Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

CBR Facebook Page. Follow us on Twitter. Follow us on Instagram. The CBR Tumblr CBR on Goodreads
  • Home
  • About
    • Getting Started
    • FAQ
    • CBR Book Club
    • Newsletter Archive
    • Fan Mail
    • AlabamaPink’s Book Reviews
  • Our Team
    • Leaderboard
    • Recent Comments
    • CBR Interviews
    • Our Volunteers
    • Meet MsWas
  • Genres
    • Tags
  • Fight Cancer
    • CBR Merchandise
    • How You Can Donate
    • Supporters and Friends of CBR
  • Contact
    • Newsletter Sign Up
    • Follow Us

A Non-Western Immigration Story

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

January 2, 2018 by Jen K 4 Comments

 Buzzfeed actually had a semi useful quiz a few weeks ago along the lines of, “answer these questions, and we’ll recommend a book.” My result was Pachinko so when I saw it prominently displayed at Barnes and Noble, I figured it meant I should go ahead and get it.

Pachinko is one of those books that is always harder to review because while very well done, as a multi-generational family drama, there is a certain amount of familiarity to the general strokes of the story.  “Poor family, faces hardship and war, changing family fortunes, works hard, maybe eventually creates a better life for the next generations but then by the end there is a certain amount of sadness because the new generation never quite understands the sacrifices and hardships the previous generations went through” – this could basically apply to a multitude of these types of books – Shanghai Girls, Honolulu, etc.  Additionally, sometimes it can be harder to feel too sympathetic to the most recent generations considering that their difficulties are the disconnectedness of living in the ’80s (or ’90s etc.) while the original family members live through wars and violent persecution.

One thing I appreciated about Pachinko, however, is that it chose to tell that family saga from a perspective that was new to me, even if certain situations were familiar and universal.  Rather than being another story of immigrants coming to America, Lee focuses on a Korean woman, Sunja, and her family in Japan. In the US, we are familiar with stories involving immigrants attempting to hold on to their culture as their families assimilate, but in Japan there is a whole other piece to the dynamic.  Being born in Japan (at least at the time of this novel) did not make one a Japanese citizen so second and third generation descendants of Sunja were still struggling with their place in the world with citizenship to Korea, a country they had never been to, while Japan, the country where they were born, could deport them and saw them as inferior.

As alluded to above, while a multi-generational novel, the “main” character is Sunja.  When she is introduced, she is the teenage daughter of a working class family that makes money by taking in lodgers.  As the only surviving child of a couple that never expected to have a family, Sunja is doted on but not spoiled.  As a teenager, she meets a man, trusts too easily, and ends up pregnant as happens so often in historical novels.  While the father of the child is more than willing to provide, he is also married, and Sunja rejects his offer to make her a kept woman.  She ends up agreeing to marry a sickly minister, Isak Baek, who stayed with her family on his way to Osaka to join his brother in Japan.  Once there, the novel explores the conditions of Koreans in Japan, the prejudices and difficulties they faced as well as gender dynamics and culture over the next forty years of history as it follows Sunja and her descendants.

 

I appreciated that Lee didn’t always make the character choices I thought she would so that while there were absolutely sad moments, they weren’t all quite as tragic as I thought they might be and have seen in other novels of this sort.  However, I also feel that when truly sad and tragic things happened I maybe wasn’t quite as connected as I could have been so it was easy to think, “oh that’s too bad” but not get too emotional about any of the things that h

appened in the novel – the events were more poignant than tragic.  This may have been due to the choice Lee made with regards to her narrative voice, stating that she wanted her “tone to be fair” in the author interview at the end of the novel. Sunja is a stoic character that spends her whole life working for her family’s well being, so between her stoicism and the fair tone, the novel didn’t dwell too much on the tragedies, and just made them part of life.  The good news always ends up being tinged with something bad or bittersweet but that is rather true to life. I quite enjoyed the novel and would absolutely recommend it but would say overall, it left me with a sense of melancholy rather than very strong reactions.

Related

Filed Under: Fiction, History Tagged With: Japan, korea, Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

Share the post "A Non-Western Immigration Story"

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • E-mail
  • Tumblr
  • Reddit
1/2/2018 Jen K's CBR10 Review No:1 |
Rating:
| Tags: Japan, korea, Min Jin Lee, Pachinko | Category: Fiction, History | 4 Comments

Jen K

World traveler. Cat owner.

CBR11 participantCBR11 CommentsCBR10 participantCBR 8CBR 7CBR 6CBR 5CBR 3CBR 2

Recent Reviews:

  • “I’ve Been Expelled From Heaven, I Think I was In Heaven”
  • About the reaction you would accept from a book with a character who is simply the other one in the title
  • The End of the Initial Series though there are more
  • View all reviews by Jen K»

Related

Comments

  1. Teresa says

    January 2, 2018 at 5:52 pm

    This book received a ton of praise on various literary sites. Sounds like a library read, but not a buy for me.

    Reply
    • Jen K says

      January 2, 2018 at 5:56 pm

      I think that sounds accurate – not getting rid of it any time soon, but if I sort through my books is a few years, it probably wouldn’t make it in the keep pile. Worth a read, though.

      Reply
  2. Malin says

    January 2, 2018 at 7:51 pm

    You’re back! I got this in an e-book sale a while back, because I’d seen it hyped so many places. With my brain seeking light entertainment at the moment, I doubt I’ll get round to reading it any time soon, but it’s nice to have some heftier literary fare for when I need it.

    Reply
  3. narfna says

    January 2, 2018 at 10:33 pm

    I like when Cannonballers come back from hiatuses!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.



Search This Site

Recent Comments

  • yesknopemaybe on “I wish his darkness lived outside of him, because you have to know it’s there to see it. Like all real monsters, he hides in plain sight.”That AJ Finn/Daniel Mallory stuff was WILD. What even in the world. Agree with you about the ending for this one. I wanted just a...
  • yesknopemaybe on Once Upon a Time…Great review! Such a beautifully written book, a worthy successor to The Thirteenth Tale for sure.
  • emmalita on Diets Don’t WorkThe paragraph you shared and the last paragraph really speak to me. I have long accepted that diets won't work and mostly accepted that being...
  • Classic on Not as Good as ChristieYup the cover is really nice. It seems a lot of reviewers weren't into this one.
  • Classic on See Into the Beast👍🏽
See More Recent Comments »

Support CBR

Give Today. Cannonball Read donates all profits from the site to the American Cancer Society. Help us fight cancer!
Donate Today »

Review Genres

  • Biography/Memoir
  • Book Club
  • Children's
  • Comedy/Humor
  • Cooking/Food
  • Fantasy
  • Fiction
  • Graphic Novel/Comic
  • Health
  • History
  • Horror
  • Mystery
  • News from MsWas
  • Non-Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Religion
  • Romance
  • Science Fiction
  • Short Stories
  • Speculative Fiction
  • Sports
  • Suspense
  • Uncategorized
  • Western
  • Young Adult

Book Ratings


a favorite


a great book


a good book


an ok book


a book
you didn't like

Need Help?

Visit our FAQs to find out how to add stars, select genres, and more. Drop us a line if you can't find your answer.

Shop on Amazon and Support CBR

One of CBR11's #CannonBookClubs will be about Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett to coincide with the BBC Miniseries.
Buy it on Amazon today, get a head start, and help us stick it to cancer, one book at a time!

© 2019 Cannonball Read | Log in