American Hagwon: A Novel
About this audiobook
Every parent wants to give their children a better future. But what happens when the promise becomes impossible to keep?
In Annandale, Virginia, Eunhee Lim opens American Hagwon with borrowed chairs, a handful of students, and a belief that hard work and education can change a life. For the families who walk through her doors, the small tutoring academy offers something worth sacrificing for: a chance for their children to go further than they did.
Keeping that hope alive becomes a family undertaking. Eunhee’s husband, Seongho, repairs whatever breaks. Their daughter, Mina, translates, answers calls, and postpones her own ambitions. Their son, Jun, discovers that being useful can make it harder to be heard. Among the students is Isabel Vega, whose mother’s hotel wages leave little room for the future her daughter imagines.
When a wealthy supporter offers his backing, the academy’s ambitions grow. College admissions become advertisements. Generosity comes with conditions. And scholarship promises begin to exceed the money available to fulfill them.
As the children grow into adults, the people closest to Eunhee must decide what they owe their families—and what they can no longer afford to give.
Spanning a decade of lessons, unpaid labor, difficult loyalties, and quiet acts of courage, American Hagwon is an intimate novel about immigrant family life, the cost of ambition, and the fragile trust between those who make promises and those who build their lives around them.
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About the author
Min Jin Lee is a recipient of fiction fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard. Her second novel Pachinko (2017) was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the Medici Book Club Prize, and a New York Times 10 Best Books of 2017. A New York Times Bestseller, Pachinko was also a Top 10 Books of the Year for BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the New York Public Library. Pachinko was a selection for “Now Read This,” the joint book club of PBS NewsHour and The New York Times. It was on over 75 best books of the year lists, including NPR, PBS, and CNN. Pachinko will be translated into 25 languages. Lee’s debut novel Free Food for Millionaires (2007) was a Top 10 Books of the Year for The Times of London, NPR’s Fresh Air, USA Today, and a national bestseller. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, NPR’s Selected Shorts, One Story, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, Conde Nast Traveler, The Times of London, and Wall Street Journal. She served three consecutive seasons as a Morning Forum columnist of the Chosun Ilbo of South Korea
