วันอังคารที่ 7 พฤษภาคม พ.ศ. 2562

Emma Watson picks 'Pachinko' by Min Jin Lee for May/June book on OSS!


Emma Watson เลือกหนังสือ Pachinko โดย Min Jin Lee เป็นหนังสือประจำเดือนพฤษภาคม-มิถุนายน บนชมรม Our Shared Shelf!




Dear Our Shared Shelf:

We are extremely excited to announce that our selection for May/June is: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. This National Book Award finalist was included on 75 Best Books of the Year lists when it debuted. We were aware of the discrimination that Koreans living in Japan faced and still endure today, but were wholly unprepared for how Lee’s writing captivated us from the very first sentence and never let go: “History has failed us, but no matter.” 

Min Jin Lee is unabashedly a feminist and her resilient female characters propel this riveting story. Lee has written a moving, historical saga that is also a timeless masterpiece; almost 500 pages long, and we didn’t want it to end. This brilliant, eye-opening novel is about outsiders, minorities, the disenfranchised and yet somehow embraces us all. 

We asked the author if she would share an introduction to herself and the book for Our Shared Shelf members and she graciously agreed. All of us at Team OSS are looking forward to discussing Pachinko with you.

With love,

Team OSS


From Min Jin Lee, author of Pachinko and Free Food for Millionaires:

I learned about the lives of the Korean-Japanese people, also known as the Zainichi, when I was nineteen years old. At university, I heard a lecture about how Koreans ended up in Japan during the colonial era (1910-1945) and how they remained after the Pacific War ended. At that time, I had no intention of becoming a fiction writer. Nevertheless, even then, I knew that the story of these people meant something important to me. It took me almost three decades to write Pachinko, a novel of a poor Korean woman’s migration to Japan. In the story, a very young woman becomes pregnant, rejects the man who has deceived her, then marries a poor man who takes her to live in a foreign country. Illiterate and without resources, my character earns money to support her family in a nation that is hostile to her people. 

Often, I am asked why I write novels. I write fiction, because stories have the power to connect the reader to our collective experiences and struggles. Whether it is attraction, rejection, inclusion, or exclusion, whether we seek love, work, or homeland, we can re-imagine our lives differently through the lives of characters and their desires. 

Thank you for including Pachinko in Our Shared Shelf, a vibrant and vital community of thoughtful readers who care about our world and the liberation of all peoples from hatred, cruelty and inequality. Reading is a powerful space of paradigm reconstruction and literary imagination, and, this is a temporal space you and I can share. I am humbled to be included in your lives, and I share your vision of a greater, broader, and freer world, where you and I can better care for ourselves, friends, and for all those who need us. We are a global family, and we are powerful together.



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