Kwon, Giaae: I‘ll Love You Forever

Jia Tolentino‘s Trick Mirror meets Cathy Park Hong‘s Minor Feelings in a meditation that blends memoir and cultural criticism to explore how the author‘s love affair with K-Pop has shaped her sense of self, charting K-Pop‘s complex coming of age through some of its big-name idols. I‘ll Love You Forever: Notes from a K-Pop Fan is a smart, poignant, constantly surprising essay collection that considers the collision between stratospherically popular music and our inescapably personal selves. Kwon explores different K-Pop stars, from H.O.T. to Taeyeon to IU to Suga from BTS, and shows how they illuminated and informed her own life. In centering personal experience to explore larger cultural topics Kwon takes cues from works such as Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino. But I‘ll Love You Forever breaks new ground in its consideration of K-Pop, bridging the gap between criticism and the personal to span the history of K-Pop from its origins to the present from the perspective of a bilingual and bicultural Korean American. I‘ll Love You Forever interweaves profiles of different K-Pop idols with such themes as Korea‘s obsession with academics, plastic surgery, and female sexuality and desire, among others. Combining insightful critique and adoring analysis, I‘ll Love You Forever provides readers with a fuller picture of a culturally and socially complex industry and the machine and heart behind its popularity. Through it all, Kwon offers up the passion of a superfan, finding joy in K-Pop along the way.