Your House Will Pay

Shawn Matthews grew up mourning the death of his big sister Ava, shot dead by a Korean woman working in a corner shop in South Central Los Angeles, around the same time as the police beating of a black man was caught on tape and the city caught fire. Years later, after wrenching himself free from gangs and the legal system, he has a girlfriend, a job, and a role helping his incarcerated cousin's family out. It's a hard life, but he clings to the hope he can build a shell of peace around his wounded family.returnreturnGrace Park grew up in a Korean family outside Los Angeles, working long hours in the family drug store after her sister Miriam became estranged from the family for reasons nobody explains. She's dutiful, but wonders if life will ever hold much promise beyond a strip mall where Koreans do their shopping and there's always another customer to tend to.returnreturnThough these families live in different worlds, they have both built precarious lives in the suburbs. It's not until a shocking crime reignites racial tension Grace and Shawn see their paths cross.returnreturnThis extraordinary standalone novel by the author of the Juniper Song private investigator series vaults the author to a whole new level. It is crime fiction – there is a crime, and it's not clear who's responsible – but the real question is how these characters will live with the complex reality of racism and the long shadow it casts. In the 1990s a young girl died at the hands of an immigrant shopkeeper, and the woman was able to escape prison and the glare of the press by vanishing. In 2019 a Korean immigrant is murdered and a black man is the prime suspect. The fires of 1992, it seems, are still smoldering and at any minute will burst into flames.returnreturnCha has imagined herself thoroughly into the lives of two families from different backgrounds, living near each other yet totally apart. The stories alternate, primarily from the point of view of two young people doing their best to support their families, doing all the right things without ever getting a break, each forced to wonder whether it's all worth it when the odds are stacked against them. Their lives weave around one another, straining in different directions. The suspense isn't so much around who committed a murder as how these characters, wrenched by violence, will figure out how to live with injustice. In a world as divided by racism as when Rodney King asked why we can't all just get along, Cha makes us yearn for a happy ending even as we wonder how any of us will figure out what comes next. returnreturnReposted from Reviewing the Evidence.

"We got our tickets already. We paid for them and everything."

"That don't mean shit."

The genesis of this book is non-fiction: In 1991, Latasha Harlins was shot and killed by a store owner named Soon Ja Du. This sparked all sorts of nationalist and racist tension and violence, naturally contrasted with the racist violence and abuse that the black community in Los Angeles have been subject to for decades. The year after, the Los Angeles Riots occurred.

Cha's book jumps off from that event but expands it into a fictional work that reaches for the sublime. By subtly displaying how humans often interact in different groups—be it in the family, at work, with our loves, other groups of people, the police, the justice system—through means of everyday language that would make Mark Twain proud, Cha has made a book that is not only intricate but simple to follow.

The reader is thrown into action and quickly learns who's who. Racial tension is brought to the surface in a way that makes me, a 42-year-old Swedish citizen, taste more than the visceral shocks to the system that Cha's simple and highly effective plot and dialogue generate.

One of the most radiant methods that Cha uses throughout the book is to show how divides are not only created between constructs like "race" and "nationality", but also between family members (e.g. the mother-daughter relationship), in heterosexuality (e.g. how men and women can interact differently than men with only men, and women with only women), in police departments, in the justice system, and even between different eras. Naturally, all of these divides between humans are merely socially constructed, and Cha highlights that fact beautifully.

Miriam was so American she renounced her own mother—a capital crime, pretty much, in a Confucian culture.

The simplicity in the writing is this book's greatest grace and provides the best framing for the story, which is simple and would undoubtedly have foiled, were it not for the author's skills.

The club leader was behind Grace, so close his voice made her jump. “Is there a problem?” The hope on his face was disgusting. Grace willed her sister to keep her mouth shut. Miriam didn’t even hesitate.

“I didn’t come here to drink with the Simi Valley Hitler Youth.”
“We’re not Nazis.”

The way he said it made Grace think he had to make the denial often.

“I’ve never had to clarify that I’m not a Nazi,” said Miriam.

Cha has written a glass onion of a book that is easily read and floats to my mind to and fro, a week after I finished it.

"We got our tickets already. We paid for them and everything."

"That don't mean shit."

The genesis of this book is non-fiction: In 1991, Latasha Harlins was shot and killed by a store owner named Soon Ja Du. This sparked all sorts of nationalist and racist tension and violence, naturally contrasted with the racist violence and abuse that the black community in Los Angeles have been subject to for decades. The year after, the Los Angeles Riots occurred.Cha's book jumps off from that event but expands it into a fictional work that reaches for the sublime. By subtly displaying how humans often interact in different groups—be it in the family, at work, with our loves, other groups of people, the police, the justice system—through means of everyday language that would make Mark Twain proud, Cha has made a book that is not only intricate but simple to follow.The reader is thrown into action and quickly learns who's who. Racial tension is brought to the surface in a way that makes me, a 42-year-old Swedish citizen, taste more than the visceral shocks to the system that Cha's simple and highly effective plot and dialogue generate.One of the most radiant methods that Cha uses throughout the book is to show how divides are not only created between constructs like "race" and "nationality", but also between family members (e.g. the mother-daughter relationship), in heterosexuality (e.g. how men and women can interact differently than men with only men, and women with only women), in police departments, in the justice system, and even between different eras. Naturally, all of these divides between humans are merely socially constructed, and Cha highlights that fact beautifully.

Miriam was so American she renounced her own mother—a capital crime, pretty much, in a Confucian culture.

The simplicity in the writing is this book's greatest grace and provides the best framing for the story, which is simple and would undoubtedly have foiled, were it not for the author's skills.

The club leader was behind Grace, so close his voice made her jump. “Is there a problem?” The hope on his face was disgusting. Grace willed her sister to keep her mouth shut. Miriam didn’t even hesitate.

“I didn’t come here to drink with the Simi Valley Hitler Youth.”
“We’re not Nazis.”

The way he said it made Grace think he had to make the denial often.

“I’ve never had to clarify that I’m not a Nazi,” said Miriam.

Cha has written a glass onion of a book that is easily read and floats to my mind to and fro, a week after I finished it.

"We got our tickets already. We paid for them and everything."

"That don't mean shit."

The genesis of this book is non-fiction: In 1991, Latasha Harlins was shot and killed by a store owner named Soon Ja Du. This sparked all sorts of nationalist and racist tension and violence, naturally contrasted with the racist violence and abuse that the black community in Los Angeles have been subject to for decades. The year after, the Los Angeles Riots occurred.Cha's book jumps off from that event but expands it into a fictional work that reaches for the sublime. By subtly displaying how humans often interact in different groups—be it in the family, at work, with our loves, other groups of people, the police, the justice system—through means of everyday language that would make Mark Twain proud, Cha has made a book that is not only intricate but simple to follow.The reader is thrown into action and quickly learns who's who. Racial tension is brought to the surface in a way that makes me, a 42-year-old Swedish citizen, taste more than the visceral shocks to the system that Cha's simple and highly effective plot and dialogue generate.One of the most radiant methods that Cha uses throughout the book is to show how divides are not only created between constructs like "race" and "nationality", but also between family members (e.g. the mother-daughter relationship), in heterosexuality (e.g. how men and women can interact differently than men with only men, and women with only women), in police departments, in the justice system, and even between different eras. Naturally, all of these divides between humans are merely socially constructed, and Cha highlights that fact beautifully.

Miriam was so American she renounced her own mother—a capital crime, pretty much, in a Confucian culture.

The simplicity in the writing is this book's greatest grace and provides the best framing for the story, which is simple and would undoubtedly have foiled, were it not for the author's skills.

The club leader was behind Grace, so close his voice made her jump. “Is there a problem?” The hope on his face was disgusting. Grace willed her sister to keep her mouth shut. Miriam didn’t even hesitate.

“I didn’t come here to drink with the Simi Valley Hitler Youth.”
“We’re not Nazis.”

The way he said it made Grace think he had to make the denial often.

“I’ve never had to clarify that I’m not a Nazi,” said Miriam.

Cha has written a glass onion of a book that is easily read and floats to my mind to and fro, a week after I finished it.