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Mourning Ten Thousand Sorrows cont'd (part 2 of 6)
Professional reviewers have said much the same thing. Some have called
the memoir"an ode to a lost mother, a story of abandonment, poverty
and emigration, with against-all-odds happiness in the end," and
an"unflinchingly, beautifully rendered book." Andrea Behr
of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote,"I was in tears by the second
page," and that "the reader's jaw drops at the horrors this
woman suffered."
Why has this book - poorly written in a syrupy, melodramatic mode - touched
so many readers? The flip answer is that melodramatic tearjerkers always sell.
Kim's memoir also resonates as a quintessentially American story about the
triumph of the human spirit, another reason why readers are so enthralled with
it. As one reader wrote,"Her healing process forced me to look at areas
of struggle in my own life and try to deal with them." But this book also
connects with two powerful American myths: the immigrant success story and
Oriental barbarism. Both myths point to American elitism and superiority.
Story in a nutshell
The following is Kim's story in a nutshell: A young woman from a rural village
in Korea runs away from home and goes to Seoul. While working at a small noodle
shop a few years after the Korean War, she meets and falls in love with an American
soldier. He abandons her. She returns to her village, pregnant with his child.
There, she farms rice and raises her daughter (Kim). Kim and her mother endure
poverty, ostracism and the daily taunts of the villagers. Her mother is reviled
for her illicit association with a foreigner; Kim is reviled for being both illegitimate
and of mi'ed race. One day, the mother's father and brother tell her to sell
Kim as a slave to a wealthy, local family. This family wants a maid and a future
wife for one of their male servants. The mother refuses. That evening, the mother
hides Kim in a bamboo basket, where the horrified child watches as her mother
is hung from the rafters by the father and brother. She leaps out of the basket
in grief, whereupon she is burned between her legs by her uncle. Her life is
saved only by the pleadings of the uncle's wife, who promises to take her away
to an orphanage. Once at the orphanage, Kim endures a grim life caged in a small
crib. Suddenly she is plucked out and sent away to America, where she meets her
new parents. Harsh Christian fundamentalists, they fail to understand their new
daughter. Instead, they abuse her mentally and use her as a servant. She goes
to school, does all the housework, even cares for her ailing adoptive grandmother
until she dies, and daily wishes that she were white. Upon graduation from high
school, she is married off to a man who physically and mentally abuses her. She
finally leaves him, and together with her young daughter she remakes her life.
She begins a career as a newspaper journalist, raises her daughter, struggles
with depression and enters therapy, and then writes her memoir.
10,000 Sorrows 3 - Orientalism Lives
