In her forthcoming second novel Exhibit, San Francisco author R.O. Kwon extracts hidden, taboo desires with precision, and her hair-raising prose sizzles.
After photographer Jin Han meets injured ballet dancer Lidija Jung at a party, the two women are inexplicably drawn to one another. Jin is married to her college boyfriend, Philip, but, at 29 years old, they’re on two different paths. Philip badly wants children. Jin — a lapsed Christian — doesn’t, and she can’t help but wonder about the kinkier, queerer side of her sexuality that she’s not able to explore in her marriage.
Jin’s chance encounter with Lidija threatens to turn everything upside down, and Kwon tells the story of their mutual obsession with propulsive writing that’s intensely physical. Your stomach might lurch and your heart might beat faster as you enter Jin’s inner monologue of suppressed wants bursting at the seams. With commentary on racialized and gendered expectations of Asian American women, and interwoven parallels to Korean folklore, this book is both hot and smart.
Ahead of Exhibit’s May 21 release via Riverhead Books, readers have the opportunity to hear from Kwon directly on May 20 during a reading and launch party at San Francisco’s Verdi Club presented by Green Apple Books and Litquake. She’ll be in conversation with Ingrid Rojas Contreras, a Colombian American author (and KQED’s former book columnist) whose 2022 book The Man Who Could Move Clouds set a new standard for memoirs. It traces the author’s family legacy of supernatural gifts and curanderismo through vivid portrayals of women with irrepressible appetites for freedom. As she takes us into her grandparents’ world in its tropical setting, humidity emanates off the page.
With these two talents present, the evening promises a fruitful conversation. R.O. Kwon’s 2018 debut novel The Incendiaries, about a Korean American Christian who becomes radicalized to the extreme right, stemmed from the author’s own journey of leaving her faith. As a co-editor and contributor to the short-story collection Kink, Kwon began exploring sexual freedom after religious repression. That theme takes flight in Exhibit, which sees her reach a new level of her literary trajectory.
R.O. Kwon’s ‘Exhibit’ launch party with Ingrid Rojas Contreras takes places on May 20 at Verdi Club (2424 Mariposa St., San Francisco). Attendees may purchase a book with their ticket. VIP entry includes a Polaroid photo with the author, early entry and reserved seating. An audience Q&A and signing will follow the conversation.
