Name: Suzanne's review of The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil
Item: The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart
Rating: 4.5
Author: Suzanne

Chesil

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 girl’s experience growing up as a Zainichi Korean, reminiscent of Min Jin Lee's classic Pachinko and Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street. Seventeen-year-old Ginny Park is about to get expelled from high school—again. Stephanie, the picture book author who took Ginny into her Oregon home after she was kicked out of school in Hawaii, isn’t upset; she only wants to know why. But Ginny has always been in-between. She can't 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 Stephanie's 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 life—and one searching for a place to belong.

The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart

Genesis (@whisperingchapters)

Suzanne

Ginny is half Korean and half Japanese and thus never really properly fits in anywhere. We follow her through different countries and slowly peel the onion that is her.
The book was very beautifully written/translated. 
I think people will love this who feel they don't always "belong".

Genesis (@whisperingchapters) &
The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil

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Genesis (@whisperingchapters) &The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil

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Join the club

Genesis (@whisperingchapters) &
The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil