Summary: Five generations of Koreans fight to survive in Korean and Japan during the Japanese occupation.
Rating & Recommendation: 5/5; recommend for anyone, especially anyone interested in WWII, Japan-Korean relations
Review: Easily in contention for best read this 2018. I got this as a free gift with purchase from a book themed shop and knew almost nothing about it.
I absolutely fell in love with the story telling, the writing, the purpose. The flow isn’t flowery or ornate; it’s intentional and pointed. Pachinko is as much about perseverance as it is resignation. I found myself so sad, so betrayed, and so angry for this family. The question is really, Can you create a home when you’ve been robbed of your humanity? Can you ever outrun your shadows? Is it curse or karma?
The Koreans in Japan are fundamentally robbed of their identities, marooned in this foreign and oppressive place without hope. They're forced to gamble their fates, their honor, and their dignity, just to stay alive, just to feel that there's a chance. I became obsessed with Sunja, with her strength and fortitude. I just wanted her to feel peace. She doesn't always get justice, and her son Solomon is the only one who truly takes each of his identities and owns them. It takes five generations to wash this family of their curse, which is sad, but not unusual.
It’s frustrating that mankind has learned so little from our collective history, that we’re so quick to demean and subjugate a people for no reason at all, that we’ve convinced ourselves that life is suffering. And THEN we convince our children that life is suffering? That they can expect nothing more? Is the bar really so low?
The story spans decades and five generations, and each generation proves a point about identity, about fear, about faith. This devastated me in the same way that American Marriage and Born a Crime devastated me - it feels like understanding and helplessness.
I'm looking forward to so much more from Min Jin Lee.
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