Mun, then eight years old, ran through the terminal and was only forced to stop running when she hit an automatic door with her face. “I’ve always had a can-do attitude, it must be in my DNA,” says Mun, who has worked as an Avon lady, dance hostess, street vendor, photojournalist, bartender and criminal investigator.
Now a writing teacher and novelist, Mun, who will read on Jan. 12 at the Barnes & Noble in Tribeca, has published her first novel, Miles From Nowhere loosely based on her experience as a teenage runaway.
In the world of literary devices, Mun’s childhood airport incident might be described as foreshadowing of the young adult life she would eventually choose for herself.
At the age of 13, Mun bolted once again— this time permanently—leaving her Bronx home for an eclectic and risky life of self-sufficiency that, decades later, would inspire her debut novel about a teenage runaway.Yet years later, Mun still finds it difficult to explain why she left home. “Even though I am 40 years old, I still have a hard time answering questions about the decision, even privately,” says Mun. “The answer is so complicated, it’s one of the reasons why I decided to work on this project.”
In Miles From Nowhere, Mun tells the story of Joon, a nave young Korean girl who runs away from her Bronx home and her near-catatonic mother after her father has left them both. She navigates the mean streets of New York City for the better part of her teenage life, though they provide little solace for her.There are brushes with death, seedy hotels, sexual assaults, drugs and all that might be expected from pre-Giuliani New York City. Constantly on the run, Joon is without the luxury to reflect on her existence; her life is merely a series of acts to survive.
Well into the novel, Joon, like the author, takes a job as an Avon lady, selling cosmetics door-to-door.
“I liked being inside people’s homes, because there I wasn’t pregnant, I wasn’t a runaway, I wasn’t using,” recalls Joon. “With the makeup on I became a new version of me—a well-mannered Korean girl, who sat with her legs crossed in living rooms decorated with plastic-covered couches and plastic-covered lampshades. I smiled often. I spoke softly.”
Mun, who currently lives in Chicago and is a professor of creative writing at Columbia College, insists that only the premise of her own life inspired her novel, rather than the details. However, real life on the street gave Mun admission to tell the story of her protagonist, which she spent eight years penning.
“When I was writing this book, I would try and write a detail that I had experienced or heard.Then immediately I would just go into fictionland,” says Mun, who wrote an average of 40 drafts for each chapter.
While the author recognizes that the two million teenagers that runaway from home each year often end up junkies, homeless, abused and even dead, she doesn’t view her own experience as all bad. “I don’t see myself being a runaway as a negative turn. For me, it was very positive.”
About 10 years ago, when Mun had begun writing her novel, she returned to the Bronx. She walked the familiar neighborhood, flanked by East Gun Hill Road and Pelham Parkway. She walked passed her middle school, I.S. 144, along the path she remembered traveling each day as a child.
“The road was even more depressing than I remembered,” says Mun. She passed the familiar car mechanic and gas station until she reached the house of her childhood. Mun could see there were people in the house.
“They even looked Korean, but I didn’t knock,” she says. “That saying, ‘You can never go home again,’ it’s definitely true.”
> Nami Mun
Jan. 12, Barnes & Noble, 97 Warren St. (at Greenwich St.), 212-587-5389; 7, FREE.
