Without You, There is No Us, by Suki Kim. Aka A Portrait of the Basic College Girl as a Young Woman. Be advised: Be current on your blood pressure meds before you check this one out from the library. Maybe have one of those defibrillator kits on hand, because it’ll get your blood boiling like no other. Kim scams an American missionary organization into sending her to North Korea as an English teacher. She’s well aware that the organization will be destroyed when she’s exposed. She’s also well aware that the young boys she’s teaching — the sons of high Party officials — are going to face potentially lethal consequences, along with their entire families. None of that bothers her a bit. No, her main problem is that all those North Korean boys find Mx. Suki Kim so irresistibly sexy, OMG, she just can’t even.
Also note the passages about Her Relationship. That’s how she refers to the poor bastard. It’s something along those lines, I forget — maybe it’s “My Ex” — but either way, he never even gets the goddamn common courtesy of being referred to by name … because to Mx. Kim, he really doesn’t have one. He’s just another interchangeable character in the all-encompassing soap opera that is her life.
Severian, “Recommended Reading”, Founding Questions, 2022-06-09.
April 8, 2026
QotD: Without You, There is No Us, by Suki Kim
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