Please Love Umma

Book excerpt: Please Love Umma is a story about an eleven-year old Korean-American girl named Jenna Kim, who experiences the dichotomy of being raised under an overprotective mother and an understanding father, parents who both love her very much but don't seem to love each other at all. Through her experiences, she struggles and overcomes issues with death, culture, and religion as she copes with her own anxiety issues. Jenna's mother, Umma, has died at the beginning of the story, and the novel unfolds as she reflects on the past year. She explores the relationships within her family and begins to see that, having been so close to her father her whole life, her mother had always been left out. But it's too late to turn back time. In this beautifully bittersweet coming-of-age story, author Gracie Kim weaves an unforgettable tale of identity, love, and the many pains involved in growing up. The setting is the Koreatown district of Los Angeles, California before and during the Los Angeles Riots.