Dear Reader,
Gene Kwak, today’s guest author, has published fiction and nonfiction both in print and online in the The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, Wigleaf, Redivider, Hobart, Electric Literature, and in the flash anthology Forward: 21st Century Flash Fiction. He teaches at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Go Home, Ricky! is his debut novel and it received a starred review in Publisher's Weekly, is an October Book Club selection for The Rumpus, and has been featured in Vanity Fair magazine. You can contact him at [email protected]
Enter a drawing for one of three copies of Go Home, Ricky! Email: [email protected]
Please welcome author Gene Kwak...
My father was born in a pigsty. My grandmother tells me this across the dinner table.
She says that it was an old Korean Shamanistic belief that only one family could birth a child under a roof in a given month, and another family who stayed in the same house had just birthed a child weeks earlier. So, it was into the slop for her. And Dad.
A few days later, my dad and I pace the long body of his newly bought RV. Twenty-five feet, my dad says. Twenty-seven with the extender. The first time he shows it off, we drive to my sister's house in Lincoln, an hour away from Omaha. When we get there, Dad pulls into my sister's narrow-streeted neighborhood. He attempts a three point turn and accidentally backs into a neighbor's mailbox, but he doesn't know, so I tip it back up before he realizes. Not used to the angles of this behemoth.
My nephews and niece run into the RV, screaming and high fiving. They luxuriate in the nest above the driver and passenger seat. Ooh and ahh at the washroom. The backroom. The TV. The mini-kitchen.
This was my dad's dream. To own an RV. Travel the country with his grandkids once he retired. Travel has always been important to our family. When my parents first moved to America, travel was a must. Korea is a tiny peninsula: it's known as the shrimp between whales. But this new wide-open homeland had to be explored. Shore to shore. Tip to tip. And for years of my childhood, we did. We had no money, and we'd drive through the night to scrimp on motel rooms. On special occasions, I'd be allowed a Burger King Original Chicken Sandwich, which was more mayo-slathered beige sponge than sustenance, but it was a nice treat during cross-country long hauls. My dad doing the bulk of the driving in a rickety Skylark.
But now he's got this twenty-seven feet house on wheels. We're driving to Yankton, South Dakota. Fishing there is choice: largemouth bass, bluegill, and black crappie you can cast and pull out as easy as snapping your fingers. The lakes and rivers abut grassy cliffs and hills jampacked with cottonwoods.
Dad helms the RV. Mom is in the passenger seat. My brother is playing his Nintendo Switch. My sister and brother-in-law and their kids will join us in a day. The sky is blue and endless and the clouds are whisper thin.
I look over at Dad. He beams, happy as a pig in slop.
-- Gene Kwak
Email Gene and welcome him to the book club: [email protected]
To enter a drawing for one of three copies of Go Home, Ricky! email: [email protected]
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
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