Download or read book The Island of Sea Women written by Lisa See and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A mesmerizing new historical novel” (O, The Oprah Magazine) from Lisa See, the bestselling author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, about female friendship and devastating family secrets on a small Korean island. Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility—but also danger. Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook find it impossible to ignore their differences. The Island of Sea Women takes place over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point. “This vivid…thoughtful and empathetic” novel (The New York Times Book Review) illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge and the men take care of the children. “A wonderful ode to a truly singular group of women” (Publishers Weekly), The Island of Sea Women is a “beautiful story…about the endurance of friendship when it’s pushed to its limits, and you…will love it” (Cosmopolitan).

Download or read book The Mermaid from Jeju written by Sumi Hahn and published by Crooked Lane Books. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A POPSUGAR Best Book of December 2020 An AMAZON Editors Pick December 2020 A SHE READS Best Historical Fiction Novel Winter 2021 A BUSTLE Most Anticipated Winter 2021 Read A LIBRO.FM Influencer Pick, December 2020 Inspired by true events on Korea's Jeju Island, Sumi Hahn's "entrancing [debut] novel, brimming with lyricism and magic" (Jennifer Rosner, The Yellow Bird Sings) explores what it means to truly love in the wake of devastation. In the aftermath of World War II, Goh Junja is a girl just coming into her own. She is the latest successful deep sea diver in a family of strong haenyeo. Confident she is a woman now, Junja urges her mother to allow her to make the Goh family's annual trip to Mt. Halla, where they trade abalone and other sea delicacies for pork. Junja, a sea village girl, has never been to the mountains, where it smells like mushrooms and earth. While there, she falls in love with a mountain boy Yang Suwol, who rescues her after a particularly harrowing journey. But when Junja returns one day later, it is just in time to see her mother take her last breath, beaten by the waves during a dive she was taking in Junja's place. Spiraling in grief, Junja sees her younger siblings sent to live with their estranged father. Everywhere she turns, Junja is haunted by the loss of her mother, from the meticulously tended herb garden that has now begun to sprout weeds, to the field where their bed sheets are beaten. She has only her grandmother and herself. But the world moves on without Junja. The political climate is perilous. Still reeling from Japan's forced withdrawal from the peninsula, Korea is forced to accommodate the rapid establishment of US troops. Junja's canny grandmother, who lived through the Japanese invasion that led to Korea's occupation understands the signs of danger all too well. When Suwol is arrested for working with and harboring communists, and the perils of post-WWII overtake her homelands, Junja must learn to navigate a tumultuous world unlike anything she's ever known.

Download or read book Moon Tides written by Brenda Paik Sunoo and published by Seoul Selection USA, Incorporated. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. Southeast Asia Studies. Photography. Interpretred and translated from the Korean by Youngsook Han. magine strolling along the windy shores of Jeju Island, off the southwest coast of Korea. Suddenly, you hear whistling echoing from the sea. Turning to the water, you spot weathered faces bobbing to the surface, and you realize that the sound is the exhaled breath of sea women, known as haenyeo. With a sigh of gratitude, the aging divers have returned to the surface to replenish their aching lungs. Jeju Island's haenyeo are a dying breed--perhaps the last of their generation. As their maternal ancestors did for centuries, they have scoured the island's sea floor, harvesting seaweed, octopuses, sea urchins, turban shells, and abalone. Their numbers have dwindled from 15,000 in the 1970s to approximately 5,600 in recent decades. Driven by economics, these free-divers continue to labor well into their eighties--the hardier ones often plunging 65 feet while holding their breath for two minutes or longer. Brenda Paik Sunoo gathered these women's stories while living in their diving villages for a total of seven months between 2007 and 2009. MOON TIDES is the first book by an American journalist to document the lives of these rare divers through intimate interviews and photographs. Their stories will appeal to those of us desiring a life of purpose--undulating and infinite as the sea.

Download or read book The Last of the Cheju Divers written by Rob Waring and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Stone House on Jeju Island written by Brenda Paik Sunoo and published by Seoul Selection . This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Creating a New life of Healing on Jeju Island Jeju's magic brings both blessings and curses. Its volcanic topography is beautiful, but left the island with a harsh environment; hidden underneath the peaceful fishing villages lie the scars of Korea's painful modern history. Around 25 years ago, after the passing of her young son Tommy, Brenda Paik Sunoo struck out on a journey in search of harbors for the heart. Of all the different places she visited, it was this island that drew her in, and she decided to build a home there. Stone House on Jeju Island is a record of building and moving into a home in a foreign land, and an adventure yarn about tackling a new life in one's twilight years. Within a Tiny Stone Cottage, a Philosophy of Nature, Culture, and Life Brenda and her husband Jan struggle to renovate a traditional stone cottage on an island where they did not speak the language. As culture clashes and natural disasters ensued, what was supposed to be a five-month building period turned into a year and a half before the two finally had their hideaway reflecting their philosophy of life in everything from its materials to its design. Daily life in Jeju is quite different from New Jersey or California. Residents can eat vegetables grown by their neighbors and leave their doors open without fear standing on their own two feet every step of the way. They learn to deal calmly with the odd natural disaster, sharing indescribable warmth and soothing their suffering with their neighbors. At Seventy, Still Dreaming of a New Life Brenda Paik Sunoo turned 70 this year. When asked by one of the construction participants why she was building a home in a foreign land at her age, she replied, Why not? Stone House on Jeju Island is a book for people who are not afraid of challenges as they grow older people seeking to live their lives without losing their sense of purpose and direction. Passing through the seasons twice over in her newly built stone house, she continues awakening to nature's cycles of growth and perishing and to an attitude of hope and affirmation.

Download or read book White Chrysanthemum written by Mary Lynn Bracht and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For fans of Lisa Wingate’s Before We Were Yours and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, a deeply moving novel that follows two Korean sisters separated by World War II. Korea, 1943. Hana has lived her entire life under Japanese occupation. As a haenyeo, a female diver of the sea, she enjoys an independence that few other Koreans can still claim. Until the day Hana saves her younger sister from a Japanese soldier and is herself captured and transported to Manchuria. There she is forced to become a “comfort woman” in a Japanese military brothel. But haenyeo are women of power and strength. She will find her way home. South Korea, 2011. Emi has spent more than sixty years trying to forget the sacrifice her sister made, but she must confront the past to discover peace. Seeing the healing of her children and her country, can Emi move beyond the legacy of war to find forgiveness? Suspenseful, hopeful, and ultimately redemptive, White Chrysanthemum tells a story of two sisters whose love for each other is strong enough to triumph over the grim evils of war.

Download or read book Seaweed and Shamans written by Brenda Paik Sunoo and published by Seaweed and Shamans. This book was released on 2006 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. Asian American Studies. Memoir. "Heartfelt and at times heart-rending, SEAWEED AND SHAMANS details Brenda Paik Sunoo's journey through grief into solace. Written with courage and generosity, her collection of essays traverses personal memory and Korean-American history, as well as the thoughts and drawings garnered from diary entries of the child she lost. A testimony to the endurance of faith and art, life and love. SEAWEED AND SHAMANS is a gift of healing"--Nora Okja Keller, author of Comfort Woman and Fox Girl.

Download or read book The Ocean Calls written by Tina Cho and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A breathtaking picture book featuring a Korean girl and her haenyeo (free diving) grandmother about intergenerational bonds, finding courage in the face of fear, and connecting with our natural world. Dayeon wants to be a haenyeo just like Grandma. The haenyeo dive off the coast of Jeju Island to pluck treasures from the sea--generations of Korean women have done so for centuries. To Dayeon, the haenyeo are as strong and graceful as mermaids. To give her strength, Dayeon eats Grandma's abalone porridge. She practices holding her breath while they do the dishes. And when Grandma suits up for her next dive, Dayeon grabs her suit, flippers, and goggles. A scary memory of the sea keeps Dayeon clinging to the shore, but with Grandma's guidance, Dayeon comes to appreciate the ocean's many gifts. Tina Cho's The Ocean Calls, with luminous illustrations by muralist Jess X. Snow, is a classic in the making.

Download or read book Colonial Modernity in Korea written by Gi-Wook Shin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twelve chapters in this volume seek to overcome the nationalist paradigm of Japanese repression and exploitation versus Korean resistance that has dominated the study of Korea’s colonial period (1910–1945) by adopting a more inclusive, pluralistic approach that stresses the complex relations among colonialism, modernity, and nationalism. By addressing such diverse subjects as the colonial legal system, radio, telecommunications, the rural economy, and industrialization and the formation of industrial labor, one group of essays analyzes how various aspects of modernity emerged in the colonial context and how they were mobilized by the Japanese for colonial domination, with often unexpected results. A second group examines the development of various forms of identity from nation to gender to class, particularly how aspects of colonial modernity facilitated their formation through negotiation, contestation, and redefinition.

Download or read book The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea written by Theodore Jun Yoo and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-05-29 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines how the concept of "Korean woman" underwent a radical transformation in Korea's public discourse during the years of Japanese colonialism. Theodore Jun Yoo shows that as women moved out of traditional spheres to occupy new positions outside the home, they encountered the pervasive control of the colonial state, which sought to impose modernity on them. While some Korean women conformed to the dictates of colonial hegemony, others took deliberate pains to distinguish between what was "modern" (e.g., Western outfits) and thus legitimate, and what was "Japanese," and thus illegitimate. Yoo argues that what made the experience of these women unique was the dual confrontation with modernity itself and with Japan as a colonial power.

Download or read book The Pearl Diver written by Jeff Talarigo and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1948, a nineteen-year-old pearl diver's dreams of spending her life combing the waters of Japan’s Inland Sea are shattered when she discovers she has leprosy. By law, she is exiled to an island leprosarium, where she is stripped of her dignity and instructed to forget her past. Her name is erased from her family records, and she is forced to select a new one. To the two thousand patients on the island of Nagashima, she becomes Miss Fuji. Although drugs arrest the course of Miss Fuji's disease, she cannot leave the colony. Instead, she becomes a caretaker to the other patients, and through the example of their courage, she gains insight into the deep wellspring of strength she will need to reclaim her freedom. Written with precision and eloquence, The Pearl Diver is a dazzling meditation on isolation and community, cruelty and compassion.

Download or read book The Shaman s Wages written by Kyoim Yun and published by Korean Studies of the Henry M.. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Most studies of Korean shamanism--a popular religion that is both celebrated and stigmatized--have minimized regional differences, focusing on shamans from central Korea whose work involves spirit possession. Less attention has been paid to hereditary shamans, a number of whom have resided for centuries on Cheju Island, off Korea's southwest coast. Although simbang (native Cheju shamans) are relied upon to perform important rituals, for which they receive lavish offerings, they are often perceived as charlatans who swindle innocent people. This first study of the material exchange and politics of Korean shamanism describes interactions between shamans and their clients in order to show how this ritual exchange is distinct from other forms of transaction, such as barter, purchase, bribery, and gift-giving. The "ritual economy" of Korean simbang involves not only monetary payment, but also reciprocity, sincerity, and the expressive forms that practitioners use to authenticate ritual actions that both emphasize ritual exchange and distinguish it from other forms social and economic transactions"--

Download or read book Korean Women written by Laurel Kendall and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book An Illustrated Guide to Korean Mythology written by Won-Oh Choi and published by Global Oriental. This book was released on 2008-04-10 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This highly engaging volume by one of Korea’s leading scholars of comparative mythology – the the first study of its kind in English – provides a valuable introduction to centuries-old beliefs, myths and folk tales relating to Cosmology and Flood, Birth and Agriculture, Messengers of the Underworld, Shamans, Disease, Good Fortune, Love and Family, Gods of Village Shrines, and Heroes. Containing thirty traditional stories, the book is fully illustrated throughout and contains a wide variety of Korean art, including rare shamanist paintings, as well as the work of some contemporary Korean artists. All the stories, based on Korean oral tradition, have been retold by the author according to their main plot and meaning because the original texts’ songs by shamans, containing many obsolete words and obscure idioms, are not easily understood today. The original title and source, including text notes, are provided at the end of each story. The author’s Introduction sets out the historical background and significance of the myths that appear here. He also provides full details of each of the Korean gods and their roles in mythology. While being a welcome addition to the literature on Korean culture for the non-specialist, An Illustrated Guide to Korean Mythology also provides an invaluable reference source for scholars and researchers in the fields of East Asian Mythology and Anthropology, as well as Korean History, Religion and Literature.

Download or read book The Book of Dead Birds written by Gayle Brandeis and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ava Sing Lo has been accidentally killing her mother's birds since she was a little girl. Now in her twenties, Ava leaves her native San Diego for the Salton Sea, where she volunteers to help environmental activists save thousands of birds poisoned by agricultural runoff. Helen, her mother, has been haunted by her past for decades. As a young girl in Korea, Helen was drawn into prostitution on a segregated American army base. Several brutal years passed before a young white American soldier married her and brought her to California. When she gave birth to a black baby, her new husband quickly abandoned her, and she was left to fend for herself and her daughter in a foreign country. With great beauty and lyricism, The Book of Dead Birds captures a young woman's struggle to come to terms with her mother's terrible past while she searches for her own place in the world.

Download or read book Mud Muscle and Miracles written by C. A. Bartholomew and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2009 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the start of the 20th century, the U.S. Navy had developed a fledgling salvage capability. Today, under the aegis of the Supervisor of Salvage, the Navy routinely handles assignments around the world, guarding U.S. naval and maritime interests and responding to requests for assistance from our allies. Mud, Muscle, and Miracles takes its reader on a journey through the evolution of salvage--from the construction of a cofferdam to reveal battleship Maineat the bottom of Havana harbor in 1911 to the use of side-scan sonar and remotely operated vehicles to recover aircraft debris and complete vessels from the depths. The story is one of masterful seamanship, incomparable engineering, and absolute ingenuity and courage. It is also the history of one of our nation's longest-lasting public-private partnerships--that of the commercial salvage industry and the U.S. Navy. The second edition updates U.S. Navy salvage history through the beginning of the 21st century and chronicles 18 additional, precedent-setting marine salvage and deep-ocean recovery operations.

Download or read book The Korean War written by Stanley Sandler and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-10-17 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Korean War has been termed "The Forgotten War" or the "Unknown War." It is a conflict which never assumed the mythic character of the American Civil War or World War II. However, this book asserts, it would be impossible to understand the Cold War and indeed post 1945 global history without knowledge of the Korean War. Providing a history of the Korean peninsula before the war and including a detailed analysis of the fighting itself, The Korean War goes beyond the battlefield to deal with the war in the air, ground attack, and air evacuation. The study also evaluates the contributions of the UN naval forces, the impact of the war on various homefronts and issues such as defectors, opposition to the war, racial segregation and integration, POWs and the media. Recently-released Soviet documents are used to assess the role of China, the Soviet Union, North and South Korea and the allied forces in the conflict. This fascinating work offers a unique analysis of the Korean War and will be invaluable to students of twentieth-century history, particularly those concerned with American and Pacific history.