WAR: Forgotten Country

For the theme "WAR" I read the book Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung. First of all, GOOD JOB MS. CHUNG! This book received many awards and came to my attention via Oprah magazine, it was a great book. And yes, I read Oprah magazine. THIS BOOK VALIDATES THAT CHOICE.

Synopsis (************SOME MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD*******************): This book recounts the family history of Janie & Hannah aka Jeehyun and Haejin through Janie/Jeehyun's perspective as the family faces serious difficulties. The first difficulty is the voluntary disappearance of her sister and how the family copes with that. From reading book synposes I expected the book to really center around this event and though that is the beginning the book quickly transitions to the family's difficulties moving to the US from Korea and the father's illness. Yet, I was not bothered by this transition (but surprised), I got sucked in at the beginning and then 100 pages later was like, "whoa how did we get here?" This book really got to my heart with some of the challenges the family faced with being in another country, far away from their known culture and family members, racism that the young girls dealt with, and loss that any family would be challenged by. Oh my, the resiliency of this family.

This book made me think a lot of about the idea of "generational trauma". Here I go getting all psychology-y again. But this book is very illustrative of how events that DID NOT HAPPEN TO YOU but were highly traumatic and influential for another, like your parent, really do shape who you are. And how much they affect you is hugely related to how the parent's cope.

For Janie and Hannah their parent's experiences of the Korean war and ongoing conflict (inasmuch as though there is no outright war anymore but North Korea is cut off from South Korea and many families had loved ones across the border they cannot communicate with) was a huge part of who they are even though they didn't experience it. They did not experience all their father's loved ones being killed and having to live as servants in a relative's house, yet, because of the way this shaped their father, such as how he loved and honored his sister because she was his only living relative, totally affected them in huge ways. This sister's children were awful and abusive and to Janie and Hannah and this may have not been tolerated if they had been the children of another family member. Or maybe not, a huge theme of this book is family and what that means. I feel like I learned a lot about traditional Korea culture reading this book. Interestingly, though Janie and Hannah are "very Asian" but "American" (classic bi-cultural kids and all the rifts that can bring) they way they dealt with the traumas they experienced was so classic to me (in the sense of common), they dealt with those just like any other young women. And perhaps that shows just how human it is to experience these kinds of things, awful as they are, and deal with them best you can.

War: The Korean war was the backdrop for this story and though it was explicitly talked about for a relatively short amount of the book it was lurking in many scenes. More prominent was the "war" within the family between Hannah and the rest of them, vs. Janie at times, vs. Janie + her parents at other times. It is interesting to think of the traditional "war" between nations and how similar that can be to the mini-wars we play out against each other in families. Purposefully hurting each other to gain something, lashing out in retaliation, etc. We under-estimate how much we can really harm each other.

Map of Korea with close-up on the demilitarized zone (DMZ) 

In sum, this book ended in a totally different place than I expected but I gladly followed to where it led me. This is an easy book intellectually, a tough book emotionally. This book is an excellent look at how some things affect all families but also the unique challenges of a family immigrating to the US.

Rating: 3.75 stars (first half: 4.5, second half: 3.0)

Recommendation: Go read it!