Re Jane: A Novel
Patricia Park“Re Jane is snappy & memorable, with its clever narrator & insights on clashing cultures.”—Entertainment Weekly
For Jane Re, half-Korean, half-American orphan, Flushing, Queens, is the place she’s been trying to escape from her whole life. Sardonic yet vulnerable, Jane toils, unappreciated, in her strict uncle’s grocery store & politely observes the traditional principle of nunchi (a combination of good manners, hierarchy, & obligation). Desperate for a new life, she’s thrilled to become the au pair for the Mazer-Farleys, two Brooklyn English professors & their adopted Chinese daughter. Inducted into the world of organic food co-ops & nineteenth–century novels, Jane is the recipient of Beth Mazer’s feminist lectures & Ed Farley’s very male attention. But when a family death interrupts Jane & Ed’s blossoming affair, she flies off to Seoul, leaving New York far behind.
Reconnecting with family, & struggling to learn the ways of modern-day Korea, Jane begins to wonder
if Ed Farley is really the man for her. Jane returns to Queens, where she must find a balance between two cultures & accept who she really is. Re Jane is a bright, comic story of falling in love, finding strength, & living not just out of obligation to others, but for one’s self.
Journeying from Queens to Brooklyn to Seoul, & back, this is a fresh, contemporary retelling of Jane Eyre & a poignant Korean American debut.
Patricia Park was born & raised in New York City. She earned her BA in English from Swarthmore College & an MFA in Fiction from Boston University, where she studied with Ha Jin & Allegra Goodman. A former Fulbright Scholar & Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction, she has published essays in The New York Times, Slice, & The Guardian. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.