Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun [in Bloomsbury Review]
Nami Mun’s debut is the disturbing but ultimately hopeful story of runaway Joon, a Korean American teenager whose father abandons the family, whose mother loses her sanity, who must somehow navigate homelessness, drug addiction, and sexual abuse to survive the unprotected streets of 1980s New York.
Even as she creates a family of sorts – a street-wise African American woman only a few years older, a prostitute boy who loves hot chocolate, an older man only to happy to be her boyfriend, a drug-and-alcohol-addicted Vietnam vet she meets at Narcotic Anonymous where she goes to eat the cookies, the Spam-eating roommate who begs her to keep the baby as they both search for the next hit, and later the boy who breaks her heart – her fractured existence provides little solace. When she finally decides she must get clean (again), she finds true kindness in strangers who offer her the solid support that just might be enough to start a new life.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2009
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