Pachinko April 12, 2018

April 12, 2018

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Hostess:  Cheryl
Attendees:  Michelle, Janna, Susan, Allison, Pam T, Pam M

                 




    "History has failed us, but no matter."

This book gave us some excellent discussion topics such as 

discrimination, the yakuza (Japanese mafia), caste system, 

WWII history, orgy parks, pachinko parlors, and women's struggles.  

"Why do men always get to leave when they can't get what they want."

“Pachinko” chronicles four generations of an ethnic Korean family, first in Japanese-occupied Korea in the early 20th century, then in Japan itself from the years before World War II to the late 1980s. The novel opens with an arranged marriage in Yeongdo, a fishing village at the southern tip of Korea. That union produces a daughter, Sunja, who falls in love at 16 with a prominent (and married) mobster. After Sunja becomes pregnant, a local pastor offers her a chance to escape by marrying him and immigrating together to his brother’s house in an ethnic Korean neighborhood in Osaka. Together, they embark into the fraught unknown.

...Like most memorable novels, however, “Pachinko” resists summary. In this sprawling book, history itself is a character. “Pachinko” is about outsiders, minorities and the politically disenfranchised. But it is so much more besides. Each time the novel seems to find its locus — Japan’s colonization of Korea, World War II as experienced in East Asia, Christianity, family, love, the changing role of women — it becomes something else. It becomes even more than it was.

       (excerpts from the book review summary - The New York Times (by Krys Lee, Feb 2, 2017)

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 We rated Pachinko 4.5 stars

 Next month:  Beartown by Fredrik Backman
 Hostess:  Amy

Bring some book suggestions for the upcoming months!

Here's a start:
Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Salvage the Bones  by Jesmyn Ward
Hum if You Don't Know the Words by Bianca Marais
Girls Burn Brighter by Shobha Rao
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Anthem by Ali Smith
The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea