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Comfort Woman
Possessing a wisdom and maturity rarely found in a first novelist, Korean-American writer Nora Okja Keller tells a heartwrenching and enthralling tale in this, her literary debut. Comfort Woman is the story of Akiko, a Korean refugee of World War II, and Beccah, her daughter by an American missionary. The two women are living on the edge of society—and sanity—in Honolulu, plagued by Akiko's periodic encounters with the spirits of the dead, and by Beccah's struggles to reclaim her mother from her past. Slowly and painfully Akiko reveals her tragic story and the horrifying years she was forced to serve as a "comfort woman" to Japanese soldiers. As Beccah uncovers these truths, she discovers her own strength and the secret of the powers she herself possessed—the precious gifts her mother has given her.
A San Francisco Chronicle bestseller
In 1995, Nora Okja Keller received the Pushcart Prize for "Mother Tongue", a piece that is part of Comfort Woman .
A San Francisco Chronicle bestseller
In 1995, Nora Okja Keller received the Pushcart Prize for "Mother Tongue", a piece that is part of Comfort Woman .
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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3620 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 194 reviews
April 19, 2011
A Book that is about Far More than just History
The comfort women issue—perhaps one of the most contentious and controversial subjects in Japanese-Korean relations—is the backdrop of this amazing novel. The issue of the enslavement of Korean women to service Japanese soldiers during the war is at once a catalyst, a terrible haunting force, and the barrier to a better understanding of family lineage.
The issue of history is certainly important in this book, and provides it with a very unique backdrop. The author uses it skillfully to examine issue of trauma, the meanings of names and the systematic violence that occurs when a culture is dominated by an outside force. The author is also skilled at examining what happens to bodies and their spirits when faced with these terrible incidences. But for me, the strongest narrative element is the relationship between Beccah and her mother. This aspect of the book shines as the most essential part of the story, and it is made that much more stronger by our ability to empathize with Beccah's struggles through childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.
It's the relationship between Akiko/ Soon Hyo and her daughter Beccah that make something that is "just" history into something vital, human, and immediate.
From the viewpoint of someone who writes, the decision to have Akiko/ Soon Hyo tell her story from her own perspective is very impressive, and was probably the hardest to write. Keller does an excellent job weaving the different pieces of the story together.
The book is a breezy read, but never simple. It is highly evocative, challenging, but most of all gives you every reason to care about a mother and her daughter.
The comfort women issue—perhaps one of the most contentious and controversial subjects in Japanese-Korean relations—is the backdrop of this amazing novel. The issue of the enslavement of Korean women to service Japanese soldiers during the war is at once a catalyst, a terrible haunting force, and the barrier to a better understanding of family lineage.
The issue of history is certainly important in this book, and provides it with a very unique backdrop. The author uses it skillfully to examine issue of trauma, the meanings of names and the systematic violence that occurs when a culture is dominated by an outside force. The author is also skilled at examining what happens to bodies and their spirits when faced with these terrible incidences. But for me, the strongest narrative element is the relationship between Beccah and her mother. This aspect of the book shines as the most essential part of the story, and it is made that much more stronger by our ability to empathize with Beccah's struggles through childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.
It's the relationship between Akiko/ Soon Hyo and her daughter Beccah that make something that is "just" history into something vital, human, and immediate.
From the viewpoint of someone who writes, the decision to have Akiko/ Soon Hyo tell her story from her own perspective is very impressive, and was probably the hardest to write. Keller does an excellent job weaving the different pieces of the story together.
The book is a breezy read, but never simple. It is highly evocative, challenging, but most of all gives you every reason to care about a mother and her daughter.
March 30, 2019
3,5 Me ha quedado un regusto agridulce al acabar este libro. Ha sido un libro super interesante, pero me ha parecido algo lioso a veces.
La trama nos va a ser contada a dos voces. Por una parte tenemos a Akiko, que nos va a narrar su dura historia, siendo exclava sexual de los japoneses, en la época de la Segunda Guerra Mundial cuando Japón había invadido Corea, y las barabaridades que estos hicieron allí. Por otra parte, tenemos en el presente a Beckah, hija de la anterior, que al morir su madre, empezará a recordar los momentos vividos con ella a lo largo de su vida, tratando de entender por fin a su madre.
Como digo hay partes muy interesantes. El fondo histórico me ha parecido lo mejor. Descubrir, como influyó la segunda guerra mundial y la invasión japonesa de Corea, para la posterior separación de Corea en dos, me ha parecido super interesante. Sobre todo porque tenía pensado que esa separación fue mucho antes y no hace tantos años. Increíble. Increíble también el papel que jugó Rusia y EE.UU en todo ello. Como digo, super interesante. Me dieron ganas de informarme más.
Por otra parte, Akiko, tiene poderes o eso parece. No nos queda muy claro si es una vidente capaz de hablar con los espíritus, o si su trágico pasado la perturbó hasta tal manera. Pero es interesante ver el choque de una madre tan peculiar para la sociedad américana y una hija tratando de encajar en esta sociedad, sin comprender a su madre.
En definitiva, un libro que recomendaría, que me ha gustado bastante, pero quizás, necesitaba un narración algo menos liosa.
La trama nos va a ser contada a dos voces. Por una parte tenemos a Akiko, que nos va a narrar su dura historia, siendo exclava sexual de los japoneses, en la época de la Segunda Guerra Mundial cuando Japón había invadido Corea, y las barabaridades que estos hicieron allí. Por otra parte, tenemos en el presente a Beckah, hija de la anterior, que al morir su madre, empezará a recordar los momentos vividos con ella a lo largo de su vida, tratando de entender por fin a su madre.
Como digo hay partes muy interesantes. El fondo histórico me ha parecido lo mejor. Descubrir, como influyó la segunda guerra mundial y la invasión japonesa de Corea, para la posterior separación de Corea en dos, me ha parecido super interesante. Sobre todo porque tenía pensado que esa separación fue mucho antes y no hace tantos años. Increíble. Increíble también el papel que jugó Rusia y EE.UU en todo ello. Como digo, super interesante. Me dieron ganas de informarme más.
Por otra parte, Akiko, tiene poderes o eso parece. No nos queda muy claro si es una vidente capaz de hablar con los espíritus, o si su trágico pasado la perturbó hasta tal manera. Pero es interesante ver el choque de una madre tan peculiar para la sociedad américana y una hija tratando de encajar en esta sociedad, sin comprender a su madre.
En definitiva, un libro que recomendaría, que me ha gustado bastante, pero quizás, necesitaba un narración algo menos liosa.
October 22, 2016
content warning: rape, sexual violence, sexual slavery, child neglect
This was a surprisingly easy novel to read despite its incredibly weighty topic. I'm taking an Asian American lit class this semester, and I was assigned this to read immediately following a really frustrating documentary about comfort woman, and to be quite frank, I expected to have to force myself through this, crying and moaning the whole time. And I did cry––of course I cried, I'm the girl who cried during Madagascar––but there was a sense of effervescence throughout the narrative that made it bearable. The writing was, of course, beautiful, but it wasn't just that. There was a life to the story, a spirit.
Comfort Woman tells the parallel stories of Akiko, a Korean comfort woman, and Beccah, the daughter she eventually comes to have with the American missionary she chooses to marry in order to leave Korea. After Akiko's death, Beccah is forced to confront the mother she thought she knew––and the woman who, she comes to realise, she didn't know at all.
I'm not going to talk too long about what an important novel this is––though indubitably it is that––but I do want to talk about how good this novel is. World War II narratives tend to end in victory or in death, and they also tend to end when the war does. In some ways, this makes narrative sense. In other ways, it obscures the generational trama that still lingers to this day, especially in a political climate where Shinzo Abe visits the Yasukuni Shrine, the former mayor of Tokyo is an apologist for Japanese war crimes, and the very few comfort women who are still alive have yet to be offered state reparations or an official apology by either Emperor Akihito or the Japanese government.
Comfort Woman spends very little time in the camps themselves, and it's a stronger novel for having done so. It certainly doesn't shy away from the horrors of those euphemistically named "comfort stations,"but it doesn't gorge itself on the comfort women's pain. It doesn't feel at all exploitative––rather, it focuses itself on the aftermath of trauma, and the way trauma never truly leaves us. So instead of visiting brutalisation upon women's bodies with the reader as a willing or unwilling voyeur, we experience the camp through Akiko's perspective, and we see the way it follows her, the way it bleeds into the life of her daughter Beccah.
The novel is split into two by time, by space, and by narrator. Akiko begins her story in colonised Korea, going forward through the war, while Beccah begins in Hawai'i in the modern day with her mother's death, and reaches backwards to her dysfunctional childhood. This split POV was at times frustrating, Beccah's voice cutting in just as I was getting caught up in Akiko's narrative––but I think it was effective not only in conveying this intergenerational trauma, but also, I think, in shaping our perspectives towards both Beccah and Akiko.
It's in the relationship between these two that the heart of the novel truly lies. It's a tense one, to be sure––Beccah describes growing up with a mother who was unable to take care of her, unable to blend in with the other mothers, who embarrasses her and sometimes neglects her. For Akiko, Beccah is in some ways both fruit and defiance of her trauma––her conception and birth both manifest in a reliving of her time at the camp. Yet it's clear that they love each other, that they are the world to each other––Beccah is Akiko's caretaker and advocate, while for Akiko, Beccah becomes the reason she plans and lives, the one light in her life.
There's a lot between them that's left unsaid, and it's up to the readers to fill in the gaps. This is a really effective technique, because I think it really hammers in the fact that trauma takes away our speech, takes away the reliability of language––that language, at times, is a kind of trauma.
I really enjoyed this novel––if enjoyment is the right word. Despite the deep undercurrent of anger, of pain, of bitterness, and resentment, the novel is ultimately one about love, and about the legacies that our parents leave us.
This was a surprisingly easy novel to read despite its incredibly weighty topic. I'm taking an Asian American lit class this semester, and I was assigned this to read immediately following a really frustrating documentary about comfort woman, and to be quite frank, I expected to have to force myself through this, crying and moaning the whole time. And I did cry––of course I cried, I'm the girl who cried during Madagascar––but there was a sense of effervescence throughout the narrative that made it bearable. The writing was, of course, beautiful, but it wasn't just that. There was a life to the story, a spirit.
Comfort Woman tells the parallel stories of Akiko, a Korean comfort woman, and Beccah, the daughter she eventually comes to have with the American missionary she chooses to marry in order to leave Korea. After Akiko's death, Beccah is forced to confront the mother she thought she knew––and the woman who, she comes to realise, she didn't know at all.
I'm not going to talk too long about what an important novel this is––though indubitably it is that––but I do want to talk about how good this novel is. World War II narratives tend to end in victory or in death, and they also tend to end when the war does. In some ways, this makes narrative sense. In other ways, it obscures the generational trama that still lingers to this day, especially in a political climate where Shinzo Abe visits the Yasukuni Shrine, the former mayor of Tokyo is an apologist for Japanese war crimes, and the very few comfort women who are still alive have yet to be offered state reparations or an official apology by either Emperor Akihito or the Japanese government.
Comfort Woman spends very little time in the camps themselves, and it's a stronger novel for having done so. It certainly doesn't shy away from the horrors of those euphemistically named "comfort stations,"but it doesn't gorge itself on the comfort women's pain. It doesn't feel at all exploitative––rather, it focuses itself on the aftermath of trauma, and the way trauma never truly leaves us. So instead of visiting brutalisation upon women's bodies with the reader as a willing or unwilling voyeur, we experience the camp through Akiko's perspective, and we see the way it follows her, the way it bleeds into the life of her daughter Beccah.
The novel is split into two by time, by space, and by narrator. Akiko begins her story in colonised Korea, going forward through the war, while Beccah begins in Hawai'i in the modern day with her mother's death, and reaches backwards to her dysfunctional childhood. This split POV was at times frustrating, Beccah's voice cutting in just as I was getting caught up in Akiko's narrative––but I think it was effective not only in conveying this intergenerational trauma, but also, I think, in shaping our perspectives towards both Beccah and Akiko.
It's in the relationship between these two that the heart of the novel truly lies. It's a tense one, to be sure––Beccah describes growing up with a mother who was unable to take care of her, unable to blend in with the other mothers, who embarrasses her and sometimes neglects her. For Akiko, Beccah is in some ways both fruit and defiance of her trauma––her conception and birth both manifest in a reliving of her time at the camp. Yet it's clear that they love each other, that they are the world to each other––Beccah is Akiko's caretaker and advocate, while for Akiko, Beccah becomes the reason she plans and lives, the one light in her life.
There's a lot between them that's left unsaid, and it's up to the readers to fill in the gaps. This is a really effective technique, because I think it really hammers in the fact that trauma takes away our speech, takes away the reliability of language––that language, at times, is a kind of trauma.
I really enjoyed this novel––if enjoyment is the right word. Despite the deep undercurrent of anger, of pain, of bitterness, and resentment, the novel is ultimately one about love, and about the legacies that our parents leave us.
September 11, 2015
Breathtaking: I had to reread certain passages, just to fully process how AMAZING this book truly was. Would recommend this to anyone.
November 29, 2017
It was a pretty powerful novel about the ties between a mother and a daughter, but it was a difficult read with the narrative switching not only between mother and daughter but also between present and past and between real and imaginary. I kept wondering about the title “ Comfort Woman” when the present world of spirits seemed to be so central and seemed to almost strangle the horrific past events. I was also a little disappointed that the disclosure came so late. I would have liked to have had more time to see the effects of that disclosure. It was a reasonably worthwhile read, but I guess I wanted more.
Read
February 7, 2008Fantastically written, though incredibly sad. She does a stellar job at making the reader feel the difference in culture between a Korean mother and an American daughter, and really articulates the poignancy of a mother's love for and relationship with her daughter.
It was a hard book to read, because the realities of the comfort camps were heartbreaking, but I agree with someone else on Goodreads who said that reading this book made them feel like a better person.
It was a hard book to read, because the realities of the comfort camps were heartbreaking, but I agree with someone else on Goodreads who said that reading this book made them feel like a better person.
May 5, 2023
This was a haunting book to read. I wanted to give it up many times but I thought that if I didn't reach the last then the book will keep haunting me.
I wanted to understand the historical aspect of comfort women through this book but it didn't feature it much. Which was a tad bit disappointing.
However, the book features strong emotional value. It can grip the readers with trauma, grief, and a detached feeling from the world. The suffering of the camps embodies itself in the sentences and falls heavy on the heart of the readers.
It almost felt a bit whimsical to read. Partly because of the heavy focus on the spirit world. It was too emotionally heavy and suffocating read for me. I prefer a lighter narrative that expresses the suffering of history in everyday life.
This is why the book isn't a great pick for someone who wishes to learn more about the historical side of comfort women but it is still a good book about a mother and daughter's relationship that is heavily influenced by generational trauma and remnants of history.
The scenes between the mother and daughter are soft, painful, and familiar. Although the characters experience the everyday life of an immigrant household with a single parent in an extremely different way- at the base of it are the familiar bounds of protection, love, sympathy, and care.
Overall, this is way too emotionally heavy for me and lacking in historical knowledge. So, it is just not for me and I am glad to bid it farewell.
I wanted to understand the historical aspect of comfort women through this book but it didn't feature it much. Which was a tad bit disappointing.
However, the book features strong emotional value. It can grip the readers with trauma, grief, and a detached feeling from the world. The suffering of the camps embodies itself in the sentences and falls heavy on the heart of the readers.
It almost felt a bit whimsical to read. Partly because of the heavy focus on the spirit world. It was too emotionally heavy and suffocating read for me. I prefer a lighter narrative that expresses the suffering of history in everyday life.
This is why the book isn't a great pick for someone who wishes to learn more about the historical side of comfort women but it is still a good book about a mother and daughter's relationship that is heavily influenced by generational trauma and remnants of history.
The scenes between the mother and daughter are soft, painful, and familiar. Although the characters experience the everyday life of an immigrant household with a single parent in an extremely different way- at the base of it are the familiar bounds of protection, love, sympathy, and care.
Overall, this is way too emotionally heavy for me and lacking in historical knowledge. So, it is just not for me and I am glad to bid it farewell.
November 7, 2024
I am in love with this book and in love with how it depicts such a complicated mother-daughter relationship. One of the best books I've read in a good while.
April 6, 2009
Oh goooodddd. There's a passage from this book that just about killed me. Killed me. I mean, if the whole book does nothing for you, then you are pretty much made of stone.
June 19, 2010
A devastating book - beautiful and painful. Hard to read...hard to put down.
August 3, 2022
Haunting and beautifully written. Sometimes we can become complacent or forget our history, and stories like Comfort Woman remind us of what came before and our duty to remember and fight for them.
December 28, 2018
To learn to be an American was to learn to waste.I picked this book up due to the phrase 'comfort woman' having been circulating around my head for some time. My lackluster rating compared to the top reviews, and even the average, attests to a combination of incompatible reading tastes and misdirected reading efforts, as what I was probably looking for was not fiction, highly relevant title aside, but nonfiction. Chances are good, back when I was first searching, the political nonsense was more successfully suppressing such research endeavors, and after much perusal of resources that were rather lacking, I decided a fictional approach was better than none. Unfortunately, while I am not adverse to reading about trauma, fictional renditions make personal preferences harder to ignore, and Keller's work is neither The Guest nor The Bullet Collection, which are, to put it plainly, more 'subtle' in their portrayals of devastation and human processing of devastation. As such, my rating stays, and I'll definitely be on the lookout for less creative treatments of the subject. Much like The Rape of Nanking, Medical Apartheid, and others, ignorance about these events ultimately leads to further dehumanization, as can be attested to by how eagerly governments forcibly pass such education by.
As I said, this narrative wasn't structured in a way that was to my taste. I appreciated the scenes that occurred in Korea from the perspective of the mother and sometimes her mother, as it further grounded events that I had picked up from a variety of sources, literary and otherwise (Mr. Sunshine is a great show on Netflix, by the way, for anyone interested in historical fiction looking at the build up of Japanese imperialism in late 19th/early 20th Korea). However, the story majorly occurred in Hawaii from the perspective of the daughter, and that rather stereotypical underdog coming of age story, coupled with what can only be called borderline magical realism, grew tiresome after a while. It didn't help when the ending came together a tad too pat and myriad characters came out of the work just long enough to be referenced by name and humanize the previously dehumanized mother figure before sinking down into the daughter's hyperrealistic visualizations, which really didn't do much at all with regards to credible narrative conclusion. As can be seen from other reviews, people found this narrative both engaging and, perhaps, realistic, so I'm glad that it's doing more for those who need it. I'm not exactly lacking when it comes to necessary reading on trauma.
This is my last book by a woman of color read during 2018. I started something very long after my last finished read, but that's only because I literally don't have enough pages left in my current reads to last out till January 1st. Goodreads tells me that nearly a third of my 2018 reads will be by women of color, which, considering my challenge efforts, shows I've come a long way when it comes to my reading demographics. Not everything I've conscientiously sought out for balancing purposes has qualified as underread classics, but the more I work my way out of the white male mainstream while keeping up my customary levels of critical thinking, the less susceptible I am to either outright praise or downright dismissal, a result which, in a roundabout way, one can see here. In any case, I'm eager to start afresh, especially since my current situation is so dramatically different from where I was at the beginning of 2018. Whether there will be such dramatic, preferably good, shifts for during the course of 2019 remains to be seen.
November 13, 2017
This is a beautifully written book. The topic is wrenching. I often felt torn between the gorgeous writing and the horrifying subject of "comfort women" who were sex slaves to Japanese soldiers during WWII. The story is compelling. I'll put it this way: after finishing this book, I went and got her second book. Simply said, I want to read more from this author.
Here are few quotes:
"I would watch the broom scratch across the surface of the floors and on the stairs in front of the house. I could feel the water in the tub running down my hand as I rubbed my fingers across the smooth and resistant surfaces of plates and cups. And I smelled the pungent stickiness of the glue when I pasted the labels on the matchboxes, table, and chairs. But without the sounds of these actions, I had no way to connect them to myself. No way to judge time, distance, action, reaction.
"As I swept, washed dishes, pasted labels, followed gestures and pointing fingers, instead of hearing the broom or the water or the fat sucking noise of glue on paper, my ears were filled with memories of the comfort camps."
"What I heard after my ears cracked open was a single song, with notes so rich and varied that it sounded like many songs blended into one.
"And in that song I heard things that I had almost forgotten: the enduring whisper of women who continued to pass messages under the ears of soldiers; a defiant Induk bellowing the Korean national anthem even after the soldiers had knocked her teeth out; the symphony of ten thousand frogs; the lullabies my mother hummed as she put her daughters to sleep; the song the river sings when she finds her freedom in the ocean."
"One night, as I was on my knees for the last prayer of the day, chanting her name in my head and my heart until her name ran together, seamless in its repetition, I fell to the ground. My body turned to lead, so heavy that I could not lift a finger or a toe, much less an arm or a leg. And then it was as if I liquefied; I lost the edges of myself and began to soak into the floorboards. Waves surged through my arms and legs, rushing toward the center of my body, where I knew they would clash and explode out the top of my head. I became afraid, knowing that I would feel naked and vulnerable without my body."
"One of the women there--I do not know her real name and will not use the one assigned to her--I think she came from yangban, high class. She spoke of a dagger her mother wore above the waist. Smaller than the length of her palm, the hilt encrusted with gems, it was to have been hers when she married. The knife would have shown her pride in her virtue; if she had failed in guarding it, she would have used the weapon on herself.
"The rest of us were envious, not of the rich things she indicated having, not of her aristocracy, but of her right to kill herself. We all had the obligation, of course, given what had happened to us, but it didn't have the status of privilege and choice.
"That is what, in the end, made Induk so special: she chose her own death. Using the Japanese as her dagger, she taunted them with the language and truths they perceived as insults. She sharpened their anger to the point where it equaled and fused with their hungers. She used them to end her life, to find release."
Here are few quotes:
"I would watch the broom scratch across the surface of the floors and on the stairs in front of the house. I could feel the water in the tub running down my hand as I rubbed my fingers across the smooth and resistant surfaces of plates and cups. And I smelled the pungent stickiness of the glue when I pasted the labels on the matchboxes, table, and chairs. But without the sounds of these actions, I had no way to connect them to myself. No way to judge time, distance, action, reaction.
"As I swept, washed dishes, pasted labels, followed gestures and pointing fingers, instead of hearing the broom or the water or the fat sucking noise of glue on paper, my ears were filled with memories of the comfort camps."
"What I heard after my ears cracked open was a single song, with notes so rich and varied that it sounded like many songs blended into one.
"And in that song I heard things that I had almost forgotten: the enduring whisper of women who continued to pass messages under the ears of soldiers; a defiant Induk bellowing the Korean national anthem even after the soldiers had knocked her teeth out; the symphony of ten thousand frogs; the lullabies my mother hummed as she put her daughters to sleep; the song the river sings when she finds her freedom in the ocean."
"One night, as I was on my knees for the last prayer of the day, chanting her name in my head and my heart until her name ran together, seamless in its repetition, I fell to the ground. My body turned to lead, so heavy that I could not lift a finger or a toe, much less an arm or a leg. And then it was as if I liquefied; I lost the edges of myself and began to soak into the floorboards. Waves surged through my arms and legs, rushing toward the center of my body, where I knew they would clash and explode out the top of my head. I became afraid, knowing that I would feel naked and vulnerable without my body."
"One of the women there--I do not know her real name and will not use the one assigned to her--I think she came from yangban, high class. She spoke of a dagger her mother wore above the waist. Smaller than the length of her palm, the hilt encrusted with gems, it was to have been hers when she married. The knife would have shown her pride in her virtue; if she had failed in guarding it, she would have used the weapon on herself.
"The rest of us were envious, not of the rich things she indicated having, not of her aristocracy, but of her right to kill herself. We all had the obligation, of course, given what had happened to us, but it didn't have the status of privilege and choice.
"That is what, in the end, made Induk so special: she chose her own death. Using the Japanese as her dagger, she taunted them with the language and truths they perceived as insults. She sharpened their anger to the point where it equaled and fused with their hungers. She used them to end her life, to find release."
July 6, 2007
Fought reading this because of the painful and ugly nature of the story. I cannot be more glad that I did. Inspiring and I think this book made me a better person. High praise.
June 22, 2017
A selection in my postal book group. I've never heard of this book prior to its showing up in my mailbox. It involves a Korean mother and her daughter who escape from occupied Korea to Hawaii. The mother speaks to spirits to the chagrin of her daughter but the financial benefit of another woman who gives the two a place to stay.
It was difficult for me to get into this book, but once I did I couldn't read it fast enough. There was a lot of magic realism and foreign words that caught me (I have to see every tree in the forest.) A challenging read, but worth the endeavor.
It was difficult for me to get into this book, but once I did I couldn't read it fast enough. There was a lot of magic realism and foreign words that caught me (I have to see every tree in the forest.) A challenging read, but worth the endeavor.
May 23, 2019
Found this novel in a small nook in the library of the school in Japan I'm currently studying abroad at, and it completely blew me away.
What I thought would be a simple historical fiction novel was actually full of more than just heartache or a retelling of history, but incorporated Eastern religion, the struggle of identity, and a mother's love.
Couldn't put it down and finished reading it in about 3 days, highly reccomend this hidden gem.
What I thought would be a simple historical fiction novel was actually full of more than just heartache or a retelling of history, but incorporated Eastern religion, the struggle of identity, and a mother's love.
Couldn't put it down and finished reading it in about 3 days, highly reccomend this hidden gem.
June 14, 2007
Comfort Woman tells the story of a Korean woman who suffered through being a prisoner in a Japanese prostitution camp during World War II. If I remember correctly It's told from the perspective of her Americanized daughter who's a bit embarassed by her mother's strange behavior. After her mother dies she finds audio tapes her mother made and learns the truth about what her mother endured. I've been meaning to re-read this book to research historic and cultural details I didn't understand on first read, but it's not a book you read for fun.
November 6, 2025
Really dark content but beautifully written; reflects on generational trauma (specifically mother-daughter relationships) and asian-american identity. Liked the alternating narrative structure. Quick read
January 24, 2017
THIS BOOK FUCKED ME UPPPPP
fucked me uppp real good ugh.
fucked me uppp real good ugh.
June 25, 2025
2.5 stars. I honestly feel bad rating this lower than 3 stars, so I have to insist that it's an appreciation rating, not a quality rating.
I absolutely expected this book to be depressing and generally unpleasant, so that is not where my issues lie.
This book doesn't really have a plot. It tells the story of a survivor of the Japanese "recreation camps" in Korea, through her own eyes and through her daughter's eyes (whom she had with an American missionary, and yes, this is even more predatory than you imagine). The narrative is told non-chronologically and through vignettes. It's a bit all over the place, really, and the daughter's perspective was mostly uninteresting to me.
What drew me to this was the Japanese occupation setting and the feminine condition during that period. Unfortunately, only a third of the book, perhaps even less, is set in Korea. The rest is in the US, mainly Hawaii. It becomes the story of an immigrant and her child and their difficulties fitting it and adjusting, and while that is entirely deserving of its own tale, that's not what I wanted to read about. A large, large part of the narrative is also centred around spirituality, which has always been a major turn off for me, regardless of the religion/culture it comes from. That may be shallow of me. But I can't take spirituality seriously.
Regardless, this is an important book about a too often glossed over part of 20th century history. This really happened, and not that long ago.
I absolutely expected this book to be depressing and generally unpleasant, so that is not where my issues lie.
This book doesn't really have a plot. It tells the story of a survivor of the Japanese "recreation camps" in Korea, through her own eyes and through her daughter's eyes (whom she had with an American missionary, and yes, this is even more predatory than you imagine). The narrative is told non-chronologically and through vignettes. It's a bit all over the place, really, and the daughter's perspective was mostly uninteresting to me.
What drew me to this was the Japanese occupation setting and the feminine condition during that period. Unfortunately, only a third of the book, perhaps even less, is set in Korea. The rest is in the US, mainly Hawaii. It becomes the story of an immigrant and her child and their difficulties fitting it and adjusting, and while that is entirely deserving of its own tale, that's not what I wanted to read about. A large, large part of the narrative is also centred around spirituality, which has always been a major turn off for me, regardless of the religion/culture it comes from. That may be shallow of me. But I can't take spirituality seriously.
Regardless, this is an important book about a too often glossed over part of 20th century history. This really happened, and not that long ago.
September 3, 2025
Better than I expected. One critique I have about contemporary books, especially American contemporary writers, is that they all write with the exact. Same. Tone. Like from 90’s onwards they just all banded together and said “let’s take Toni Morrison’s tone and progressively make it worse.” Beyond the tone though, I think it used fantastical elements really well, doing what a lot of Asian American writers would later/still do: exploring generational trauma through native folklore, especially in contrast with American society. She does this better than some other authors I read, and it’s just especially strong with the issue of comfort women specifically. Overall really strong, impressive debut novel
November 6, 2025
Very well written but an extremely sad book. It explores a complicated mother-daughter relationship against the backdrop of the mother’s tragic past, and how the ghosts of that past, both literal and figurative, affect the present. I was a little disappointed that the revelation about the mother’s past came so late in the book, I’d have preferred it earlier and would’ve liked to see how it affected the daughter. There were also frequent jumps between the past and present, which were a bit confusing at times. Ultimately, this book introduced me to a dark period in modern history that I was completely unaware of, and I’m thankful for that.
April 6, 2020
This book hurt to read at times and required a break. For such an abhorrent subject matter, the prose used to convey atrocious actions in an almost beautiful fashion made me appreciate the art of language.
Simply beautiful tale of generations and the love between mothers and daughters.
Simply beautiful tale of generations and the love between mothers and daughters.
February 12, 2019
Enternecedora historia de una madre y una hija, de cómo escondemos secretos y cuidamos a nuestros seres más queridos. El ser respetuosa con las creencias y tradiciones que no siempre entendemos y tenemos nosotr@s.
Una delicia, eso sí, dura, desgarradora.
Una delicia, eso sí, dura, desgarradora.
October 2, 2011
I was quite disappointed to find that "Comfort Woman" was less about a historical account of a survivor of the Japanese recreation camps than it was about a Korean shaman mother whose relationship with her daughter was strained by spiritual idiosyncrasies, miscommunication, and misunderstanding. Of course, the daughter came to realize that everything her mother did, she did it out of love for her. History played a minor role in the story, even if the mother's shamanism was prompted by her experience as a comfort woman. I enjoyed the references to Korean superstitions and folklores, and how the colors and animals central to them were so integral to the story. However, anything used in excess can grow exhausting--the same could be said of Keller's use of the colors, red, white and blue; of frogs, dragons; and of water and stream as symbols for the narrators' lives. I was really excited to read "Comfort Woman". The atrocities that Japanese committed during World War II were too numerous to recount, and many crimes remain largely untold and overlooked by the rest world--the stories of comfort women are definitely one of them. I was excited to think that "Comfort Woman" was going to be a rare account dedicated to publicizing the sufferings of comfort women, only to be underwhelmed in that respect. But I must say, Keller's writing invoked in my mind some of the most vivid, haunting images I had ever imagined.
October 5, 2017
This is a "one-sitter" book. I wish my schedule allowed me to read it in one go. The story-telling is mesmerizing, taking you into a world that is there but we tend to ignore.
This book was unexpected. I was expecting more of a "historical" type of book, telling a story about a mother and daughter relationship. To my surprise, it was even more than that. In my opinion, this is NOT a book just about one daughter and one mother relationship. It has the ability to uplift your soul and become a part of the narration. I found a gem amongst so many books. I cannot wait to read Fox Girl, that I've ordered halfway reading Comfort Woman. To me, is that good!
It still has left a flavour in my mind. I would love to re-read it at some point to extract more juice from it as there is plenty.
I just would like to add that I loved the layout of the book in its whole. The way it is written and being on paper. For a person that has difficulties to focus it made it much easier to read.
This book was unexpected. I was expecting more of a "historical" type of book, telling a story about a mother and daughter relationship. To my surprise, it was even more than that. In my opinion, this is NOT a book just about one daughter and one mother relationship. It has the ability to uplift your soul and become a part of the narration. I found a gem amongst so many books. I cannot wait to read Fox Girl, that I've ordered halfway reading Comfort Woman. To me, is that good!
It still has left a flavour in my mind. I would love to re-read it at some point to extract more juice from it as there is plenty.
I just would like to add that I loved the layout of the book in its whole. The way it is written and being on paper. For a person that has difficulties to focus it made it much easier to read.
March 7, 2012
A beautifully wrought, nuanced novel about a mother and a daughter, and the way they are both held prisoner by the past--slowly revealed to be the harrowing experience of the mother, who, like many Korean women, had been arrested during WWII to service Japanese soldiers as a'comfort woman' in a military brothel. I was incredibly moved by this debut book, reviewed it years ago in a now defunct magazine, Speak. In my mind I still have it next to Yannick Murphy's the Sea of Trees.
August 3, 2014
A unique novel, moving between the narratives of a Korean mother - laced with threads of magic and mythology - and her stolid American daughter. Beccah's mother is opaque to her, but the reader learns of her tragedies. Sold by a sister to the Japanese, Akiko (as she is called by the Japanese) is enslaved as a comfort woman. Deeply mysterious, this is no Amy Tan novel with its easy access to Western readers. An amazing debut novel.
May 22, 2017
There was a quite a lot of spirits and trances which I didn't care for. I would have liked the story more if the author spent less time taking us into the world of spirits. It is a story about a crime against women that I had not known of before reading this book. I'll be following up with more books about these comfort women.
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