Jia Tolentino's Trick Mirror meets Cathy Park Hong's Minor Feelings in a meditation that blends
memoir and cultural criticism to explore how the author's love affair with K-Pop has shaped her
sense of self charting K-Pop's complex coming of age through some of its big-name idols.
I'll Love You Forever: Notes from a K-Pop Fan is a smart poignant constantly surprising essay
collection that considers the collision between stratospherically popular music and our
inescapably personal selves. Kwon explores different K-Pop stars from H.O.T. to Taeyeon to IU
to Suga from BTS and shows how they illuminated and informed her own life. In centering
personal experience to explore larger cultural topics Kwon takes cues from works such as Trick
Mirror by Jia Tolentino. But I'll Love You Forever breaks new ground in its consideration of
K-Pop bridging the gap between criticism and the personal to span the history of K-Pop from
its origins to the present from the perspective of a bilingual and bicultural Korean American.
I'll Love You Forever interweaves profiles of different K-Pop idols with such themes as Korea's
obsession with academics plastic surgery and female sexuality and desire among others.
Combining insightful critique and adoring analysis I'll Love You Forever provides readers with
a fuller picture of a culturally and socially complex industry and the machine and heart behind
its popularity. Through it all Kwon offers up the passion of a superfan finding joy in K-Pop
along the way.
