leave Me

“Nancy Jooyoun Kim’s What We Kept to Ourselves illuminates the glacial secrets among a family that crackle under a glass lens. Through the brushstrokes of tragedy and grief and mystery, Kim interrogates how a forgotten past bleeds into the choices we make in our everyday lives."—E. J. Koh, author of The Liberators

“What We Kept to Ourselves is a nail-biting thriller with hairpin turns, a generational saga, a love story, an unsparing look at belonging and unbelonging in America today and the abject joys of food, family, forgiveness. I can’t stop thinking about the Kim family. A glorious achievement!” —Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of The Evening Hero

"A propulsive mystery about yearning, loneliness, and duty (but to and for whom?). Kim is a masterful wordsmith, tackling brittle topics with grace, urgency, and most importantly, hope. This book is a call to action, and a reminder that it's never too late to live the life you've always wanted."—Carolyn Huynh, author of The Fortunes of Jaded Women

"Those of us who love southern California know it's an entire universe where people's dreams and loves and families orbit and dance and collide in neighborhoods as diverse as the world. Nancy Jooyoun Kim knows Los Angeles so deeply that her novel brings to life loquat trees, the melancholy of staying where new roots sometimes cannot flourish, and the geography of neighbors and strangers whose loyalties turn into what might be love." —Susan Straight, National Book Award Finalist and author of In the Country of Women

"What We Kept to Ourselves is an intricately crafted mystery and a heart-wrenching family saga. Nancy Jooyoun Kim writes with a piercing moral clarity, suffusing every page with emotional depth. Fiery, bittersweet and complex, this is a novel of incredible conviction and empathy."—Michelle Min Sterling, New York Times bestselling author Camp Zero

"What We Keep to Ourselves is a breathtaking literary force of a novel. With melodious prose, Nancy Jooyoun Kim has crafted a page-turning mystery with thoughtful meditations on family, love, and connection. This novel is a searing portrait on how long-buried secrets, desperate hopes, and blind compromises shape the decisions that affect generations to come. Kim is a master storyteller!"—Catherine Adel West, author of Saving Ruby King

author of Girl In Translation Jean Kwok

What We Kept to Ourselves is both a suspenseful page-turner and a poignant family drama. Kim’s beautiful, thoughtful prose illuminates themes of immigration, identity, love, and loss...[a] thrilling read.”

NOVEMBER 2023 - AudioFile

Jennifer Kim narrates this story of the Kim family. In 1999, the Korean immigrants are struggling with the disappearance of their matriarch, Sunny, a year earlier. Kim captures all the raw emotion of a family that is having a difficult time connecting in the midst of a crisis. When a deceased Black man is found in the Kims' backyard with a note addressed to Sunny by his side, members of the family investigate, at their peril, to discover the man's relationship to the family. Flashbacks give Kim a chance to shine at depicting the prejudice and racism of the immigrant experience. This slow burn of a narration packs social commentary into a compelling plot. L.M.G. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2023-07-13
The year-old disappearance of a Korean immigrant woman in Los Angeles is still a mystery to her family when a dead Black man with a letter addressed to her appears in their yard.

Sunhee “Sunny” Kim did not seem like the kind of mother who would vanish without a word from the lives of her daughter, Ana, a college graduate, and her son, Ronald—but there is much about the family's situation that is, as the title of Kim's second novel suggests, hidden from view. Sunny's relationship with her husband, John, a man deeply damaged by the atrocities and dislocations of the Korean War, is far from nurturing, and the family has not recovered from the burning of their gas station during the Rodney King riots. The complicated timeline, moving between the end of 1999 and earlier periods going back to 1977, very gradually provides answers to myriad questions: Why did Sunny leave? What was her relationship to the dead homeless man, Ronald “RJ” Jones, after whom she named her son, letting her husband believe it was for Ronald Reagan? Why was RJ estranged from his daughter, Rhonda, whose quest for answers about the father she never knew becomes entwined with Ana and Ronald’s? What was the exposé RJ was working on about the LAPD, where he was a janitor in the 1980s, and did he hide his evidence with Sunny, and is this why people are being mysteriously followed and murdered in the days after his death? If it sounds very complicated, it really is, and Kim doles out answers very, very slowly, spending a great deal of time reviewing and rereviewing the thoughts of each character, often having them consider stiffly phrased political questions. “While she had been speaking with Priscilla, the realization—that Ana, too, was a beneficiary of this specific system under which so many like RJ had been harmed—crept throughout her body. She had worked hard, yes, and up until high school, displayed excellence in all the subjects that centered the perspectives and accomplishments of gatekeepers (mostly, straight white men).” When answers to our questions finally come, in intense, violent scenes at the end of the book, it is a welcome relief.

A potentially propulsive tale suffers from a slow reveal and too many public service announcements.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940178225837
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	10/10/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

1999
With his girlfriend’s T-shirt draped over his face, Ronald bathed in her favorite scent, Juniper Breeze. The perfection of that evergreen was unlike the seasonal high-school fragrance variations on American desserts—peppermint sticks and gingerbread and sugar cookies.

His parents never baked; ovens were for storing pots and pans. Many of the immigrant kids, or the children of immigrants like himself, who came from predominantly Latino and Asian families, didn’t have homes filled with pies or cupcakes. Yet everyone at school wanted to smell the same way, longed for the comfort of some common nostalgia, whether it belonged to them and their histories or not. But comfort to him smelled of his mother in the kitchen, her hands in plastic gloves, massaging red pepper flakes, salt, a dash of white sugar, garlic, and saeujeot into the chopped leaves of a napa cabbage. He would stand beside her at the counter, and every time she taste-tested the kimchi, she’d place a child’s bite-sized portion in his mouth, careful not to deposit the scarlet paste on his face, her plastic gloves crinkled on his lips. She’d ask, “What do you think?”

But nobody in America celebrated the smell of kimchi. The only non-Korean he knew who actually loved kimchi was his girlfriend Peggy, who was Filipina and stopped at the Korean market every time she was in town, where she’d load up on her favorite banchan—kkakdugi, seasoned spinach, and jangjorim.

A week ago last Friday, Ronald had strummed his fingers against the warmth of Peggy’s stomach, along the bottom edge of her pale pink bra with the tiniest bow between her breasts, as his mouth touched the cup of her perfect navel. At first she flinched at the coldness of his fingers, then smirked, her eyes closed in pleasure. He kissed her lips, which were smooth and small and ripe, the color of berries.

They had met back in middle school in Hancock Park, where her family had lived about two to three miles away from him yet worlds apart, with its distinctive multimillion-dollar residences, formal hedges, country club, and healthy white people. But her family had fled four years ago to La Cañada for the obvious—the lack of crime and homelessness, the better schools, the serene isolation of the foothills by the Angeles National Forest, and the full amenities of neighboring Pasadena and Glendale. Her father was a doctor, and her mother, some kind of manager or administrator at the VA.

And he loved her. Peggy Lee Santos. They loved each other still. Even though he could not follow her to the fancy places she would go, the private universities that she researched with her seemingly infinite hours on AOL, he would drive to the end of the world for her in his father’s beat-up, ugly Eldorado.

Pots and pans clattered like sad cymbals less than ten feet from his door in the kitchen where his father prepared dinner. Frustrated, Ronald pulled Peggy’s T-shirt off his face and switched on his desk lamp, washing in glare the import-car posters—images of shiny modified Hondas flanked by models—around his bed. He didn’t even know why he had these posters anymore. For a little while, before he could actually drive, he had been interested in cars—the speed, the acceleration, the women—but now these images, curling at the corners, functioned only as distractions to cover the emptiness of the dirty white walls.

In a photo that his older sister Ana had framed for him on his desk, Ronald and his mother posed after his middle school graduation. Her face glowed as she clutched him with manicured fingers around his shoulders. She never had the time to do her nails, but she’d painted them that morning in front of her vanity. He remembered how much pride she exuded that day, but he could also sense—because he and his mother always had this way between them—her sadness over his growing up so fast.

How embarrassed he had felt that day beside her, as if he was too grown to be babied by his mother. But what he would give to hold her hand now. How much they could say to each other without words, how much they knew about each other in a squeeze of the shoulder, a quiet observation of one another through an open door, a mirror, a glance. His father, on the other hand, had always been unknowable, opaque, a dull stone worn smooth by time.

He didn’t believe his father’s claim that she was dead. There was no body. There was no proof.

Ronald had the itch to log on to see if he could find Peggy or any of his friends. Although they had already made plans to meet up in Pasadena tonight, he needed an escape now. But his father always got angry when he clogged up the phone line before nine p.m. Who knew who could call the house? They should all be available—just in case. But his father never acknowledged for whom or what they had been waiting.

Instead, their lives were a constant away message.

His father had set the breakfast nook for dinner—paper napkins, metal chopsticks, spoons. They hadn’t used the dining room table since his mother disappeared. Ronald slid onto the bench in front of the oxtail soup, the meat and bone and mu which had simmered for hours last night in a garlicky salt-and-pepper broth. Steam delicately painted the air with the rich and oily smell of gelatin and beef. Even if his father underseasoned and never bothered to brown anything, time and low heat performed most of the work.

“Did you sell all the Christmas stuff at the shop?” Ronald asked.

“What, the garlands?” John set his bowl of rice in front of Ronald, then winced as he bent to sit.

“The poinsettias. The ones you were making such a big deal about.”

“Yeah, yeah. Almost gone. More come in the morning,” his father said.

The soup was too hot, so instead Ronald sampled the baechu kimchi that his father bought. Without his mother, no one bothered to make kimchi at home. His mother would prepare jars and jars that they’d eat from almost every night, which his sister Ana found to be repetitive and dull. Sure, Ronald craved cheeseburgers and fast food too, but Ana claimed to dislike all the spice, and she hated the chopsticks, always using a fork instead. She had to make everything some kind of protest. No wonder why she liked Berkeley.

“Can I take the car out tonight?” Ronald asked.

“How long?”

“Couple hours.” He spooned the tender meat off the knobby bones, which he discarded onto his napkin.

“Your homework?” his father asked.

“It’s Friday.” Ronald hated his father’s voice—the graininess from all his years of smoking, the heaviness of the tone, the accent, which wasn’t quite Korean but distinctly foreign. His sister had once explained that since their father had immigrated in the early sixties, he’d picked up his accent from speaking English with Chinese Americans, Black customers, and Jewish shopkeepers who were then prevalent in the areas of South LA where he’d worked. But whatever the reason, his father’s accent always embarrassed Ronald. He was embarrassed for his father. His mother could hardly speak English, but he preferred her voice to his whenever she tried. She could play off anything through her tact and charm, her sense of humor. Her laugh, a ho, ho, ho, which she covered with her hand.

“And?” his father asked.

“Can I borrow the car?” Ronald said as clearly as possible.

His father sucked the meat from between his teeth. “Bring the car back before midnight.” His purplish lips frowned. “No drink. No smoke. No pregnant, uh, okay?”

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