Description: In Before the Fire Dogs Steal the Sun, Crystal Mun-hye Baik blends different genres, from narrative prose to epistles to ancestral mourning rites, to offer an intimate cultural history of war, illness, and estrangement through the experiential lens of her family.
Review Quotes: "In Before the Fire Dogs Steal the Sun, Baik balances research and storytelling with expert precision. Her beautifully crystalline prose illuminates the historical depth of intimate lives and the personal stakes of social experiences. Sentence after sentence, insight after insight, this elegy grips the reader and holds them in communal embrace until the very last word. A monumental achievement."--Vinh Nguyen, author of, The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse
"Although rooted in Baik's deeply personal experience--her mother's painful break from reality after her husband's death--reading this book felt like looking into a mirror. A gift to all of us shaped by militarized diasporas and the unfinished business of war, Before the Fire Dogs Steal the Sun: An Elegy moves between memoir and cultural analysis with power and grace. In the wake of profound loss, Baik pieces together a diasporic family history from makeshift archives scattered across borders and time, offering a speculative yet searingly candid account. This is a brilliant work--moving, engaging, and quietly radical. It will stay with you, and in the best way, restore you."--Jinah Kim, author of, Postcolonial Grief: The Afterlives of the Pacific Wars in the Americas