She quickly hides Emi in small cave and sacrifices herself to save her younger sister. Inspite of all this there is hope. Hana is raped by Corporal Morimoto, making this her first sexual experience. Mary Lynn Bracht White Chrysanthemum read book short summary. by Kathleen Collins. It sounds cliched when I use the word devastating or heartbreaking but I don’t know what other words to use. White Chrysanthemum is a novel written by Mary Lynn Bracht. JinHee convinced Emi to go to the inaugural ceremony of the Jeju Peace Park that commemorates the 1948 Jeju Uprising. [1] It is written in dual timelines that are split between the two women: Hana's life during the 1940s and Emi's life in 2011. The novel is based on comfort women, Korea, Japan, and history. They were not allowed to be themselves. So many years have passed since the war ended, since the protests began, yet the crimes still go unpunished. Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound. White Chrysanthemum is not an “issue novel” seeking to twist the knife and make you feel as much pity and pain as possible; instead, Hana and Emi’s stories feel powerful and fully realized, as if Bracht is merely a documentarian uncovering the forgotten lives of real women. • White Chrysanthemum is published by Chatto & Windus. Book Review: TOO AFRAID TO CRY: MEMOIR OF A STOLEN CHILDHOOD by Ali Cobby Eckermann – Maggie Reads. Mary Lynn Bracht writes (in a note) that only forty-four South Korean comfort women are alive at the time White Chrysanthemum was being written. She is then returned to the rest of the women as they arrive to a train depot. YoonHui visited the statue after her mother had died with Lane and her nephew. The sisters are haenyeo - free divers - and belong to a strong female community. But the payoff more than compensates for these weaknesses. [2] At the age of 16 years old, Hana is taken away by a Japanese soldier to become a comfort woman. She explores the effects of Hana’s abduction on her family, especially her sister Emi. Corporal Morimoto abducts Hana and so begins the story of two sisters violently separated by war. Despite the devastation of war, the frightening circumstances, the atrocities the sisters never stop thinking about each other. The novel begins with the two sisters on the beach of Jeju Island; Hana is with her mother as she dives for abalone and Emi is waiting on the sand. He is a Japanese soldier named Corporal Morimoto, and has Hana taken with him, leaving her sister behind. To give one? The next morning, the local soldiers learn of the arrival of a new comfort women, prompting them to visit Hana. The novel has fictional names, characters, places, and incidents. This novel is Mary Lynn Bracht’s debut, and it is a tremendously auspicious one. The existence of comfort women wasn’t widely known until the first Korean woman came forward in 1991–over 50 years after the practice began–but the history is still foggy to many Americans. Emi thinks to herself that she has finally found Hana. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Visit Today. Both are haenyeo, women who dive into the ocean on Jeju island, Korea. What amazed me about Bracht’s skilled, precise writing, however, is that these events never feel sensational or cruel. The novel then splits between the two women as Hana becomes a comfort woman and Emi searches for her sister sixty years later. She is unable to communicate with them because she does not speak Mongolian. ( Log Out / I hope you’ll stick around and browse the stacks! White Chrysanthemum is absolutely harrowing; like I wrote in my review of The Tangled Lands last week, readers who are triggered by sexual assault and violence should probably avoid this book. – Mary Lynn Bracht chats about her debut novel, White Chrysanthemum", "White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn Bracht review – Korea's pain", "White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn Bracht review: A sea of troubles", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=White_Chrysanthemum&oldid=969521647, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 25 July 2020, at 23:17. CTRL + SPACE for auto-complete. Asian Review of Books considers the novel to be "thought-provoking" for its incorporation of politics, "the personal and familial", and the "horrific" that may contribute to the remembrance of comfort women so that they are not forgotten. This novel is precisely told, always-suspenseful, ambitious, and moving, and Bracht is a debut author to watch. Terrified for her sister, Hana swims as quickly as she can, for the shore. The story focuses on the impacts of World War II and the Korean War on the regular citizens and it's not the type of thing they teach in school: it centers around the psyc 4.5 stars! [6] The Guardian continues to remark that "the novel will affect readers differently, depending on their background". 4/5 stars. (In a sense, she is.). My name is Madhura and I am a voracious reader. After the introductory chapter documenting Hana’s love of her sister and her shamanistic induction ceremony as a haenyeo (expressly forbidden by the Japanese), the narrative splits: one half stays in 1943, following Hana’s capture and hellish new life as a comfort woman, and the other half jumps to 2011, following an elderly Emi as she seeks news of her lost sister during the historic (and ongoing) Wednesday protests at the Japanese embassy demanding reparations for comfort women. There’s a tragic twist to Emi’s story about halfway through the book that came off as cheap to me–I think Bracht was trying to add urgency, but I thought the story would have been just as good without it. ( Log Out / In 1943, Hana sacrifices herself for Emi and is captured by Japanese soldiers as a "comfort woman": a sex slave for the Japanese army. Twitter: _litcircle Hana is brought to a police station where she maintains the lie that she told Corporal Morimoto, that her family is dead, by giving a false last name so they cannot locate them. When she is brought to Mongolia, she stays with two men and a woman. [3] The novel focuses on the experiences of comfort women and how the war impacted different hierarchies of individuals from multiple perspectives. You have entered an incorrect email address! ( Log Out / White Chrysanthemum memorializes the comfort women of Korean who were forced into military sexual slavery by the Japanese forces during the second World War. Today’s demonstration is special, the one thousandth protest.