Love Language
By Christine J. Ko
Sorra Book, an imprint of Shaherazad Shelves
Out Aug. 4, 2026
“Would you ever live in Korea?”
I get this question often as a Korean-American. I hadn’t thought about it much, because I’d already decided on the answer: I think I’m too American to be accepted. And, sure, I’m kind of afraid.
I revisited this question often while reading New Haven author Christine J. Ko’s middle-grade novel-in-verse, Love Language. The book chronicles the perspective of an astute young girl, Cassie Goh, as she and her family move to South Korea from the United States. In the process, she is forced to confront where she really belongs.
I grew up with friends who, like Cassie, eventually moved to Korea despite never having lived there before. I was excited to finally hear their perspective, especially because I’d lost touch with them over the years.
The immediacy of the in-verse format makes the first half of the book easily digestible while detailing this life-changing global move. The physical blank space forces pauses that gave ample room for me to create my own images. Lines are terse, often with a single word, to evoke aches of loneliness, like when Cassie’s mom steps inside a city for the first time in fifteen years.
She does not recognize
this new city,
telling me
that she had held
onto memories
of family
of college friends
of her homeland
because of her loneliness
in America.
And this new city,
strangely,
also makes her
feel lonely.
Cassie experiences more moments of subtlety after the big move, which helped ease me into the book. Her cousins, who played with her on vacation, are now too busy because of their grueling schoolwork. Her father’s mother knits sweaters for those cousins, but not for Cassie and her sister, perhaps because they are still strangers. I wrote in my notes, “ouch,” because I believed its plausibility. Oh yes, that could happen to me, too.
I was also delightfully surprised that Cassie experiences struggles that transcend culture and country, despite her best efforts to integrate. She is wordlessly iced out in international school by a friend, who then turns everyone in her posse against Cassie. I’ve been there, seen that.
The latter half of the book is where Ko more directly addresses Korea’s traumatic history. Cassie’s Big Aunt, her mother’s older sister, is described as a shadow at family gatherings. It is later revealed that she was abducted during World War II as a comfort woman.
That was when I started to worry.
When my confusion about this historical timeline was finally too much to bear, I turned to the acknowledgements to learn that Big Aunt’s story is a “work of fiction set in present day, though it draws from true historical events. The timeline and modern South Korea have been intentionally reimagined.”
I have questions about the purpose behind this choice. I can understand the importance of having Cassie witness firsthand how much the stigma haunted Big Aunt. Isolated, this is effective. But relationally to the larger story, it’s confusing. The choice, probably intended to open the door to curiosity, instead risks being misinformative.
For example, Cassie, as a young and modern Korean-American, takes great issue with Korea’s preference of boys over girls:
In Korea, the matter of gender is more
annoying
than the questions in America.
Girls (nyuh; 녀) are second
(and might create need for a second wife)
to boys (nam; 남)…
By pulling Big Aunt’s story forward in time while Cassie lives in the present day, the story implies that the antiquated norm of second wives is modern enough that Cassie actively disapproves of it. I worry that this unintentionally regresses Korea in the eyes of young readers who are being introduced to Korean culture. The mention of the popularity of Korea’s more-recent soft exports like K-pop, or technology, further blurs the lines of what is true right now.
I also wondered if it was accurate that Cassie has disproportionately negative experiences in Korea than what is mentioned from her time in America. Of course, any move of this scale can justify any existential crisis, especially for children. This fact emphasizes just how impressive and astute it is of Cassie to eventually conclude that “it is up to me/(really)/to figure out/how/ (and if)/I want to fit in.”
But I wished Ko equally acknowledged the complexity of being a minority in the States, or offerede more context about Cassie’s life there. It was heartbreaking to see so many of Cassie’s attempts to join Korea’s largely collectivist culture go awry, especially without that context. “The questions in America” that are less annoying than the “matter of gender” are about where she’s really from. But there had to have been more that was exclusionary and lonely about being Korean in America, too.
Throughout, I relished in those fewer moments of sweetness and genuine connection in Korea. My grandma often reminisces about eating cold Korean watermelon, which Cassie enjoys on the sand with her family. She also visits her grandmother for the first time, who shows her jeong, or a “feeling of closeness, affection, and love,” with a hand squeeze and a toothless grin. I’m so glad Cassie was able to get a taste (literally) of this very specific Korean joy.
Love Language is ultimately a universal lesson about what it means to fit in, and how important it is to accept your whole self, no matter where you are. I know many adults who haven’t learned this yet. But I know that Cassie will be just fine.
