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By Marie Myung-Ok Lee
Reviewed by Jonathan Goetz
Updated: Friday the 13th
July 23, 2024 (Kansas) -- The Evening Hero is good, clean, and relevant humor by Marie Myung-Ok Lee. Her Simon and Schuster book touches on topics from the point of view of an immigrant family, from rural American hospital closures and venture capital, to family separation, cultural assimilation, marriage ups and downs and different expectations placed upon children based on culture and even between generations within a single family. The American hospital chain Dr. Youngman Kwak works for buys up a bunch of rural hospitals and lays off Doctors eventually closing them all to corral the medical doctors into strip malls performing more profitable elective surgery than general practice.
I enjoyed the first two sections of the book and hope we'll read the next sections together! I thoroughly enjoy The Evening Hero's mix of humor, cultural relevance, history and modern critique of American culture, subculture and universal themes. I'm delighted that Marie Myung-Ok Lee thought I might enjoy it and mailed a complimentary copy to me because it's just such a humorous tapestry of several juicy topics.
Dr. Youngman Kwak, the main character in The Evening Hero, lends the reader asides, about North Korean and American history, some flattering, some not. I imagine them looking like the family in Fresh Off the Boat (TV-PG), although the author describes them to her liking. By the time the book begins he and Youngae Kwak, his wife, are already empty nesters and dealing with the marital issues of a family in that stage of life, including a daughter-in-law we later meet much opposed to values the parents hold dear, at least when it comes to hard work. They send their son to Harvard while all his son does is play video games and expect to inherit "a castle."
In the real world, my grandfather served in the Navy during American involvement on the Korean peninsuila, and in this fictionalized immigrant account Youngman and his wife Youngae (the Kwaks) were born in a small village North of the 38th parallell, originally the northern portion to provide plunder for the U.S.S.R. following World War II and now providing plunder for the Kim relatives of Song Diety most recently Kim Jong Un, although I call him "lil Buddah" his subjects are jealous that he always has plenty of food (in the north the Song Diety I suppose if reunification while he's still alive then in that case the south would officially recognize Un as the Song diety and plenty to eat for all those named "Kim?" little "d" south of the 38th? and big "D" in the north?), who seem to have taken over this church in Minneapolis given all the Kimms.
Youngman abhores eastern medicine, so in one sub-plot he is disgusted by Youngae's new bff family, Dr. and Dr. Kimm, and their penchant for accupuncture. In Youngman's opinion, the American medical base he idolizes from his childhood was great, whereas all the eastern remedies afforded by his countrymen did in his view was delay diagnosis, costing lives, according the only OB-GYN in a small rust-belt city who finds work with the same venture capital firm doing laser hair removal that just closed the town's sole hospital.
Youngae found a strange Minneapolis Korean Church with Youngman's introduction to them being a home party with a snake eaten alive by alcohol and then served to only the men in the house. Youngman speaks up but doesn't want to embarass his wife and finally shuts upon his second pinch from Youngae about this gathering he finds so repulsive masquerading under the guise of church. Dr. Kimm quotes some obscure Bible verses and then insists Youngman have the first drink in a funny but perhaps degrading account of this particular American North Korean church culture.
In his day job, the rural hospitals were closed by this chain as a plot to get doctors into strip malls for elective surgery instead of an emergency rooms for primary care, depending on how far you want to read into things. Youngae wants to visit their hometown, and Youngman reminds her the difficulty of traveling between "North Korea" and the United States. In a memorable heartfelt line that brought me to tears, she chastizes her husband, "That's not North Korea; that's our home!"
In one rather awkward segment a town man complains to Dr. Kwak about losing two toes in Korea and laments he would have preferred to have nuked it than have to go fight, then realized his audience and embarassingly verified, "the other Kwak was Chinese," to which Youngman's conflict adverse nature, he replies cordially something along the lines of "yes; Kwak is a Chinese name," (also).
Their town sponsored this family, having thoroughly enjoyed their first, Chinese, Kwak, afterall, now saving the new Kwak from North Korea from what had been looking like a looming deportation for the medical doctor. Dr. Kwak was able to help the mining town's hospital, which had, until venture capital closed in, guaranteed in a Trust as part of the century past incorporation and building of the high quality iron mines that fed American steel through the wars, two hot one cold plus the forgotten at the 38th. Therefore Youngman is very upset by its closure by the venture capital firm that then employs him in elective surgery at a strip mall instead of saving babies and mothers in a hospital.
Please republish! Reviewer with comments seeking Nobel Peace Prize nomination. First appeared in East County Magazine Bookshelf.
@PressSec although we pulled out, at least officially, hostilities have not yet ended within the Korean Peninsuila. Do @POTUS @JoeBiden and @VP @KamalaHarris have any plan to change that? If not ask them to read this book review, por favor y sie sie danke https://t.co/QENAfwVIkq
— Jonathan Goetz (@socalgoetz) September 13, 2024
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