Pachinko
by Min Jin Lee
Four generations of Koreans in Japan. Never fully belonging.
For you if
you want to understand what it means to be permanently foreign in the country you were born in
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A Korean woman's secret pregnancy in 1910 sets in motion four generations of a family navigating Japanese colonialism, WWII, post-war discrimination, and the particular limbo of being Zainichi — ethnic Korean, born in Japan, belonging fully to neither country. Lee spent thirty years researching and writing this novel. The dispatch from inside one of the most systematically erased communities in East Asia — people who were brought to Japan as colonial labor and then told they didn't exist as Japanese citizens even when they'd been born there. One of the great multigenerational novels of the 21st century.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- Japan • East Asia
- Voice
- Written by a Japanese author
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
Silence(2016)
dir. Martin Scorsese
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Why it’s here: Punk in staying inside the missionary's doubt rather than resolving it — apostasy here isn't simple failure, it's a real moral question the film refuses to answer for you. Pedagogical in showing how colonial-era evangelism collided with a society determined to survive it, at real human cost on both sides.
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For the family bookshelf
Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.
