The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart

Now in translation for the first time, the award-winning debut that broke literary ground in Japan explores diaspora, prejudice, and the complexities of a teen girls experience growing up as a Zainichi Korean, reminiscent of Min Jin Lees classicPachinkoand Sandra CisnerossThe House on Mango Street.

Seventeen-year-old Ginny Park is about to get expelled from high schoolagain. Stephanie, the picture book author who took Ginny into her Oregon home after she was kicked out of school in Hawaii, isnt upset; she only wants to know why. But Ginny has always been in-between. She cant bring herself to open up to anyone about her past, or about what prompted her to flee her native Japan. Then, Ginny finds a mysterious scrawl among Stephanies scraps of paper and storybook drawings that changes everything:The sky is about to fall. Where do you go?

Ginny sets off on the road in search of an answer, with only her journal as a confidante. In witty and brutally honest vignettes, and interspersed with old letters from her expatriated family in North Korea, Ginny recounts her adolescence growing up Zainichi, an ethnic Korean born in Japan, and the incident that forced her to leave years prior. Inspired by her own childhood, author Chesil creates a portrait of a girl who has been fighting alone against barriers of prejudice, nationality, and injustice all her lifeand one searching for a place to belong.