{"id":44973,"date":"2019-01-14T11:12:56","date_gmt":"2019-01-14T16:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=44973"},"modified":"2019-01-10T19:32:32","modified_gmt":"2019-01-11T00:32:32","slug":"the-island-of-sea-women-by-lisa-see-in-booklist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-island-of-sea-women-by-lisa-see-in-booklist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See [in Booklist]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"*STARRED REVIEW<\/strong>
\nThey meet at age 7. Young-sook and her mother are working their garden; Mi-ja crouches among the sweet-potato plants, desperate to eat. They are on Korea\u2019s Jeju Island, \u201cknown for its Three Abundances of wind, stones, and women, it was also acknowledged for lacking three other things: beggars, thieves, and locked gates.\u201d Mi-ja is a city transplant living with relatives, who consider her a servant. She is also the village pariah because her late father was a collaborator with the brutal Japanese colonizers. Ironically, this becomes Mi-ja\u2019s \u201cbest day\u201d since being orphaned because she leaves Young-sook\u2019s with a full belly, a surrogate mother, and a best friend.<\/p>\n

Trained together as haenyeo<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 Jeju\u2019s renowned sea women who free dive for sea life \u2013 Young-sook and Mi-ja share intimate joys and survive debilitating hardships into adulthood, wifehood, and motherhood, until an unfathomable tragedy sunders their closer-than-sisters bond.<\/p>\n

Sixty years later, Young-sook is a national treasure, a world-traveled octogenarian haenyeo<\/em>. On her shoreline appear Mi-ja\u2019s granddaughter and her American family; Young-sook\u2019s initial denials acquiesce to reveal a past driven by love, loss, betrayal, perhaps even forgiveness.<\/p>\n

A stupendous multi-generational family saga, Lisa See<\/a>\u2019s (The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane<\/em><\/a>, 2017) latest also provides an enthralling cultural anthropology highlighting the soon-to-be-lost, matriarchal haenyeo<\/em> phenomenon and an engrossing history of violently tumultuous 20th-century Korea. A mesmerizing achievement.<\/p>\n

Review<\/strong>: “Fiction,” Booklist<\/em>, January 1, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*STARRED REVIEW They meet at age 7. Young-sook and her mother are working their garden; Mi-ja crouches among the sweet-potato plants, desperate to eat. They are on Korea\u2019s Jeju Island, \u201cknown for its Three Abundances of wind, stones, and women, it was also acknowledged for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,21,6,37,6535],"tags":[84,6608,6668,341,59,5852,10,11,24,8203,1597,13,129,39,45],"class_list":["post-44973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-chinese-american","category-fiction","category-korean","category-repost","tag-betrayal","tag-bookdragon","tag-booklist","tag-colonialism","tag-cultural-exploration","tag-domestic-abuse","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-historical","tag-island-of-sea-women","tag-lisa-see","tag-love","tag-mother-daughter-relationship","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Island of Sea Women by Lisa See [in Booklist] - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-island-of-sea-women-by-lisa-see-in-booklist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See [in Booklist] - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"*STARRED REVIEW They meet at age 7. 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