When Sunja is born in the 1910s in Yeongdo, a small fishing village, in what is now South Korea, she has no expectation of ever leaving her hometown. Her parents, including her kindly but disabled father Hoonie, run a boardinghouse that largely caters to local fishermen. It seems inevitable that Sunja, as her parents’ only surviving child, will also spend her entire life in Yeongdo running the family boardinghouse.
However, as a teenager, Sunja migrates to Japan to start a new life, as many Koreans did during this time when Korea was a Japanese colony. This decision, made largely to avoid the intense shame she will face in her hometown for her out-of-wedlock pregnancy and connected to marriage to a virtual stranger to save face, touches off a family saga spanning decades that examines the experiences of Zainichi, Japan’s Korean population. As with many Zainichi, Sunja and her family find themselves experiencing intense discrimination in Japan and must navigate finding their way in a country that is technically home but doesn’t feel like it.
Continue reading “Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko”
Berryville Book Buzz 