Author Rachel Barebaum interviews author Patricia Park about her new novel, Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim.

This event will be held on Zoom.  You can register in advance for a Zoom invite here.

You can also view the program on Facebook and YouTube. 

Alejandra Kim doesn’t feel like she belongs anywhere. At her wealthy Manhattan high school, her súper Spanish name and súper Korean face do not compute to her mostly white “woke” classmates and teachers. In her Jackson Heights neighborhood, she’s not Latinx enough. Even at home, Ale feels unwelcome. And things at home have only gotten worse since Papi’s body was discovered on the subway tracks.

Ale wants nothing more than to escape the city for the wide-open spaces of the prestigious Wyder University. But when a microaggression at school thrusts Ale into the spotlight—and into a discussion she didn’t ask for—Ale must discover what is means to carve out a space for yourself to belong.

Patricia Park’s coming-of-age novel about a multicultural teen caught between worlds, and the future she is building for herself, is an incisive, laugh-out-loud, provocative read.

Patricia Park was born and raised in New York City. She earned her BA in English from Swarthmore College and an MFA in Fiction from Boston University, where she studied with Ha Jin and Allegra Goodman. A former Fulbright Scholar and Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction, she has published essays in The New York Times, Slice, and The Guardian. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

ATOMIC ANNA is Rachel's second novel. The New York Times Book Review said it was “masterfully plotted." Her debut, A BEND IN THE STARS, was named a New York Times Summer Reading Selection and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Rachel is a prolific writer, reviewer and podcast host. Her work has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, the LA Review of Books, and more. She is a Scholar in Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis. In a former life she was a hedge fund manager and spin instructor. She has degrees from Harvard in Business, and Literature and Philosophy. She is an elected Town Meeting Member in Brookline, MA.