![]() ![]() In the harrowing scene that opens the book, Kim watches from a hiding place as her mother-the victim of a so-called honor killing-is hanged from a rafter: "All I could see through the bamboo slats were her bare feet, dangling in midair. Yet her mother refuses to sell her into servitude, and for that show of compassion she pays with her life. As a honhyol, or mixed-race child, she isn't considered a person at all. The child of an illicit union between a Korean mother and an American father, Kim grows up the object of disgust and contempt in rural Korea. But McCourt's hardscrabble youth looks like a walk in the park compared to the experiences of Elizabeth Kim. "Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood," Frank McCourt famously wrote in Angela's Ashes. Ten Thousand Sorrows starts with its young narrator watching her mother's murder improbably, things go downhill from there. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |