Q&A: Helena Rho, Author of 'Stone Angels'

We chat with author Helena Rho about Stone Angels, which follows a forty-year-old woman who journeys to her cultural homeland—and uncovers a harrowing secret that makes her rethink everything she thought she knew about her mother.

Hi, Helena! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

Hello! I’m a writer living in the woods, which sounds transcendent if you’re Henry David Thoreau but for a city girl like me is far more complicated. I’m also a devoted fan of K-dramas and the haenyeo of Jeju Island—female free divers who harvest abalone and sea urchin in all seasons and in all kinds of weather. In a previous life, I was an assistant professor of pediatrics.

When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?

I suppose the first glimmer of my desire to be a writer appeared when I was ten years old. My mother had just made me watch Gone with the Wind, which had played on TV for hours, and I picked up a notebook and started a diary. “Dear Scarlett” was how I addressed each entry, and I diligently kept at it for a year. Unfortunately, I lost the diary. I wish I could retrieve the origins of my writing career.

Quick lightning round! Tell us:

The first book you ever remember reading: The Secret Seven by Enid Blyton
The one that made you want to become an author: My Own Country by Abraham Verghese
The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

**Your latest novel, Stone Angels, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?**

A love letter to women.

What can readers expect?

In a Pachinko meets Persuasion, a forty-year-old woman journeys back to her cultural homeland and uncovers a harrowing secret. Combining elements of migration and identity in the Korean diaspora with a slice of painful World War II history and a precious second chance at love, Stone Angels is a family drama told through the bold and determined voices of three women—mothers and daughters and sisters—navigating the beauty and brutality of their lives.

**Where did the inspiration for Stone Angels come from?**

In the summer of 2006, I’d abandoned the practice of pediatrics and was studying Korean language at Konkuk University in Seoul and reconnecting with my mother’s family. That’s when I learned that hundreds of thousands of girls and young women were forced into sexual slavery by Japan during the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945). They were known as “comfort women” although the victims at the time were mostly teenagers, and some of them were as young as nine and ten years old. As an MFA candidate in nonfiction at the time, I thought I’d eventually write a long form piece about them, but I didn’t do more research. Then, in 2015, I was given a special book, Can You Hear Us?, a verified, compiled oral history of Korean survivors translated into English. It completely changed my life. Although I’d never written fiction before, I decided to write a novel. Because only through fiction could I imagine the life of a single victim, her family, her friends, and her community, all destroyed by systematic, institutionalized sex trafficking by a government.

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Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

I don’t mean to be unkind to my character Gongju, but the comedy inherent in the trials and tribulations of her life was fun to write. My favorite chapter is what I like to call “Gongju at Angelina’s wedding” (my chapters don’t have titles). I write from Gongju’s POV and it’s hilarious to me how absurdly funny she is in her head. Juxtaposing her dark humor against the disastrous conversations she has with two of her daughters in that chapter allowed me to amp up both the elements of comedy and tragedy. I love it when I can do this as a writer.

Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?

Once I decided that falling in love was at the heart of my central character Angelina’s journey, I then ran into a huge problem—I had no idea how to write a love story! And my history of reading dime-store romances as a teenager was wholly unhelpful. So I turned to the OG: Jane Austen. I read all six of her published novels every decade of my life and I’ve been doing it since I was twenty years old. Persuasion, a wildly romantic story about second chances, is my favorite, and I based Angelina on Anne Elliot.

What’s next for you?

In 1592, in the Western hemisphere, Sir Francis Drake had already helped the Royal British Navy defeat the Spanish Armada, and a young playwright named William Shakespeare had written The Taming of the Shrew but had not yet written Hamlet. In the East, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a feudal warlord, who had just united Japan under his rule, invaded Korea and started the Imjin War (1592-1598). All seemed lost for the Koreans, except for the actions of one man—Admiral Yi Sun-sin, who saved his country. I’m writing a novel based on what I imagine would have been the women’s experiences during this devastating war, and the story is told through the lens of a fictional character, the admiral’s third wife, which is also the working title of my manuscript.