Juhea Kim's debut novel, Beasts of a Little Land, is about Korea's decades-long fight for independence and the lives it impacted. Kim wanted the novel to focus on people who often get overlooked, which is why one of the main characters in the novel is a courtesan, or a sex worker. Kim told NPR's Elissa Nadworny that "these characters show how we can live in a meaningful way, even when the world is falling apart, even when the sky is falling down."