Les noms perdus
Richard E. Kim, Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).
The professor I TA'd for this past quarter recommended this book to me, saying she thought of designing a course just so she could use this. It was really, really wonderful - reminded me some of And So Flows History, though entirely lacking in the melodramatic and way-too-neat aspects (which, admittedly, are part of And So Flows History's charm), in a lovely pared down 'autobiographical' fictional work detailing Kim's (?) experiences as a boy in Korea, living under the Japanese occupation.
The title comes from Koreans literally losing their names & being forced to take Japanese surnames; as Kim ends the chapter,
"Today, I lost my name. Today, we all lost our names.
February 11, 1940." (115)
The image of a greyish-white snowy winter landscape, Koreans bowed down in front of ancestral graves, apologizing for having 'lost their names' - being forced to renounce them by the Japanese - is one of the most affecting in a book full of affecting moments. There's a lot of anger in the book, but more moments of love. It reminded me of Chihwaseon - a love letter, but a conflicted love letter. A powerful love letter - the good ones never are all entirely sweet, are they?
Overall, it's really lovely and lyrical. The book has a clear narrative trajectory, moving from '32 to '45, but the narrative is vignettes, not all remembered by the author. It works very well - there are times that even though we (and the author) are looking back, you can see things through an 8 year old's eyes, a 12 year old's eyes ....
Not very long, absolutely gripping (I was stuck on a plane, but I absolutely devoured it & you wouldn't have been able to pry it out of my hands), and a beautiful meditation on all sorts of things. I had a lump in my throat most of the time I read it, not wanting to bawl ungracefully on a plane full of people.
It's been translated into Korean and Japanese. Kim has a nice note on the problems of the title in his 'afterword'; he didn't really want 'lost' to imply 'forcefully taken from,' which is how it was first translated in Korean and Japanese. The second time 'round, the Korean title 'got it right,' while the Japanese title used 喪 - Kim says it has a 'uniquely Japanese pronunciation,' whatever that means, which makes it especially mournful, though it IS a character for mourning/funerals in Chinese. It certainly has overtones of death, mourning, etc.
I'd love to know how the book was received in both countries.
The professor I TA'd for this past quarter recommended this book to me, saying she thought of designing a course just so she could use this. It was really, really wonderful - reminded me some of And So Flows History, though entirely lacking in the melodramatic and way-too-neat aspects (which, admittedly, are part of And So Flows History's charm), in a lovely pared down 'autobiographical' fictional work detailing Kim's (?) experiences as a boy in Korea, living under the Japanese occupation.
The title comes from Koreans literally losing their names & being forced to take Japanese surnames; as Kim ends the chapter,
"Today, I lost my name. Today, we all lost our names.
February 11, 1940." (115)
The image of a greyish-white snowy winter landscape, Koreans bowed down in front of ancestral graves, apologizing for having 'lost their names' - being forced to renounce them by the Japanese - is one of the most affecting in a book full of affecting moments. There's a lot of anger in the book, but more moments of love. It reminded me of Chihwaseon - a love letter, but a conflicted love letter. A powerful love letter - the good ones never are all entirely sweet, are they?
Overall, it's really lovely and lyrical. The book has a clear narrative trajectory, moving from '32 to '45, but the narrative is vignettes, not all remembered by the author. It works very well - there are times that even though we (and the author) are looking back, you can see things through an 8 year old's eyes, a 12 year old's eyes ....
Not very long, absolutely gripping (I was stuck on a plane, but I absolutely devoured it & you wouldn't have been able to pry it out of my hands), and a beautiful meditation on all sorts of things. I had a lump in my throat most of the time I read it, not wanting to bawl ungracefully on a plane full of people.
It's been translated into Korean and Japanese. Kim has a nice note on the problems of the title in his 'afterword'; he didn't really want 'lost' to imply 'forcefully taken from,' which is how it was first translated in Korean and Japanese. The second time 'round, the Korean title 'got it right,' while the Japanese title used 喪 - Kim says it has a 'uniquely Japanese pronunciation,' whatever that means, which makes it especially mournful, though it IS a character for mourning/funerals in Chinese. It certainly has overtones of death, mourning, etc.
I'd love to know how the book was received in both countries.