A masterful blend of personal, family, and national history set against the backdrop of South Korea's long fight for independence and democracy. Kang, a journalist for the Los Angeles Times, combines fastidious academic research and personal recollection to create a vibrant, often disturbing account of a country caught in a centuries-long clash between world superpowers. The period of Japanese colonialism is embodied in the story of Kang's paternal grandfather, Myong-Hwan Kang, whose mind and spirit were shattered when he was twice arrested and tortured for nationalist activities. Celebration over the end of Japanese domination with their loss in WW II was interrupted by the outbreak of the Korean War. In 1946, when Kang was three, she and her mother escaped from their home in the north, going first to Seoul and then to a refugee camp in Pusan; they waited there over a year for passports so that they could rejoin Kang's father in Tokyo, where he was working as an interpreter for the American government. Finally, the two made an illegal crossing and were detained by the Japanese and finally released on bond, still without passports. Kang walks the line between Korean, Japanese, and American culture, and is acutely aware of the tensions among these separate worlds. As a woman she is intellectually attracted to the freedom inherent in American culture, but emotionally she is drawn toward her country of birth, despite its complex social hierarchies. When her parents join her in San Francisco in 1975, they are forced to start from scratch in a new country that does not credit them for past victories. The two buy a grocery store and are perceived like many other Korean immigrants—as if they come from a race of storekeepers who have little other experience. Deft and timely, this helps dispel many misconceptions about one of our nation's least understood immigrant populations.
Pub Date: July 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-201-62684-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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