Alexes Josephine Lee

Hyun-sook pressures her anxious daughter to greet her strict grandmother for Lunar New Year, but when her daughter, Jisoo cannot speak, she must choose between punishment or defying generational expectations.

A deep friendship between two first-generation American girls—one Korean, one Persian—illuminates the beauty and tension of belonging, even as the unseen weight of their mothers’ expectations follows them into adulthood.