Teen Runaway Propels Nami Mun’s ‘Miles from Nowhere’

Fictionalized accounts of teenage runaways usuallydepict drugged-out, tough-talking boys plagued by inner demons and explosiveanger. Seldom are they given the voice of someone like Joon, a 13-year-old girland Korean immigrant trying to survive in the New York underbelly of the 1980s, a timewhen the city was known for being especially dodgy. In the book Miles from Nowhere, debut novelist NamiMun follows the young narrator over the course of five years on the streets asshe fights through heartbreaking, agonizing experiences. Mun, a respectedshort-story writer, brings a human face to an oftentimes cliché story line inher first novel.

After her father leaves home, shamed by marital infidelities,and her mother begins to suffer an ever-increasing mental break from reality,Joon flees her life in the Bronx to begin aharrowing struggle on the streets. Youth does not stop Joon from speaking in araw, jarring voice that makes you ache for her: a runaway still so close tohome and surrounded by the bright lights of New York, yet living in complete desolationmiles from where she needs to be. At times you will want to embrace and protectJoon as she moves from homeless shelters to a job as an Avonlady, existing alongside violent addicts and fellow misfits.

Mun grew up in South Korea and immigrated to the Bronx,but notes that Miles from Nowhere isnot autobiographical. Currently a faculty member at Columbia College Chicago,Mun, like her character, left home at a young age before receiving her G.E.D.and going on to graduate from both UC-Berkeley and the University of Michigan. Miles from Nowhere, her story of a youngwoman surviving on the margins of society, is written in matter-of-fact chaptersthat will be explored in further detail when Mun visits Boswell Book Co. on Thursday, Sept. 17, at 7 p.m.