“When everyone suffered so much loss, where did you begin?” says author Frances Park, when contemplating her latest novel, Blue Rice, which follows a plucky, sensible hero, while examining the devastation of the Korean War alongside the experience of immigrating to America. Park continues, “Your pain’s only special to you, right?”

Park’s indelible tale of loss, love, and bravery follows Pyongyang native Song Hanhee from her horrific experiences in Seoul’s red-light district in 1957 to her lonely suburban life as Honey Song—now Mrs. Joe Lipton—in early 1960s D.C. and Alexandria, where this novel is largely set. Along the way, Honey finds astute friends who help her. Once in Washington, she learns English, how to type, and how to get a job here—all without encountering anyone who looks like her.

“I grew up never even seeing another Korean American student, besides my siblings, from kindergarten through college,” Park tells City Paper. Born outside Boston, she came to Northern Virginia at age 3, when her father’s economist job moved the family to the area where she lives today. “There was only one Korean store when I was growing up, and it was in Arlington. And it was a big deal to go there. Occasionally my parents went into Chinatown to the store for some specialties.”

Blue Rice, which will be published by Vine Leaves Press on June 18, took Park more than 20 years to write, but she’s stayed busy with other projects. Park is the author of 14 books—including novels, memoirs, and co-authored children’s stories with her sister, Ginger Park. The two siblings also co-founded Chocolate Chocolate, a confection boutique across Connecticut Avenue NW from the Mayflower Hotel, in 1984. 

“Washington is mostly what I know, and the timeline of my parents is here,” says Park. “My whole history is here.” 

Beginning in the early 1960s, the Parks went to Seoul every three years. “People see Seoul today through the movies and whatnot, and it’s just so modern and advanced and stylish,” Park says. “All I remember was being eaten alive by these post-war sights. They traumatized me.” One visual she still remembers: little children holding bandaged, bloodied hands out for money. “We got the attention of the Beatles as soon as we got off the plane,” she notes. “We just looked different, and everybody knew we were Americans, and they would say, ‘Dollar, dollar, dollar.’ Their handprints all over any car we were in.” 

Growing up in middle-class White America, Park was haunted by memories of those children. Now, when she watches contemporary Korean dramas, she sees actors “wearing all these designer outfits … I think, well, their parents are probably my age, so what were they doing when I used to visit? And how were they living?” she says. “It’s just amazing to me that they came out of the ashes.” Inequality was something her dad  taught her about early. “I still, to this day, will not wear anything with a designer label on it. I just won’t.”

Park based Blue Rice’s Honey Song on a woman from her past. The unnamed woman, whose son Park tutored, was a sex worker in Korea before coming to America. Park remembers that though she was illiterate in both Korean and English, she was “extremely vivacious, loving, and liberal.” She left such an imprint on Park that she inspired an entire vivid novel.

“How many were there? They were countless,” Park says of the Korean women who needed to make new lives in a strange, new country. In fact, Blue Rice is dedicated “to all the lives lost and souls shattered by The Korean War, and to my late mother who lived and breathed it as she carried on in America, humming Korean songs.” 

Park says she’s “half-Korean, half-American in my spirit.” She started writing when she was 10, but she didn’t write about Koreans or Korean Americans until she was in her 30s. “It never even occurred to me,” she muses. 

Last year, Heliotrope Books republished Park’s novel The Summer My Sister Was Cleopatra Moon. Originally acquired and released by then-new, now-defunct, splashy publishing company Talk Miramax Books in 2000, the reprint has been revised and streamlined. Heliotrope also published Park’s memoir in essays, That Lonely Spell: Stories of Family, Friends & Love, in 2022, which featured previously published pieces from national magazines. 

One essay, “Mister, Your Shoelace Is Untied,” is a jazzy-voiced meditation on family. “Totally experimental, totally lawless,” she says of the essay and her writing in general. “I like to write without any rules … I like to write the way Janis Joplin sang.” 

Despite more than a dozen books on her author list, Park prefers short-form writing, and “those epiphany moments”—as she refers to sudden flashes of insight into life—mean everything to her. 

“Most of the time, you’re just kind of coasting and things can be funny. Things can be maddening, but it’s not that electrifying.” But then, Park says, “Something happens. You’re going to remember that it’s seared in you.”

Blue Rice, the latest novel by Frances Park and published by Vine Leaves Press, comes out June 18. vineleavespress.com.