Nami Mun revisits being homeless

Nami Mun
Like the central character in her book "Miles from Nowhere" Nami Mun ran away from home as a teenager. She says her book is 99 percent fiction. However she says the emotions in the book are real.
MPR photo/Euan Kerr

Writer Nami Mun's new novel "Miles from Nowhere," tells the heart rending tale of Joon, a Korean girl who runs away from her family to live on the streets of New York.

At age 13 she is immersed in a world riddled with crime and drugs.

Mun, who emigrated from Korea to the U.S. as a girl, also ran away from her family as a teenager. She says the story isn't autobiographical, but it captures the emotions she experienced.

She told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr about the time she got a job selling jewelry on the street. She went into the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant to try to sell something to the cooks.

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