A nightmare scenario awaits the main character of Nancy Jooyoun Kim’s debut The Last Story of Mina Lee: upon returning to her childhood home in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, Margot discovers her mother’s body face down on the floor. Days after, Margot finds herself not only haunted by grief but also plagued by questions. Margot comes to realize she hardly knew her mother, an orphan of the Korean War and undocumented immigrant. The investigation into the suspicious circumstances surrounding Mina’s death ultimately becomes a quest to recover lost family history. Using the genre of mystery, Kim examines the darker edges of the immigrant narrative and the unspoken costs of the American Dream. But Mina Lee’s story is also one of survival. For her daughter, it’s about confronting the past in order to make sense of who she is in the present.
Over a video call, Kim and I spoke at length about what it means to be the children of immigrants and how she approaches representing her community in writing.
Mimi Wong: You have two main characters in the novel. You have Margot and her mother, Mina. When you were originally conceiving this story, whose voice or perspective came to you first?
Nancy Jooyoun Kim: Definitely Margot’s. This began as a short story in 2008. It was a short story about a young woman who was working—and it was a very typical, millennial-type of story—a very boring office job. She doesn’t know what she’s doing with her life. And she has an affair with one of her coworkers, who is Jonathan in this book, as part of her backstory. So it began with Margot. And it actually began with this image that I had developed and was stuck in my mind: this image of this young woman who in so many ways loves, needs, and also resents her mother [in] this really complicated mother-daughter relationship. She hates every time her mom calls her, but she’s terrified of the day her mom doesn’t call her.
So it really began with an image of a young woman calling her mother and one day her mother not picking up the phone. I just became obsessed with that. I think I’ve probably had this experience in my life where my mom just was too busy and didn’t pick up the phone for a couple of days, but I was literally like, “Oh my God, mom is dead.” I have to go, I have to go now. I have to figure out where she is. Feeling like she needs me in ways that, as I got older, I realized exactly how much more empowered, independent, courageous my mother is. But it took me so many years to realize that.
MW: A lot of times our parents, especially our immigrant parents, do feel like a bit of a mystery, and we are trying to piece together what their story is. Using a mystery narrative is such an interesting way to try and tackle their relationship, as well as the feeling of guilt that runs throughout the novel. Was that built in from the beginning?
NJK: I think Margot wants to survive, but at the same time she feels guilt because she’ll never be able to make the kinds of sacrifices that her mother has made for her. That’s what gives her a sense of responsibility for her mother’s life. I think that’s very specific to immigrant families and the immigrant experience, where the children literally feel like we’re taking care of our parents. Part of that is cultural, but I actually think it has a lot to do with the ways that immigrants need their children that I think are different from American-born people
For example, a lot of immigrant kids, we translate documents for our parents. We’re looking at phone bills for them. We’re explaining things to them. In most circumstances, kids with parents who were born here don’t have to take on that labor. Even though [Margot] feels guilty about her mother dying alone in this apartment, there’s also this quiet relief because in some weird way she doesn’t have to worry about [her] mom anymore. It takes up so much of her life. Obviously, she feels guilty for thinking that. All of those layers in that relationship was the catalyst for this unpacking that happens in the book.
MW: There’s also a meta-narrative about her mother’s story and who has claim to that narrative. In the novel, you write: “These women were doing their best to navigate their own lives within circumstances driven, stories told by men. Margot also had to protect them.” As the author, how did you negotiate that balance of the sense of duty you felt to telling Mina’s story, but also trying to protect that story
NJK: Since the novel isn’t autobiographical, it was a little bit easier in that sense. But I think I know what you’re saying. Even the universal truths of some of it [are] kind of brutal, and one might want to feel protective for various reasons. For me, I work so closely with character, and just what I feel the story demands, and what I can live with, and what I can write and produce on the page. I don’t know if I necessarily feel like I have to protect or reserve anything on the page. I feel like it’s my obligation to write as honestly as possible. And that’s what makes me love writing so much.
What drives me more is a sense of indebtedness to the communities and the people who raised me, the people who cared for me in various ways, and to tell a story that is true to their and our shared humanity. As opposed to: “Oh, well maybe I shouldn’t put that out there. Maybe that makes me look like a bad daughter. Or maybe that’s not nice for mom. Or maybe everyone thinks this is my mom.” I stay focused on that sense of indebtedness and wanting to tell a story that I think is very humane and as true as it could possibly be for me.
MW: You mentioned the community at large. Koreatown is such an interesting world, especially thinking about present-day issues that are centered in this community in terms of racial history and ongoing issues of gentrification. What do you hope readers take away about this community that they might not previously have been aware of?
They’re ecosystems that provide all sorts of resources to people who just come to this country, and who are some of the most vulnerable people in our country.
NJK: For a lot of mainstream America, ethnic enclaves serve within the imagination as places where people get to dine out and go to nightclubs. There’s a reference to that early in the book. Margot’s friend Miguel calls it “slumming.” It’s places where people go when they have resources, and they want to spend money and do something new and exciting for them. For me, I hope that what people take away from this—and if they’re not as familiar as some of us are with ethnic enclaves and immigrant communities—is the ways in which this community is our lifeline. They’re ecosystems that provide all sorts of resources to people who just come to this country, and who are some of the most vulnerable people in our country. They provide things like churches, community resource centers, language translation services, bookstores—ways in which immigrants survive in this world.
This also plays into thinking about how ethnic enclaves are used traditionally within the mystery genre and crime. It’s like these seedy places where seedy things happen. But the way I think of Koreatown is I think of all of the elderly people who live there, who literally cannot live anywhere else and cannot imagine another world for them[selves] in America. And their lifeline is being around each other, being at cultural centers, being at church, being at temples, things like that. So I hope that it kind of expands the ways in which we think of these places as built out of necessity and extraordinarily vital to immigrants that come to this country, whether they completely integrate or not.
MW: It’s a fascinating microcosm, too. Even in the book, someone says, “Don’t you just hate how small this world is?” In some ways, this insular community makes it almost perfect for a mystery story because it felt very believable that you would have people with all these connections.
NJK: Right. And I think it’s very surprising. I think it is a small world, and it’s difficult to escape, and it’s one in which they depend upon and also creates a sense of entrapment for different reasons. For Margot, Koreatown represents foreignness and poverty. While for Mina, it’s about survival. But at the same time, she realizes her survival depends upon all these potentially exploitative situations. How does she even get away from that?
MW: One of the larger themes that I read into it was this disillusionment or questioning of the American Dream that Margot, especially as the second-generation daughter, has. There’s this back and forth between wanting freedom, but also feelings of loneliness and isolation. Could you speak a little bit about how the novel tackles all that?
NJK: For Mina, the American Dream is not a reality for her. When I was writing this novel, the words “American nightmare” occurred in my mind, probably more often than “American dream,” because the level of entrapment that she experiences is the opposite of the American Dream. Regardless of how hard she works, she can’t work any more hours than she does. She can possibly expect or want more from her daughter’s life. But for her, regardless of how many hours she works, she’ll always live month to month. I think that’s a reality for a lot of people, for a lot of people of color. A lot of Americans in general, a lot of people are struggling, regardless of how hard they work, without the safety nets in place, without the institutions that support them. I’m not exactly sure this concept of success is often attainable for a lot of people, especially the most marginalized people.
For me, Mina is actually a very successful character. As tragic and dark as her life is, I think she makes extraordinary decisions. I think that she is creative. She not only endures, but she creates change in her life in a very interesting way. I think that considering where she comes from, she is very proud of the job that she has. I think that she puts a lot of heart and a lot of work into what she does. And so part of this novel is not only questioning the American Dream in the format of an American nightmare, but it is questioning our general notions of success. Part of Margot’s shame over her mother is that she thinks of her mother as a failure. She’s ashamed of what her mom does for a living. But I think that when we reframe it and see Mina as the protagonist of the story, and the ways in which she participated in her own demise, as tragic as it is, it’s actually kind of fascinating.
