A brilliant novel from an exciting new writer.

Isadora Myung Hee Sohn—Isa—worships her mother, an exceptional beauty, born in Seoul and sheltered in a harem of sisters inside the wealthy family’s compound. Isa’s father, a scientist and professor, an orphan, is haunted by the war in which he served as a South Korean soldier and by a painful secret that he keeps from his wife. Still mourning the death of Isa’s younger brother, Stephen, her parents are traditional enough to prize their dead son over their living daughter; to them, Isa only half exists.

But unlike many Asian American daughters, Isa is neither meek nor a quiet victim of tradition. Despite her parents’ success and sophistication—they’ve achieved the American dream—she repudiates their values, embarks on her own sexual education, and runs away with an albino boy, Hero. At the same time, Isa suspects that despite her mother’s strict adherence to Korean traditional values, she is involved with another man, and Isa determines to make the affair known. What begins as a child’s unthinking fury at her mother soon leads to more deadly consequences.

A daring, haunting, inspired debut.


“[A] haunting debut . . . Swirling, textured, beautifully detailed . . . Min’s rendering of an outsider family’s tight-knit alienation is spot-on.”
—Publishers Weekly

“In Secondhand World Katherine Min depicts with wonderful eloquence the coming of age of an unusually spirited heroine–Isadora Myung Hee Sohn–as she struggles to negotiate between her family’s Korean past and their American present. A fiercely compelling and immensely intelligent debut.”
—Margot Livesey, author of Banishing Verona

“What makes this novel so memorable–and hard to put down–is the realness and urgency of its emotion.  It’s a force that commands the reader from one aching and beautifully concise chapter to the next.  Secondhand World is both powerful and intimate and offers us a piercing, new view of immigrant isolation.     
—John Dalton, author of Heaven Lake

 
WINNER 2006 - School Library Journal Adult Books for Young Adults
WINNER - New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age

 
Katherine Min was born in Champaign, Illinois, and was raised in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Clifton Park, New York. She attended Amherst College and the Columbia School of Journalism. She has been the recipient of writing grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Hampshire Arts Council. She lives with her husband and children in New Hampshire.