NUCLEAR FAMILYby Joseph Han
precipitation. It is a topic that is at the forefront of our minds today, with the threat of nuclear warheads at the hands of deranged leaders and the nuclear weapons of hate falling around us daily. Joseph Han’s Debut Novel, ‘Nuclear Family’, also focuses on fallout – from war, from family obligations, from all that remains unspoken – and what it takes to move forward after a disaster.
Meet the Cho family, owners of Cho’s Delicatessen 1, 2 and 3. Yes, three thriving Korean delis in Honolulu! All thanks to Appa and Umma, and their children, Grace and Jacob. And thanks to Guy Fieri, who once paid a visit (but “didn’t even pay for his food”) and catapulted the restaurants to local fame.
It’s not easy to maintain a deli dynasty, but the life of the Chos has been quite good. But when Jacob decides to go to South Korea to teach English, his parents are thrilled because it means he will reconnect with his roots and return with a newfound sense of purpose. Unbeknownst to them, he also leaves to escape his own secrets. But once there, Jacob is possessed by the ghost of his grandfather – who died in a South Korean parking garage and longs to reconnect with the family he left behind in North Korea – and tries to cross the DMZ, which causing a multicontinent, multigenerational collapse.
Jacob’s stunt quickly affects his family’s restaurant dynasty in Hawaii. Regulars stop patronizing the Chos’ delis. Formerly carefree Appa, who would “sweep the floor and shake his hips while singing”, is obsessed with restoring his family’s reputation. Umma becomes estranged from her daughter. And Grace loses herself in bongs the size of mushroom clouds.
You should visit Cirque du Soleil to see someone juggling with as much effort as Han with such effortless agility and tenderness. Generational trauma, the American dream, the consequences of conquest. And his prose is rhythmic and hypnotic; it captivates from the first page and gracefully conveys the family’s loss and longing. Coupled with this are frequent, buttery shifts in perspective, allowing us to occupy a multitude of hearts and minds with such intimacy that it almost becomes intrusive.
The quiet beauty of Han’s work is also contained in his characters – the Chos and their relatives, naturalized and Native Hawaiians. Han’s characters are very familiar – even if you’ve never traveled to Hawaii or South Korea, tasted mandoo or loco moco, or spoke pidgin or Korean – and you want them to succeed and find peace together. It’s hard to read “Nuclear Family” and not be inspired to mend broken relationships. Listen. To speak. Because this is a novel about how pain can be caused by silence. The echoes of what we do not say can resound loudly.
History is also always present in the novel; it’s practically another character full of blood, guts and violence. We witness the tangible effects of war, colonization and rescue complexes. While Han’s characters express their frustrations with crushing accuracy, it sometimes feels like it’s Han himself speaking to us, rather than his characters, but this never wanders into the realm of distracting preaching.
Han never ceases to surprise. Once you get used to his prose, he breaks form, edits paragraphs, builds towers out of words only to knock them down pages later. And his comedic timing is always punctual, full of cackling humor when we need it most. There’s a specific weed-filled scene towards the end where…well, I won’t screw it up, but it’s extremely funny and cathartic.
“Nuclear family” illustrates that if we are lucky, on the other side of the disaster is family, which is not an abstract noun thrown from one generation to the next, but a verb defined by the action, movement and work needed to survive anything, even outages.
Mateo Askaripour’s debut novel is ‘Black Buck’. He is currently working on his second novel.
NUCLEAR FAMILY, by Joseph Han | 301 pp. | Counterpoint Press | $26