Crystal Hana Kim: On Beginning With a Premise and a Question
Crystal Hana Kim is the author of If You Leave Me, which was named a best book of 2018 by over a dozen publications. Kim is the recipient of the 2022 National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award and is a 2017 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize winner. Currently, she is the Visiting Assistant Professor at Queens College and a contributing editor at Apogee Journal. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Crystal Hana Kim
Photo by Nina Subin
In this interview, Crystal discusses the little-known South Korean history that led to her new novel, The Stone Home, her hope for readers, and more!
Name: Crystal Hana Kim
Literary agent: Katherine Fausset at Curtis Brown
Book title: The Stone Home
Publisher: William Morrow
Release date: April 2, 2024
Genre/category: Literary Fiction
Previous titles: If You Leave Me
Elevator pitch: In 2011, a Korean American woman arrives at narrator Eunju’s home in South Korea in search of the truth about her family. This arrival forces Eunju to think back to her past and the life-altering year she spent at a reformatory center with her mother in 1980. The Stone Home is a hauntingly poetic family drama and coming-of-age story that reveals a dark corner of South Korean history through the eyes of a small community living in a reformatory center.
Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]
What prompted you to write this book?
The Stone Home is based on real events that occurred in 1980s South Korea, in the years leading up to the 1988 Seoul Olympics. I first learned of these “reformatory centers” in 2017 and couldn’t stop thinking about them. I wondered how the children forced to work in these labor camps survived, and what their lives looked like after they were released, if they were released at all. Then in 2018, I met a survivor of one of these institutions and interviewed him over the course of a day. Hearing his story, I felt I had to write this story.
Slowly, my novel came to focus on two duos: Eunju and her mother, and a pair of brothers as they try to escape the reformatory center. Through their narratives, The Stone Home shows the ways in which humans come together even under the most difficult circumstances.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I started this novel in 2017 and it has changed dramatically in the past seven years. I have swapped out narrators, changed the structure, the story arc, and the resolution. The main narrator, Eunju, was not present at all in my initial draft. Rather, she was a throwaway line—a girl in a photograph that one of the other characters finds among her father’s belongings. I distinctly remember wondering about her while at a writing residency. I couldn’t stop asking myself: Who is she? What’s her story?
That girl, Eunju, took over the narrative and is the driving force of The Stone Home now. Through all these changes, the premise stayed the same. I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to explore the contained space of the reformatory center. However, in one of my later drafts, I added a 2011 framing device so that we could see the ripple effects of the reformatory center across time, political upheaval, and generations.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
I’m so glad to be teaming up with my editor, Jessica Williams, who published my first novel If You Leave Me. It’s such a pleasure to build a career with the same editor and imprint because I know how they work, and they know me. We trust each other, which makes the publishing process a smoother and more enjoyable experience.
Since this is my second novel, I also feel better prepared for that distinct transition from the book being a private work to a public one.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
There were so many surprises! I am a writer that begins with a premise and a question. I don’t outline or have an idea of the overall story before I begin writing. This way, I am constantly learning as I follow my characters into the story they want to create. This is the way I like to write because then every day is a discovery. This adds an energy to the writing that I can’t replicate if I were to know the whole story in advance.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope my readers will come to love my main characters: Eunju, her mother Kyungoh, Narae, and the two brothers Sangchul and Youngchul. I also hope The Stone Home unveils a little-known part of South Korean history while also showing the ways in which humanity can come together in moments of hardship.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Keep writing. Get to the end of the page, and then the next day start again. Find your community. They will buoy you.
With a growing catalog of instructional writing videos available instantly, we have writing instruction on everything from improving your craft to getting published and finding an audience. New videos are added every month!