Pachinko book cover7/3/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Sunja, the daughter of a boardinghouse owner, becomes involved with an older businessman, Koh Hansu, who comes to her aid when she is harassed by Japanese men in occupied Korea. The Korean diaspora in Japan is fraught, as we learn through Lee’s sweeping multigenerational epic. I did my own light research, which led me to this life-changing book. ![]() ![]() Through family stories, most from my mother, some translated from family members, I learned my history piecemeal. This selection is a bit personal for me: my mother is a third-generation Zainichi Korean, something I didn’t understand until close to my high school graduation. However, our choice of Pachinko was rooted in its status as the first English-language novel depicting the history of Koreans in Japan, known in Japanese as Zainichi (literally, “existing in Japan”) Koreans. The sun has already shone on bestsellers, which is why they are seldom included in our boxes. And unlike many other books we’ve included, it’s a bestseller - the sort with lots of laudatory quotes on the cover about Lee’s refined storytelling, the intricacy with which she crafts her characters and their world, and her inimitable ability to draw you into this family’s struggle. Those pages span over half a century and four generations, from Korea to Japan to the United States. Pachinko is a big book, in many senses of the word. ![]()
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