Pachinko

Very light spoiler that pertains to the progression of the book

I did really enjoy the view of history that I've not seen covered in a book before. I got through the first part pretty quickly due to not wanting to put the book down. But then it just started dragging. I was avoiding reading because I didn't want to be reminded that I had this on my phone waiting to be finished.

SPOILERISH I also got to the point that my first though when being introduced to a new character was "ok and how long until they die?" END SPOILERISH

This should have been a DNF for me, but I'm still going to give it 2 stars because I really did appreciate Min Jin Lee bringing forward the racism and disparity that Koreans faced during that time. I cannot begin to fathom leaving your birth country and then have no country want to claim you as a citizen.

I just wish some of the parts would have been slimmed down a little more.

Family, migration, survival, the power of poverty and coercion and being outsiders. Koreans in Japan, 20c. The depth of family complexity flattened to a hyphen in immigrant labels like "Korean-American".

The first third was easily engrossing. It was refreshing to learn about the history of Ikuno and about the Korean diaspora in Japan. The formula of family sagas is difficult to escape though. The older generations stoically live through readable hardship, while the younger generation is spoiled and ungrateful. I was actually expecting the youngest generation here to end up in America and to experience new discriminations, but the United States is maintained as a distant promised land. The novel holds the ideology too of work and wealth as virtue with no compunctions for example about swindling an old lady out of her home—and I nearly resented having to read through a banker bro poker game. Why are all the protagonists of the younger generation men? Both the narrator and the characters examine the structures of racism but none confront the misogyny, and the women who are granted long lives surrounded by devoted family members accept their lot as one to suffer—confines that are vocalised repeatedly across 470 pages.

Incidentally, if Phoebe and her disapproval of aspects of Japan were to be written more roundedly, the most salient affliction of living in Japan as a woman and expat is the omnipresence of pickup artist bullshittery and anti-feminist pageantry.