A very powerful book about such a tough subject. It switches back and forth between present-day, with the author visiting and interviewing an elderly Korean woman living in a “house of sharing”. The other, major storyline depicts what the elderly “granny” related of her childhood and youth- a terrible time from the beginning as she attested. Her family was very poor, on the verge of starving. She always wanted to go to school but never had the opportunity. When she was still a little girl, her parents basically sold her to a restaurant owner. She went willingly because she was told her stomach would always be full, and she’d be able to attend school. But she was basically a slave. That seemed bad enough, but then one day when she was just thirteen, she was abducted in the street and taken to a place out in the middle of nowhere that housed “comfort women” for the Japanese military. Beaten and starved if they didn’t submit, nowhere to go if they ran away, suffering for years with the humiliation and degradation. When much later the war finally ended, the girls didn’t even know, they were just abandoned. They finally started walking away, nearly died of hunger before reaching a town, ignored and shunned by the locals who knew exactly where they’d come from. Begging on the streets. Eventually the main character met someone who would take her in, and later she married (twice) but the men didn’t turn out to be as decent as they’d seemed up front. She trudged her way through a decades-long marriage and was glad when it finally ended. Reunited with her siblings but that was awkward and painful, they knew what she’d been forced to do during the war and were discomfited by it. It seems she finally found some peace living at the “house of sharing” but she was angered about the current government’s blind eye and unfulfilled promises to make right what had been done to her and her companions in the past- she protested over and over, publicly, even at such an old age. It was heartbreaking to read about what she went through, and admirable that she still had a sense of hope, enjoyment for life, and touch of humor. This one will weigh on my mind for a long time.
Borrowed from the public library. Completed on 5/15/24.
