false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1180433694m/1039455.jpg 1039455 12 <I>Ten Thousand Sorrows</I> starts with its young narrator watching her mother's murder; improbably, things go downhill from there. "Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood," Frank McCourt famously wrote in <I>Angela's Ashes</I>. But McCourt's hardscrabble youth looks like a walk in the park compared to the experiences of Elizabeth Kim. The child of an illicit union between a Korean mother and an American father, Kim grows up the object of disgust and contempt in rural Korea. As a <I>honhyol</I>, or mixed-race child, she isn't considered a person at all. <p> Yet her mother refuses to sell her into servitude, and for that show of compassion she pays with her life. In the harrowing scene that opens the book, Kim watches from a hiding place as her mother--the victim of a so-called honor killing--is hanged from a rafter: "All I could see through the bamboo slats were her bare feet, dangling in midair. I watched those milk-white feet twitch, almost with the rhythm of the <I>Hwagwan-mu</I> dance, and then grow still." Left alone in the world, without so much as a name or date of birth, Kim ends up in an orphanage where she spends hours on end locked in a crib that resembles a cage. Things ought to look up when an American couple adopts her. Instead, one form of abuse merely replaces another, as the pastor and his wife tell Kim that her mother "left her to die in a rice paddy" and immediately take away any toy or pet to which she develops an attachment. Later, Kim escapes into a young marriage (arranged, naturally, by her fundamentalist parents), only to find no refuge there either. Surely there is a special place in hell reserved for her husband, the kind of pathological sadist who becomes aroused only by inflicting pain. <p> By this point, the reader begins to feel like something of a sadist herself. It's a tribute to Kim's skill as a writer that we can't look away from her pain, even when it might feel more comfortable to do so. True, she <I>does</I> leave her husband, make herself a new life with her daughter, begin a journalism career without benefit of training or degree--all of which demonstrates an amazing tenacity and inner strength. Yet the latter half of the book employs the familiar vocabulary of healing without doing much to convince. Reconciled with her experiences, Kim doesn't necessarily seem to have finished processing them. Her book has all the raw urgency of a call to 911: it feels written for the author's very survival. <I>--Chloe Byrne</I> 1025825 5 2000 Ten Thousand Sorrows : The Extraordinary Journey of a Korean War Orphan total:157|5:32|4:71|3:39|2:12|1:3| 157 588 217 23 3 0 false false Sat Sep 06 22:24:00 -0700 2008 Sat Sep 06 22:24:00 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Jun 28 20:29:38 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 28 20:32:48 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Wed Jun 17 12:50:26 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 17 12:58:44 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Thu Sep 17 19:38:01 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 17 19:38:28 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat Jun 14 21:52:37 -0700 2008 Tue Sep 23 10:30:06 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Mar 02 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Mar 02 15:22:51 -0800 2009 Mon Mar 02 15:24:07 -0800 2009 1 0 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Mon Feb 25 16:43:51 -0800 2008 Wed Feb 27 12:14:56 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Jun 08 14:09:47 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 08 14:11:32 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Sep 10 03:11:55 -0700 2007 Tue Jan 01 04:52:28 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Jun 29 22:16:41 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 29 22:17:45 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2001 Wed Aug 22 07:59:11 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 22 08:00:42 -0700 2007
It is a beautiful simple tale of life in the global world. Utterly fascinating. Well written. Easy to read.

Thank you for sharing.]]> 0 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004 Fri Sep 07 06:23:00 -0700 2007 Fri Sep 07 06:23:00 -0700 2007 4 0 false false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Thu Mar 29 03:05:46 -0700 2007 Thu Mar 29 08:48:19 -0700 2007 3 0 false false Tue Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Wed Mar 26 15:14:10 -0700 2008 Wed Mar 26 15:15:31 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Tue Sep 02 20:40:45 -0700 2008 Tue Sep 02 20:43:47 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Tue Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Thu Aug 16 23:49:51 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 17 00:03:45 -0700 2007 2 0 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Thu Jan 17 11:42:18 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 17 11:43:04 -0800 2008 3 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 18 18:47:55 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 18 18:48:05 -0800 2008 4 0 false false Mon Aug 20 14:55:55 -0700 2007 Mon Aug 20 14:56:34 -0700 2007 5 0 false false Sat Aug 23 10:51:19 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 23 10:53:21 -0700 2008 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=1039455