Friday Reads: Pachinko

It's been a minute since our last Friday Reads post, but we haven't forgotten! Today, Adam tells us about Pachinko by Min Jin Lee and reflects on learning through historical fiction. 

One of the things I like about reading historical fiction, especially historical fiction written by authors from other parts of the world, is that I often learn for the first time about historical events that occurred outside of the United States. Before I started reading Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee, I never knew that Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910 until the end of World War II. To learn that Korea was not an independent nation for most of the first half of the twentieth century came as a surprise to me, and it helped spark my interest in this story right from the start.

Pachinko is a sprawling, multigenerational saga about a Korean family's experiences living in Japan during the twentieth century, exiled from their homeland and struggling to survive and thrive amid prejudice, hardship, and loss. The story begins with teenage Sunja, who becomes pregnant after falling for a wealthy businessman in her seaside Korean village. Refusing his offers of financial support after finding out he's already married, she instead accepts an offer of marriage from a kind minister passing through on his way to Osaka. Sunja moves to Japan to live with the minister and his family, and so begins an immigrant story that is rich with themes of sacrifice, ambition, and love. I'm usually a sucker for flowery or elaborate language in the fiction I read, but Pachinko is written in simple, straightforward prose that is nevertheless very affecting.