OKCHUNDANG CANDY

Go reflects on the experience of watching her beloved grandparents grow older and weaker.

The young narrator adores spending time with Grandma and Grandpa. Their interactions have a loving simplicity: Grandpa gently places a hat on Grandma’s head when the weather turns hot, and every Jesa Day, when many Korean people honor their ancestors, he gives her a brightly colored okchundang candy. As the book progresses and the narrator matures, Grandpa is diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, but he initially conceals his illness from everyone except Grandma. Slowly he weakens and dies. Grandma retreats into silence; a doctor diagnoses her with Alzheimer’s, and she’s admitted to a nursing home. Mirroring the sweet okchundang, her color fades with time. Told from the perspective of an adult Go reminiscing, this graphic memoir, set and originally published in South Korea, takes on aging and death—topics many authors flinch from—with a rare mix of respect, tenderness, and candor. Love is palpable throughout, too: in the grandparents’ enduring bond and in scenes of the narrator bathing Grandma and trimming her nails. Go’s illustrations have a childlike playfulness that often tempers the heavy subject matter; characters have rounded, oversize heads, while pencil marks are visible throughout. Themes of familial love and loss will pierce readers’ hearts while also offering them both windows and mirrors into Korean culture.

An achingly lovely work laced with profound truths on love, death, and grief.