Module 1: A Step from Heaven

Na, An. 2001. A STEP FROM HEAVEN. New York: Speak. ISBN: 0-14-250027-5.

Mi Gook. To four-year-old Young Ju Park, the Korean name for America is “a magic word” (11). In this short novel about family and finding a new home as immigrants, America is everything. Young Ju and her family must leave her grandparents and venture into the unknown. Sure, her father’s sister is already in the U.S. and paves the way for the family’s trip, but they must leave everything and everyone they know for an uncertain future. Before leaving, the focus is on appearances and questions about the certainty of a better future. Young Ju must get her hair curled to look like an American girl, imagining that America is a sort of heaven where she can find a new friend.

The reality of the immigrant experience is different from its dreams, however. In a series of chapters that read almost like vignettes, Young Ju grows up, beginning school, trying to learn the language, and attempting to understand her new home. Her family grows with the birth of her brother, Joon, but the true struggle is with her parents. As with most immigrants, they gave up lives they knew for new lives. In this case, those new lives mean the pressure of working long hours, of not understanding the language, and of feeling inferior to those who live in the dominant culture or who have already immigrated and adjusted to it. Her father feels this pressure the most. His actions drive the story of this family and make it possible for Young Ju, Joon Ho and their mother to find stability and new lives on their own.

Analysis:
This is a short but intense novel. An Na tells the story through Young Ju’s eyes in a series of chapters with a very spare, poetic writing style. Indeed, with different line breaks, the author could have written the visual chapters as a verse novel. She is spare but descriptive, as in the scene when the family dreams of winning Lotto and paying for their better life the fast way: “One dollar for afternoon dreams is expensive and cheap” (81). Similar to most of the situations in the book, the members of the Park family conceive of ways to improve their lives, but those ways do not pay off.

In addition to a novel about a family, this is a novel about a young girl growing up and attempting to make the best of things. Young Ju begins the novel as a naïve four-year-old and finishes it as a young woman preparing to leave for university. Early in the book, she does not want her hair curled and is shocked during the flight over the Pacific. When she reaches her relatives’ house in the U.S., Coke is an alien taste to her, and her first day of school is a nightmare, given her lack of language skills. Still, though, she is optimistic that someday she will fit in, as when she describes her language ability: “I know only little Mi Gook words now. But someday I will know all of them. In the future” (31). She dreams of friends, of being president and, as things worsen, of being far away.

Acting as a foil to her maturation is her father’s growing inadequacy. He has given up everything in an attempt to create a new life for himself and his family, but he is also short-tempered and relegated to working long hours at menial jobs. When Joon Ho arrives, he realizes he has another mouth to feed. In one critical scene laced with irony, he tells Joon Ho, “In this world, only the strong survive. Only the strong can make their future” (68).

From this moment onward, the reality of his inadequacy intrudes into the Park family, leading to Young Ju’s continued growth and also to the dissolution of the family, at least of the family with him in charge. He gets arrested for drunken driving and continues to drive after drinking. He beats his wife for asking a question, and he beats his daughter for finding an American friend. He cannot give a voice to his rage, and through him the author reminds her audience that new lives involve new attitudes. A person cannot remain selfish is he is to change.

In the climactic scene, the father again expresses his emotion through violence, beating Young Ju first and then the mother. This time, however, Young Ju, the perceptive and dutiful daughter, phones 911. Her actions evoke words her mother had said to her previously: “Your life can be different, Young Ju. Study and be strong. In America, women have choices” (129).

Unlike the father, Apa, her mother is able to view and remember the family’s larger goal, that of forging a better life. He is caught in his own selfishness and poorly expressed emotion and abandons the family to return to Korea. Her mother, Uhmma, through her bruises and hands gnarled from restaurant work, understands that sacrifice and strength are the keys to a better life, and by the end of the novel, she and her family have a place of their own, a home in a new country.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED (Grade 7 and up)

Awards & Recognition:
Asian Pacific American Award for Literature, 2001-2003
Michael L. Printz Award Winner, 2002
National Book Award Finalist, 2001
Children’s Book Award in YA Fiction, 2002