Matthew Salesses Books in Order

After years as a Korean War prisoner, Theodore Dickerson returns to Virginia during the McCarthy era. Welcomed as a hero, he struggles with captivity’s lasting effects, an unresolved former relationship, and the demands of his new marriage.

A man discovers that he has a five-year-old son and struggles to reconcile parenthood with the life he already knows. Across 115 brief chapters, his uncertain family relationships expose tensions between commitment, personal identity, and the desire to escape responsibility.

Drawing on his upbringing as a Korean adoptee in a white family, Matthew Salesses explores racism and Asian American masculinity. These essays examine stereotypes, media representation and the model-minority myth alongside questions of identity, belonging and divided self-perception.

Nine-year-old Teddy travels to Korea with his adoptive parents and searches the faces around him for his birth mother. An encounter with his father’s colleague brings family tensions into focus as Teddy struggles with questions of belonging and origin.

After his uncle’s suicide and the September 11 attacks, Korean American adoptee Tee leaves for Prague in search of a different life. New friendships and romantic entanglements complicate his questions of identity as a catastrophic flood approaches the city.

Matt Kim fears he is disappearing from a life already fractured by abandonment and exhaustion. When his girlfriend discovers that their doubles once dated, the vanished life of a supposedly better Matt makes his own existence even more uncertain.

Basketball player Won Lee’s sudden winning streak brings fame without acceptance in the NBA. His relationship with producer Carrie Kang unfolds as both confront the stereotypes, professional barriers, and demands for visibility facing Asian Americans in sports and entertainment.