This volume is a translation of Choi Seung-ja's 1991 anthology titled Portrait of a Suburbanite. Published in the series of "100 Prominent Korean Poets" by Mirae Press, the poems in this volume were selected from four of Choi's previous works titled, Love of This Age (1981), Merry Diary (1984), House of Memory (1989), and the subsequently published My Tomb, Green (1993). Speaking with a fierce sense of equality and independence, Choi Seung-ja's poetry battled ossified forms of language not only on the political but also the personal front. Like her male colleagues, Choi parodied and critiqued the idol of the father, but even further, she insightfully explored irreverent content to reveal the gendered constraints of the lyric form. In particular, Choi exposed the idolatrous power of the lover, the basis of exploitation and injustice at the most intimate level. On top of their political disempowerment as citizens, the private and domestic alienation of women as daughters, lovers, and wives form a deep stratum of repression. When Choi's women personae broke this long silence of compliance nurtured by the traditional lyric and voiced themselves as exploited and traumatized, yet fearless and tenacious human beings, the shock of this transgression shook the nation. In turn it demonstrate how long and how powerfully the gender constrictions had been imposed on Korean women.

Kent Roivas is a normal, upper-middle-class-suburbanite living in the Midwest. He has all the trappings of the American Dream: massive custom home, exotic cars, gorgeous wife, and nearly the largest stainless steel grill in his entire neighborhood. Following an accident at work, Kent decides to embark on a self-imposed midlife crisis. It begins with a strange mushroom trip, followed by a slight addiction to prescription painkillers. Like trying to run down a mountain, things go downhill fast. With so much free time to think, Kents thoughts turn sadistic, especially toward the people around him. He believes his evil neighbors are hiding something beneath the guise of raising a family. Reality is skewed as Kents imagination escalates to the point of actually being afraid of his neighbors but also afraid of his own consumerist lifestyleand afraid even of himself. All hell breaks loose in this posh, quiet neighborhood, but is Kent to blame or has the community just been waiting for a reason to implode?

This is a humorous novel that follows the experiences of John, a man who moves from a city apartment with his wife, Isobel, to a suburban house in Westcote. Isobel, who has always lived in flats, finds it difficult to adjust to living in a house without neighbours above or below. As they settle into their new home, they encounter eccentric neighbours and have comical misadventures. The novel satirises the suburban lifestyle and the quirks of the people who live there.