Pachinko

by Min Jin Lee

Love for God, he’d thought, should come naturally and not out of fear of punishment.

I think this nobility argument or a greater nation for a persecuted people is a pretext to eject all the unwanted foreigners.”

She would always believe that he was someone else, that he wasn’t himself but some fanciful idea of a foreign person; she would always feel like she was someone special because she had condescended to be with someone everyone else hated. His presence would prove to the world that she was a good person, an educated person, a liberal person. Noa didn’t care about being Korean when he was with her; in fact, he didn’t care about being Korean or Japanese with anyone. He wanted to be, to be just himself, whatever that meant; he wanted to forget himself sometimes. But that wasn’t possible. It would never be possible with her.