Beccah is a youngish, contemporary Hawaiian whose Korean mother, Akiko, was sold into prostitution as a young woman and sent to a 'recreation camp'' to service the occupying Japanese army. An intense study of a mother-daughter relationship, it dwells simultaneously in the world of spirits and the social milieu of the adolescent schoolgirl who later becomes a career woman with lovers. (Big contrast to West Texas especially now when we’re wilting from the long dry summer.This impressive first novel by a Hawaii-based writer of mixed Korean and American ancestry depicts one of the atrocities of war and its lingering effects on a later generation. The story is set in Hawaii (where I am going in December and have never been before) – so I was interested in the descriptions of the lush flora etc.

I also liked learning about the various beliefs and customs for some of the villages in Korea – fascinating. It was interesting watching the cross-cultural misinterpretations from mother/daughter interactions, and as the daughter learns about the mother’s history, so do the readers.) Not a happy book, but a good one with a strong ending. (There must be other intergenerational/cultural family stories out there – just can’t think of them right now.)

I think if you liked books by Amy Tan or similar, you’d like this one.

Normally not a big fan of this, but this book worked for me once I got the hang of the writing style. This is not a straight-forward narrative and there is quite a bit of magical realism (naturally, since we see some of it from the mother’s PoV and the mother has visions). The mother can see spirits and goes into trances – a gift that she believes she was given after having suffered as a “comfort woman” to the Japanese troops when they invaded Korea. The book flips back and forth between the daughter’s present time PoV and the mother’s (now dead) PoV and the cultural/generational clashes that arise between them. I have just finished Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller (1998), a debut novel following the story of an adult daughter of a Korean immigrant wife and her white US missionary husband who now live in Hawaii.

Nora okja keller comfort woman