A fantastic medley of short stories that dance between literary fiction, fable, Korean folklore, and science fiction. Wildly entertaining, wonderfully diverse, and always delivered with a superb understanding of pacing and economy of language, the stories in this collection are full of emotional intelligence but also prove Chung isn't afraid to explore what genre mixing can do for short narratives. . . . Chung is a keen observer of the human condition who is unafraid to tackle difficult themes like growing up, abandoning our dreams and settling, grief, being an outsider, and the complexities of multiculturalism and its impact on those who are caught between two cultures and thus never feel like they fully belong to either. However, she's also a talented storyteller who can easily take her deep messages and wrap them in entertaining, emotionally resonant short fiction. The fabulist takes and great writing make Green Frog a great collection, but the way Chung works feminism and otherness, while almost always centering Korean or Korean American woman, is what makes this a must read.”
—NPR.org
"Glimmering . . . stories imbued with subtle magic, balancing one foot in and one foot out of the ordinary. . . . This longing—to do something about one’s presence, to choose one’s own fate—hangs in the air long after the book has been closed. Green Frog glitters and haunts, remaining with you until, slowly, you start to see yourself and your surroundings differently."
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“Sprinkled in folkloric wisdom and speculative darkness, Gina Chung’s story collection, Green Frog, humors and haunts with thoughtful precision. The stories within incorporate Korean American women; fox demons; talking dolls; memory-warping AI; and an edible heart to demonstrate not only Chung’s imaginative range, but her ability to cut to the quick no matter the medium.”
—Elle
“Gina Chung’s debut short story collection, Green Frog, bursts with heart and heat. Whether following a vengeance-driven kumiho in Human Hearts, or a grief-stricken mother in Attachment Processes, Chung deftly shows us the soft underbelly hiding within us all.”
—The Idaho Review
“A collection of achingly real but also sometimes unusual stories about survival, change, nature, and womanhood, with a dash of Korean mythology and culture. . . . Great for people who like Bora Chung, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Yōko Ogawa, Carmen Maria Machado, and so many more.”
—Book Riot
“Superb. . . . Standouts are many, effortlessly ranging from fantastical, futuristic, and slice-of-real-life narratives.”
—Booklist (starred)
“Chung’s dynamic collection (after the novel Sea Change) employs various genres and styles to illuminate her Korean American characters’ grief and regret. The evocative and playful opener, “How to Eat Your Own Heart,” which will put readers in mind of Lorrie Moore, takes the form of a macabre set of instructions for recovering from heartbreak. . . . Chung shines the most when portraying intense emotions with realism, such as in the beautifully strange closer, “The Love Song of the Mexican Free-tailed Bat,” about a woman tenderly caring for her dead scientist father’s bats in the way she wishes he’d cared for her. Chung’s talents are on full display in these contemplative tales.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Beautifully expressed stories. . . . Chung’s gift is patiently unraveling ordinary moments in ordinary lives and conveying their significance is translucent prose. Lovely, emotionally resonant stories.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Gina Chung’s Green Frog is remarkable. The stories hit, each one, and land with such seeming perfection. Chung’s book sits next to my all-time favorite story collections by masters of the craft: Karen Russell, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, George Saunders, and Ted Chiang. This book does not disappoint—it defies gravity in such a way that it takes your breath away, like it lifts you up and up and up past the clouds and into space. There is so much raw power and emotion in these stories that after finishing each one, I felt more and more alive. Green Frog is an unforgettable dream.”
—Morgan Talty, award-winning author of Night of the Living Rez
“Gina Chung writes with great heart and daring. Her stories reach for new ways of framing the Korean-American experience, laying claim to all genre or style that serves her purpose. Quite literally spanning the cerebral to the visceral, this is a collection that refuses to acknowledge the limits of immigrant fiction.”
—Yoon Choi, author of Skinship
“From praying mantises to toothy cats to shape-shifting kumihos—a menagerie of creatures stalk Gina Chung’s stories, bringing their appetites and apprehensions to these spellbinding narratives of love, loss, and belonging. In Green Frog, magic comes in many forms: from outright enchantments to small miracles of grace. Every story in this collection feels heart-thumpingly alive.”
—Allegra Hyde, author of The Last Catastrophe
“With Green Frog Gina Chung further announces herself as a bold new voice in American Literature. Pulsating with heart and profound emotional intelligence, these masterful short stories build into a tapestry of wonder. These powerful characters with their voices rendered so elegantly will stay with you long after the last page.”
—Kali Fajardo-Anstine, bestselling author of Woman of Light
2024-01-05
Familial obligations knit together these quiet, beautifully expressed stories about Korean Americans.
What do we owe the people related to us through blood or marriage? What do we owe ourselves? These are the questions Chung addresses in her first collection of stories, following the novel Sea Change (2023). On the third anniversary of her mother’s death from cancer, the narrator of “Green Frog,” who dropped out of art school to care for her mother and help run the family restaurant, wonders whether it’s time for a change: “I am here, I remind myself. And maybe it’s time I did something about it.” In “After the Party,” a woman whose husband asks her to put up with one of his lecherous colleagues for the sake of his tenure case vows to protect her own professional dreams, even if her path forward isn’t as clear as her husband’s. Some of the most moving stories consider what women inherit from their mothers and grandmothers. The second-person narrator in the pleasingly zingy “The Arrow” gradually comes to appreciate her difficult mother when she finds herself single and pregnant, just as her mother once was: “Your mother, no matter how you feel about her, is a reminder that what you want—to have this baby and raise it on your own—is possible.” In “You’ll Never Know How Much I Loved You,” a grandmother urges her young granddaughter to value herself and be her “own prize,” and yet the rest of the piece is a devastating account of the difficulty of this task and the granddaughter’s failure to use her beautiful singing voice. A handful of magical and fabulist stories aren’t nearly as successful as the realistic work. Instead, Chung’s gift is patiently unraveling ordinary moments in ordinary lives and conveying their significance in translucent prose.
Lovely, emotionally resonant stories.
