The sea is better than a mother. You can love your mother, and she still might leave you. You can love or hate the sea, but it will always be there. Forever. The sea has been the center of her life. It has nurtured her and stolen from her, but it has never left.
We took a vacation to South Korea and our first stop was Jeju for a 4-day thru-hike. This is the perfect book to read on an airplane to Jeju.
Mi-ja and Young-sook meet on Young-sook’s farm in the 1930s during the Japanese occupation of Korea. Young-sook’s mother is the chief of the local Haenyeo – women free-divers. While the women dive, the men stay at home and take care of the children. Mi-Ja and Young-sook grow up together and join the diving collective. The book traces their relationship over decades, through their diving careers, marriages, babies, wars, love, loss. It also fictionalizes (sometimes just barely) very true, very haunting historical events, from the Japanese occupation to the Jeju massacre.
What I loved most about this book is how thoroughly and lovingly it was researched. Literally the day after I read it (!), we hiked 22 km (!) to the Haenyeo Museum (!) where I kept exclaiming, “Oh! This was in the book!” “Oh yea, let me tell you how they hunt for abalone!” “Oh, ok so in the book, she says that…” “In the book the main character goes to Vladivostok to dive, look here it is on this map!” “Did you know that the government didn’t let anyone talk about the 4/3 incident until the years 2000?!” “Oh I bet she based the story on this real life person, I can see a lot of similarities! Let me tell you ALL ABOUT IT!”
Highly recommend if you like historical fiction about badass ladies. A+ novelization, A+ badass ladies, A+ research.
