March 25, 1997
Repairing Lives Torn by the Past
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
COMFORT WOMAN
By Nora Okja Keller
213 pages. Viking. $21.95.
It's hard to think of a euphemism more disturbing than the one that gives Nora Okja Keller's stunning new novel its title: ''Comfort Woman.'' ''Comfort women'' were young women and girls (many of them Korean) forced by the Japanese Army to work in brothels during World War II. Some were kidnapped at gunpoint; others were recruited with false promises of jobs in factories and restaurants. Taken to battlefront ''recreation centers,'' the women were forced to have sex with dozens of soldiers a night. They were also beaten, tortured and forced to give up their former identities and names. When the war ended, shame and humiliation, not to mention physical and emotional scars, exiled many of the women from their families and their former lives forever.
In her new novel, Ms. Keller -- a Korean-American who works as a freelance journalist in Hawaii -- does not simply tell the story of a fictional ''comfort woman'' named Akiko but by juxtaposing Akiko's story with that of her American daughter, Beccah, turns her tragic history into a familial saga of love and pain and resentment. She has written a powerful book about mothers and daughters and the passions that bind one generation to another. It is a book that combines the familial intimacy of Louise Erdrich's early novels with the fierce, historical magic of Toni Morrison's ''Beloved.''
Told in alternating chapters narrated by Akiko and Beccah, ''Comfort Woman'' cuts back and forth between Akiko's painful past in war-torn Korea and Beccah's Valley Girl existence in suburban Hawaii, between Akiko's desperate struggle to survive her experiences as a comfort woman and Beccah's attempts to deal with an eccentric and often irrational mother. Both women, it seems, are torn between two worlds: Akiko, between the spirit world of possession and superstition and the workaday world of the present; Beccah, between her life as a modern American teen-ager and the undertow of her mother's madness.
Bit by bit, we learn that Akiko -- whose Korean name, Soon Hyo, was erased by her Japanese captors -- was sold into prostitution by her older sister, who needed to raise a dowry for her own marriage. At 12, she was being raped many times a night; at 14, she was forced to have a crude abortion, without benefit of an anesthetic, and nearly died. Although she was eventually taken in by a group of missionaries, the ghosts from her days as a comfort woman continued to haunt her imagination.
''Invading my daily routine at the mission house, shattering the gaps between movement and silence,'' she recalls, ''were the gruntings of soldier after soldier and the sounds of flesh slapping against flesh. Whenever I stopped for a beat, for a breath, I heard men laughing and betting on how many men one comfort woman could service before she split open. The men laughed and chanted niku-ichi -- 29 to 1, one of the names they called us -- but I heard the counting reach 124 before I could not bear to hear one more number.''
One of the missionaries intent on saving Akiko marries her and brings her to America to begin a new life. Beccah grows up knowing nothing about her mother's secret past. She knows only that her mother is subject to strange spells, that her mother speaks to ghosts. Ridiculed by her classmates for her mother's outbursts, Beccah longs for normality, for a mother who would sign her report cards, a mother who would make her dinner so she wouldn't have to live on Ho Ho's and nachos from the 7-Eleven. After her father's death, however, Beccah realizes that she must try to protect her mother from ridicule and from the spirits who haunt her sleep.
''Later, after my mother tried to drown herself the second time,'' Beccah recalls, ''I realized that our roles had reversed. Even at 10, I knew that I had become the guardian of her life and she the tenuous sleeper. I trained myself to wake at abrupt snorts, unusual breathing patterns. Part of me was aware of each time she turned over in bed, dreaming dreams like mini-trances where she traveled into worlds and times I could not follow to protect her. The most I could do was wait, holding the thin blue thread of her life while her spirit tunneled into the darkness of the earth to swim the dark red river toward hell.''
Moving between Akiko's searing memories and Beccah's humdrum life as a schoolgirl and apprentice journalist, Ms. Keller describes the cultural and psychological gaps that divide mother and daughter and the emotional loyalties that link them -- ties that are delineated through gently patterned images and motifs, and scenes that echo back and forth across time. The shabby, Goodwill-furnished world they live in is made palpable and real, as is the frightening world of spirits that Akiko inhabits in her mind. We are made to realize that Beccah's efforts to piece together, and reimagine, the story of her mother's past is an attempt to understand this difficult, damaged woman, and also an attempt to come to terms with her own familial past.
With ''Comfort Woman,'' Ms. Keller has written a lyrical and haunting novel. She has made an impressive debut.
http://
Repairing Lives Torn by the Past
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
COMFORT WOMAN
By Nora Okja Keller
213 pages. Viking. $21.95.
It's hard to think of a euphemism more disturbing than the one that gives Nora Okja Keller's stunning new novel its title: ''Comfort Woman.'' ''Comfort women'' were young women and girls (many of them Korean) forced by the Japanese Army to work in brothels during World War II. Some were kidnapped at gunpoint; others were recruited with false promises of jobs in factories and restaurants. Taken to battlefront ''recreation centers,'' the women were forced to have sex with dozens of soldiers a night. They were also beaten, tortured and forced to give up their former identities and names. When the war ended, shame and humiliation, not to mention physical and emotional scars, exiled many of the women from their families and their former lives forever.
In her new novel, Ms. Keller -- a Korean-American who works as a freelance journalist in Hawaii -- does not simply tell the story of a fictional ''comfort woman'' named Akiko but by juxtaposing Akiko's story with that of her American daughter, Beccah, turns her tragic history into a familial saga of love and pain and resentment. She has written a powerful book about mothers and daughters and the passions that bind one generation to another. It is a book that combines the familial intimacy of Louise Erdrich's early novels with the fierce, historical magic of Toni Morrison's ''Beloved.''
Told in alternating chapters narrated by Akiko and Beccah, ''Comfort Woman'' cuts back and forth between Akiko's painful past in war-torn Korea and Beccah's Valley Girl existence in suburban Hawaii, between Akiko's desperate struggle to survive her experiences as a comfort woman and Beccah's attempts to deal with an eccentric and often irrational mother. Both women, it seems, are torn between two worlds: Akiko, between the spirit world of possession and superstition and the workaday world of the present; Beccah, between her life as a modern American teen-ager and the undertow of her mother's madness.
Bit by bit, we learn that Akiko -- whose Korean name, Soon Hyo, was erased by her Japanese captors -- was sold into prostitution by her older sister, who needed to raise a dowry for her own marriage. At 12, she was being raped many times a night; at 14, she was forced to have a crude abortion, without benefit of an anesthetic, and nearly died. Although she was eventually taken in by a group of missionaries, the ghosts from her days as a comfort woman continued to haunt her imagination.
''Invading my daily routine at the mission house, shattering the gaps between movement and silence,'' she recalls, ''were the gruntings of soldier after soldier and the sounds of flesh slapping against flesh. Whenever I stopped for a beat, for a breath, I heard men laughing and betting on how many men one comfort woman could service before she split open. The men laughed and chanted niku-ichi -- 29 to 1, one of the names they called us -- but I heard the counting reach 124 before I could not bear to hear one more number.''
One of the missionaries intent on saving Akiko marries her and brings her to America to begin a new life. Beccah grows up knowing nothing about her mother's secret past. She knows only that her mother is subject to strange spells, that her mother speaks to ghosts. Ridiculed by her classmates for her mother's outbursts, Beccah longs for normality, for a mother who would sign her report cards, a mother who would make her dinner so she wouldn't have to live on Ho Ho's and nachos from the 7-Eleven. After her father's death, however, Beccah realizes that she must try to protect her mother from ridicule and from the spirits who haunt her sleep.
''Later, after my mother tried to drown herself the second time,'' Beccah recalls, ''I realized that our roles had reversed. Even at 10, I knew that I had become the guardian of her life and she the tenuous sleeper. I trained myself to wake at abrupt snorts, unusual breathing patterns. Part of me was aware of each time she turned over in bed, dreaming dreams like mini-trances where she traveled into worlds and times I could not follow to protect her. The most I could do was wait, holding the thin blue thread of her life while her spirit tunneled into the darkness of the earth to swim the dark red river toward hell.''
Moving between Akiko's searing memories and Beccah's humdrum life as a schoolgirl and apprentice journalist, Ms. Keller describes the cultural and psychological gaps that divide mother and daughter and the emotional loyalties that link them -- ties that are delineated through gently patterned images and motifs, and scenes that echo back and forth across time. The shabby, Goodwill-furnished world they live in is made palpable and real, as is the frightening world of spirits that Akiko inhabits in her mind. We are made to realize that Beccah's efforts to piece together, and reimagine, the story of her mother's past is an attempt to understand this difficult, damaged woman, and also an attempt to come to terms with her own familial past.
With ''Comfort Woman,'' Ms. Keller has written a lyrical and haunting novel. She has made an impressive debut.
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コメント(1)
第二次世界大戦中、12歳のときから数年間、日本軍の従軍慰安婦として働かされた朝鮮人女性と、その娘の物語。慰安婦の連行方法には詐欺や強制・誘拐、人身売買がありますが、この小説の主人公Akikoの場合は姉の結婚の持参金を作るために日本軍に売り渡されます。アメリカ人宣教師に救われ、結婚してアメリカに渡り娘をもうけますが、過去の深い傷は癒えず、家族間にも亀裂が入ります。母の過去を知らされていない娘は母の奇矯な行動(幽霊に向かって話しかけるなど)の理由が分からず戸惑うものの、次第に断片的な証拠をつなぎ合わせ、この難しい、傷ついた女性を理解するようになる…。という本だそうです。そして、本書は単にAkikoという、ある架空の従軍慰安婦の特別な悲劇にとどまらず、tragic history into a familial saga of love and pain and resentment であり、powerful book about mothers and daughters and the passions that bind one generation to another としての意味合いを持つことに価値があるそうです。。
Ms. Keller has written a lyrical and haunting novel.
Kakutaniさんとしては最高の賛辞かも。
Ms. Keller has written a lyrical and haunting novel.
Kakutaniさんとしては最高の賛辞かも。
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