April 17, 2005: Headlines: COS - Korea: Adoption: Providence Journal Bulletin: In alternate chapters, we follow the life of Kyung-Sook from her musical ambitions and work in a noodles and dumpling shop far from her Enduring Pine Village to her fateful affair with Dave, an American guitarist with the Peace Corps.
Peace Corps Online:
Directory:
Korea:
Peace Corps Korea :
The Peace Corps in Korea:
April 17, 2005: Headlines: COS - Korea: Adoption: Providence Journal Bulletin: In alternate chapters, we follow the life of Kyung-Sook from her musical ambitions and work in a noodles and dumpling shop far from her Enduring Pine Village to her fateful affair with Dave, an American guitarist with the Peace Corps.
In alternate chapters, we follow the life of Kyung-Sook from her musical ambitions and work in a noodles and dumpling shop far from her Enduring Pine Village to her fateful affair with Dave, an American guitarist with the Peace Corps.
In alternate chapters, we follow the life of Kyung-Sook from her musical ambitions and work in a noodles and dumpling shop far from her Enduring Pine Village to her fateful affair with Dave, an American guitarist with the Peace Corps.
In search of her identity - Emotionally stunning first novel follows Korean orphan's quest to find her birth mother
Apr 17, 2005 - Providence Journal Bulletin
SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER, by Marie Myung-Ok Lee. Beacon Press. 264 pages. $23.95.
* * *
What part of the self is a biological legacy, a cultural artifact, a "pure free improvisation?"
This bothers 19-year-old Sarah Thorson, a Korean orphan adopted as a baby by a family in Minnesota. Her identity eludes her. Haunted by dreams of her possible birth mother, she decides to fly to Korea and take part in the Motherland Program at Chosun University.
This skeletal set-up by no means suggests the rich and probing style and vision of this sumptuous and emotionally stunning novel. Marie Myung-Ok Lee of Providence (profiled on the cover of this section), has written several young adult novels and is a visiting scholar at Brown. This is her first adult novel, based on a Fulbright Fellowship to Korea in search of oral histories from women who were forced for various reasons to surrender their daughters.
Lee has woven all of her Korean material meticulously into her narrative, so that it seamlessly accompanies the story that unfolds. Two stories, actually, as we follow Sarah's adventures and those of Kyung-Sook, nicknamed "Shrimp Auntie" and "Esteemed Minister's Wife," in 1993 and before.
Sarah becomes involved with Jun-Ho Kim, a Korean serving in the army, and Doug Henderson, a Korean-American whose Polish-Irish father married a Korean prostitute who worked at the U.S. Army Base. Both she and Doug focus on their "mongrel" backgrounds, trying to piece together bits of the past, which lead Sarah to the Little Angels Orphanage and the tale of her being found at a fire station.
In alternate chapters, we follow the life of Kyung-Sook from her musical ambitions and work in a noodles and dumpling shop far from her Enduring Pine Village to her fateful affair with Dave, an American guitarist with the Peace Corps.
At one point, student riots in Seoul in 1972 and 1993 overlap, providing a broader and sinister political context for Sarah's and Kyung-Sook's quests. Both must navigate the perilous tides of inter- cultural waters, at once determined, shunned, abandoned and terrified.
Lee provides a rich and stunning background, creating a Korea that is both recognizable and disturbingly alien, from kimchi, the fermented spicy cabbage that is a national dish, to the red chili peppers hung at the gate of a house in the village when a son is born.
Once you begin this novel, you won't be able to put it down, infused as it is with our fragile sense of self, the search for natural parents to anchor one's identity, and Lee's elegant, imagistically sinuous prose that continually stabs the heart.
Sam Coale is an English professor at Wheaton and a frequent reviewer.
When this story was posted in April 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:
Peace Corps Online The Independent News Forum serving Returned Peace Corps Volunteers
 | The Peace Corps Library
Peace Corps Online is proud to announce that the Peace Corps Library is now available online. With over 30,000 index entries in 500 categories, this is the largest collection of Peace Corps related stories in the world. From Acting to Zucchini, you can find hundreds of stories about what RPCVs with your same interests or from your Country of Service are doing today. If you have a web site, support the "Peace Corps Library" and link to it today. |
 | RPCVs and Friends remember Pope John Paul II
Tony Hall found the pope to be courageous and capable of forgiving the man who shot him in 1981, Mark Gearan said the pope was as dynamic in person as he appears on television, Maria Shriver said he was a beacon of virtue, strength and goodness, and an RPCV who met the pope while serving in the Solomon Islands said he possessed the holiness of a man filled with a deep love and concern for humanity. Leave your thoughts here. |
 | Friends of the Peace Corps 170,000 strong
170,000 is a very special number for the RPCV community - it's the number of Volunteers who have served in the Peace Corps since 1961. It's also a number that is very special to us because March is the first month since our founding in January, 2001 that our readership has exceeded 170,000. And while we know that not everyone who comes to this site is an RPCV, they are all "Friends of the Peace Corps." Thanks everybody for making PCOL your source of news for the Returned Volunteer community. |
Read the stories and leave your comments.
Some postings on Peace Corps Online are provided to the individual members of this group without permission of the copyright owner for the non-profit purposes of criticism, comment, education, scholarship, and research under the "Fair Use" provisions of U.S. Government copyright laws and they may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner. Peace Corps Online does not vouch for the accuracy of the content of the postings, which is the sole responsibility of the copyright holder.
Story Source: Providence Journal Bulletin
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Korea; Adoption
PCOL19936
07
.
