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Indlæser... Ten Thousand Sorrows (2000)af Elizabeth Kim
Books Read in 2017 (2,764) Indlæser...
Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. There is no doubt that this is the story of a life that was unfair from the beginning. Born post-Korean War to an absent GI father, and subsequently shunned villager, Elizabeth was seen as a non-human for 2 reasons, being a girl, and being of mixed race. The things she sees and experiences as a child are bad enough in her home country, but when she is adopted by a "nice religious American family".......the abuse continues behind closed doors. This time in the name of God. Terrible things happen to her, and yet we know from the fact that the book is written that she comes good. Thank goodness. It might have been hard to read otherwise. This is a real facing of demons book, and the author has a lot to face. What an inspirational person. It has made me very grateful that my life is peaceful and violence-free. Amen. Kim traces her evolution from a traumatized childhood in postwar Korea to her emotional awakening as a young abused wife in America. Currently a journalist based in California, she re-creates her uncle and grandfather's gruesome "honor killing" of her rebellious mother. Eventually, Kim was left at a Christian orphanage where she was adopted by a white, fundamentalist American couple. However, their pious tyranny was matched only by the harsh, racist abuse Kim endured at school from her classmates. Seeking to escape, she married the young deacon at her parents' church, who turned out to be an abusive schizophrenic. It's hard to believe that human beings can suffer so many atrocities starting in childhood and still turn into successful adults! ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
Read by the author 6 CD's 6 hrs. They called it an "honor killing," but to Elizabeth Kim, the night she watched her grandfather and uncle hang her mother from the wooden rafter in the corner of their small Korean hut, it was cold-blooded murder. Her Omma had committed the sin of lying with an American soldier, and producing not just a bastard but a honhyol--a mixed-race child, considered worth less than nothing. Left at a Christian orphanage in postwar Seoul like garbage, bleeding and terrified, Kim unwittingly embarked on the next phase of her extraordinary life when she was adopted by a childless Fundamentalist pastor and his wife in the United States. Unfamiliar with Western customs and language, but terrified that she would be sent back to the orphanage, or even killed, Kim trained herself to be the perfect child. But just as her Western features doomed her in Korea, so her Asian features served as a constant reminder that she wasn't good enough for her new, all-white environment. After escaping her adoptive parents' home, only to find herself in an abusive and controlling marriage, Kim finally made a break for herself by having a daughter and running away with her to a safer haven--something Omma could not do for her. Unflinching in her narration, Kim tells of her sorrows with a steady and riveting voice, and ultimately transcends them by laying claim to all the joys to which she is entitled. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)973.04957History and Geography North America United States United States Ethnic And National Groups Other Groups Asian Americans Korean AmericansLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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The book wasn't what I expected - a grueling story of life in Korea. In fact it was the life in a small-town America of the 1960s and 1970s that brought her those horrors and will shock the readers the most. In fact those couple of years she had in Korea with her loving birth mother, regardless of the poverty, the ostracism they had to face and the trauma of seeing her mother being murdered, were the happiest years of her life, memories of which seemed to help her cope with the abuse later on. A truly awful and disgusting picture of the Western world on one hand and beautiful and inspiring story of mother’s love on the other. ( )