If you’d like to reach me, my email is: jiminkang2021@gmail.com.
HIGHLIGHTS
The New York Times
“As someone who was approaching Lent after a long hiatus from faith, I wanted to give up a precious thing whose absence would make room for something revelatory. I wondered: What if I gave up language?”
Reuters:
Brazil’s Munduruku tribe haunted by mercury’s deadly threat
For a full list of Reuters articles (Brazil bureau), see: https://www.reuters.com/journalists/jimin-kang
Vox:
I’m an international student 7,000 miles away from family. Loneliness is my new reality.
“As an international student from a high-risk country, I will be part of a handful of students allowed to remain on a campus that has been traumatically emptied out. This creeping sense of loneliness is a new normal I have to get used to, as everything I’ve grown familiar with has changed, quite literally, overnight.”
The Nation:
What About the International Students?
“The coronavirus threw their lives into disarray. Months in, their futures are still uncertain.”
Atlas Obscura:
On Streets and Subways in South Korea, Poetry Hides in Plain Sight
“You’ll find poems in hostels, restaurants, and even on mountain trails—if you know where to look.” (Featured in Poetry Magazine’s Harriet blog: “In South Korea, Poetry’s Everywhere”)
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FEATURES / NEWS PIECES
Narratively
And the Cure for Millennial Burnout Is…This Giant Penguin
(Listen to the audio version here or on Spotify)
In June 2021, I was invited to speak at the Goethe Institute’s Kultursymposium Weimar — on the theme Generations — about this article: you can find the full 12-minute interview, entitled ‘Pengsoo for President’, on YouTube.
The Nation:
International Students Don’t Want to Study in the US Anymore
Princeton Students are Sitting In for Title IX Reform
The Counter:
Is food waste a religious issue?
Nobody knows why we have so many national food holidays
Princeton Alumni Weekly:
“At Princeton, where just 68 undergraduates identify as having Native American heritage, efforts are underway to increase Native student enrollment and build support for Indigenous topics in the curriculum.”
Student Dispatch: Wondering What Could Have Been for the Class of 2021
U.S. 1:
Climate unpredictability puts New Jersey farmers in fight for survival (narrative non-fiction)
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FIRST-PERSON / OP-ED ESSAYS
Business Insider
The Huffington Post
I’m an international student in the US. I’m devastated by ICE’s new guidelines
The Counter
Covid-19 has sent most college students home from campus. I’m one of the few still here.
TIME:
This is Not How I Pictured My Senior Year of College. But It’s Not All Bad Either
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LITERARY WORK + ESSAYS
In 2021, my essay What Prayer Is, received an Honorable Mention in Ploughshares’s Emerging Writers Contest. It will be published in the Spring 2023 issue of the Sonora Review.
OffAssignment
The Art of Delusion: Reading Don Quixote on Jeju Island
“In the negative space of their illusions are the everyday consistencies that, in sun or in rain, will never change, and my courage to face new experiences at home could be bolstered by the fact that, at the end of the day, there would always be someone who loved me by my side.”
Cha: An Asian Literary Journal
To the Cat Feeder in Hong Kong
“How, I wanted to ask you then, did you manage to love something you knew you could never possess? That could disappear and never return, as you discovered?”
The Nassau Weekly:
“When do we gain the right to call a place home—and what responsibilities do we hold to the place once we do?”
A Mother’s Love, Lost in Translation
“…my “mother tongue,” ironically enough, often hindered my ability to connect with the people I loved the most. It was painful then, and still painful now, to realize that although I owe my parents many things, my words — most of which I speak because of them — will never fully pay the debt.”
A Melody at the Crossroads (about Princeton’s Alexander Hall)
The Map’s Edge:
“Besides, as long as Brazil has made its way into the definition of who I am, I think my response is pretty accurate, and brings me a little closer to home.”
Casapaís (in Spanish)
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BOOK REVIEWS
The Oxonian Review
Mother, Daughter, Stranger (a review of Jessica Au’s 2022 novel Cold Enough for Snow)
Cha: An Asian Literary Journal
“Testimony Will Always Prevail”: A Review of Aftershock (2020)
“Hong Kong has come to stand for something personal in all of our lives. It should serve as a reminder that, even when our worlds are falling apart, we can—and must—bear witness. Because testimony will always prevail.”
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POETRY
‘Dutch Oven’ in Nassau Literary Review (Spring 2021)
‘An Afternoon on the Star Ferry’ in Quixotica: Poems East of La Mancha (Chameleon Press, 2016)
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MEDIA & OTHER
VIDEO & DOCUMENTARY
7,000 Miles (2020)
A documentary short about the experience of being an international student on an empty college campus during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Selected for the Hellbender Student Film Festival and shortlisted for the COVIDeo-19 Film Festival. Showcased in screenings at Princeton University and Wesleyan University.
INTERVIEWS
[CNBC]: As more colleges move to remote learning, students struggle to adapt
An interview I did with CNBC about how Princeton changed as a result of the coronavirus. Many of my images I took—while the school was gradually shutting down—were used in the video.
Hey there, I'm Jimin. 