Ten Thousand Sorrows:
The Extraordinary Journey of a Korean War Orphan
by Elizabeth Kim
List Price: $22.95
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0385496338
Publisher: Doubleday
Nothing has a stronger
influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their
children, than the unlived life of the parents.
--Carl Jung, from Paracelsus
Elizabeth Kim knows little of the Korean village where she was born, or
the "official" facts of her birth such as its day, month, or year. She knows
even less of her father, an American soldier in Korea who deserted her mother,
her Omma. But in the four or five or six years that Kim lived in her mother's
warm embrace and sheltering shadow, she came to know much about the woman
whose love and sorrow, strength and resilience, rebellion and pride, and
brutal murder loom large in her life.
A veil of sorrow, slowly parted, is a thing of beauty, an act of faith.
And in her memoir, Ten Thousand Sorrows: The Extraordinary Journey of
a Korean War Orphan, author Elizabeth Kim shows us how she lifted that
veil, and learned to see clearly the sorrows and joys that are the stepping-stones
of her life.
Nobody, who has
not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of
any individual of that family may be.
--Jane Austen, from Emma
As if witnessing her grandfather and uncle murdering her mother were not
trauma enough, Kim is then abandoned at a Korean orphanage where she is
a virtual prisoner with little physical or emotional comfort. Months later,
Kim's adoption by an American couple puts an end to the physical deprivation
and begins a different kind of hardship. Her Fundamentalist adoptive parents
may mean well, but they are ill-equipped to give her more than food and
shelter, and it is difficult to read their actions as anything but cruel.
Kim continues her life having endured more direct trauma by age seventeen
than most people have witnessed by age seventy.
It is seldom indeed
that one parts on good terms, because if one were on good terms, one would
not part.
--Marcel Proust, from Remembrance of Things Past
Kim's tale continues with her arranged marriage to a Fundamentalist deacon
who beats, humiliates, and hates her. She returns that last favor. She also
has the strength (and as she admits, weakness) to become pregnant by purposely
not practicing birth control, something her husband had insisted upon. Ultimately
it is her daughter, Leigh, who gives Kim the strength to leave her brutal
husband. Like her Omma, Kim is devoted to protecting and nurturing her daughter.
Unlike her, Kim is able to take her daughter and flee.
A young child knows
Mother as a smelled skin, a halo of light, a strength in the arms, a voice
that trembles with feeling.
--Annie Dillard, from An American Childhood
At this point, we see Kim gathering her meager resources and shouldering
on to give Leigh what her Omma gave her: a childhood with little money but
with her a loving presence. And Kim works hard to make a better life for
them both along the way. She takes college classes, and finds reporting
jobs, first at small newspapers, and then at bigger ones. She scrapes and
scraps and struggles, always with her daughter in mind, and always with
an eye out for others who, like her, have been brutalized and ill-used by
those who are more powerful. She gives everything she can to her daughter,
including the truth.
My religion is
loving-kindness.
--Dalai Lama
Once Leigh is in her early teens, Kim begins the journey to her own emotional
and spiritual health and healing, which she had, for the most part, disregarded
while concentrating on survival. During these years, Kim fights valiantly
to reclaim her mother, her dreams, and the child that she was--the child
that everyone, even Kim herself, had pushed away. Kim's epiphany of practicing
loving-kindness toward herself did not take place in a year or a month or
a week or a moment. Instead it was earned and learned over a lifetime of
sorrows that she now recognizes travel alongside great joys.
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1. The author tells her story in basic chronological order except
for the opening, which flashes forward. How does this opening scene inform
the rest of the book? Would it have had the same effect if it had come
later in the book?
2. Talk about the author's use of her own poems in the book and
the influence of other poets, especially Millay, on her life.
3. There is an overlay of sadness in this memoir. Discuss its various
forms and rhythms in different chapters and sections of the book. Where
does sadness drape thickly? Where does it intrude sharply? Does it ever
abate?
4. This memoir suggests that geography imprints a person's soul.
Talk about this in relation to the author's feelings about the desert
and the mountains.
5. Compare and contrast the different mothers in this memoir--their
power and their weakness. For instance, Kim is not sold into slavery in
Korea only because the family that was willing to buy her demanded her
mother's approval.
6. The author's earliest memories center on the ritual that her
mother made of meals, however meager those meals were. Discuss the role
of food in this book.
7. The author portrays her Fundamentalist father as a study in
contrasts. Publicly, he is kind, caring, and devoted to his congregation.
Privately, Kim says he is deeply caring too, but harsh and judgmental
in his manner. Talk about these contradictions and about the Fundamentalist
faith in which the author was steeped as a girl.
8. Fear plays a big role in Kim's life once she is brought to the
United States. Talk about the different ways fear had an impact on her
life, from the Bosch painting that hung over her bed to her abusive husband.
9. At which points in Kim's life did somebody from outside her
family give her hope, and assure Kim that it was her parents, not she,
who were crazy? Could her story have been different had there been more
such people or had they taken a more active role?
10. When her grandmother comes to live with them, the author's
life changes again. Discuss Kim's relationship with her grandmother and
what she comes to understand about her grandmother and her mother.
11. What is the role of dreams in this book?
12. The author's daughter, Leigh, has a voice in this memoir. Twice
Leigh offers her view of her mother and of the way they've lived. Discuss
the author's choice to include this other voice and the perspective it
gives.
13. The author chooses a profession that enables her to give a
voice to those that have none. Talk about this choice.Why do you think
she chose this job?
14. As the author works her way out of depression, she quotes Blake
about those who are without hope, and she explores the meaning of suffering.
Talk about the journey she takes to get to the point where she recognizes
the ten thousand joys in life and not only the ten thousand sorrows.
Courtesy of Random House, Inc.
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