Pachinko
by Min Jin Lee
4 stars
Pachinko is a big, sprawling novel about three generations in twentieth-century Japan and Korea in which author Lee writes about love, family, and loss while focusing on the overlooked history of discrimination of the Koreans living in Japan who are perpetually seen as outsiders.
The story begins with Hoonie who is born in Korea after Japan annexes Korea in 1910 and follows his wife, Yanglin, and his beloved daughter, Sunja. Sunja (17) is seduced by a much older married man, named Koh Hansu, who is a gangster. Sunja becomes pregnant and refuses to be Hansu’s mistress and marries a kind minister named Baek Isak who brings up their son, Noa, as his own. Isak takes a position in Osaka, Japan. But Hansu follows his illegitimate son and Sunja throughout the years continuing to affect and influence their lives. Sunja and Isak have a second son, named Mozasu who ends up working in Pachinko parlor which is where the author gets her title from. The story takes you forward over 80 years! If you didn’t know, pachinko is a mechanical gambling machine and as the author explains with the climate of prejudice against the Koreans meant they had only a few ways to make a living and pachinko provided a lucrative means to a livelihood. Highly recommend! Very hard to not look at the parallels to our current American discussion on discrimination.
Read-alikes
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang
Early Warning by Jane Smiley
