In 'Cursed Bunny,' horror takes unexpected forms

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Arts, Books

4.2 • 670 Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Bora Chung's collection of short stories, Cursed Bunny, jumps across different characters and genres, but there's something a little sinister in nearly all of them. In this episode, Chung speaks to NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about how bodily autonomy, social stigma and cultural norms played a big part in one particular horror story – which is actually rooted in something the author experienced in real life.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaung. Today on the pot, we've got author
0:06.8	Borah Chung. Her short story collection is called Curst Buddy, originally published in Korean. It's now
0:12.4	translated into English. The book is full of wild trips into different genres. So I was surprised
0:18.1	to learn that one of her stories is actually based on a true thing that happened to her.
0:22.7	She tells Ampera's Aisha Rosco about how one time when she was 28, she had this medical issue where her period just would not stop.
0:30.3	I'll let her tell the rest of it.
0:31.6	But she points out how cultural mores over motherhood and pregnancy got in the way of her ability to receive her own health care, which strikes me as the perfect backdrop for a horror story.
0:43.9	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:48.6	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, Sources and Methods. NPR reporters
0:55.9	on the ground bring you stories of real people helping you understand why distant events
1:00.5	matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:08.4	A girl whose brother feeds on her blood, robots that take revenge on their owner, and a bunny lamp with a deadly curse.
1:19.9	Those are some of the bizarre, twisted plot lines in cursed bunny, Boruchung's first collection of short stories to appear in English,
1:29.1	which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. It was translated from Korean by
1:35.1	Anton Her. Author Boruchung joins us now to talk about her collection. Welcome to the show.
1:41.5	Hello. Thank you for having me. Thank you for joining us.
1:45.0	So you've described these stories as, quote, like a fairy tale, but with a little bit of a Korean twist.
1:52.4	Can you talk about what that means?
1:53.9	They definitely felt like fairy tales to me.
1:57.1	Fairy tales, usually the European ones that we are kind of used to in the English-speaking world,
2:05.4	has a certain way of plot development. And I really love that structure. So I try to use it
2:13.0	whenever it seems fun. And I add a Korean reality, the things that I see, or the things that I heard from somebody
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.