Comfort Woman Kindle Edition
by Nora Okja Keller (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 out of 5 stars 82 ratings
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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.
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Print length
223 pages
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Review
An impressive debut ... the characterisation is sharp, the prose lyrical without being affected (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)
An emotional touch so sure and a sense of language so precise she seems to have sprung into print full-grown as a novelist (NEWSWEEK)
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"Comfort women"--that dumbing-down euphemism for the almost one quarter of a million Asian women who were made sexual slaves of the Japanese military during World War Two.
Comfort Woman, the title of Nora Okja Keller's brave and utterly compelling first novel, tells of one such woman, the Korean Akiko, and her first-generation Hawaiian -American daughter Beccah. Narrated in their two voices, what is harrowingly pieced together is the horror of Akiko's enslavement in a Japanese camp, her escape by abandoning her very name, her country and for a time her voice, a forced marriage to an American missionary, more intent on her body than her soul.
It is only the birth of Beccah that tethers her: "Blooming in the boundary between life and death, this child, with the tendril of her body, keeps me from crossing over and roots me to this earth."
Beccah is in turns stifled and mortified by her mother's suffocating protectiveness, yet frightened by her absences into a spirit world of ravings and tyrannical ritual.
(The fabric of their stories is shot through with the pain of Akiko's exile and of Beccah's rejection of her mother's incomprehensible omens--until after her death when she comes to know her mother's story and understands it as a part of her own.)
The novel's subtle reflection on the nature of colonisation, of deracination and cultural transformation, is rendered through a wonderful precision of language and originality of characterisation. Comfort Woman is a rich testament to the unquenchable resi (Ruth Petrie, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Nora Okja Keller was born in Seoul, Korea, and now lives in Hawaii. In 1995, Keller received the Pushcart Prize for 'Mother Tongue', a piece that became part of COMFORT WOMAN and the novel has since won a 1998 American Book Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
* Narrated in two voices, this is the story of a young Korean-American girl growing up in Hawaii, as she uncovers the dark secrets of her mother's lurid past --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews: 4.4 out of 5 stars 82 ratings
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4.3 out of 5 stars 36
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Comfort Woman
by Nora Okja Keller
3.84 · Rating details · 1,573 ratings · 143 reviews
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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.
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Daniel Clausen
Apr 19, 2011Daniel Clausen rated it it was amazing
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. (less)
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Diversireads
Oct 13, 2016Diversireads rated it it was amazing
Shelves: realistic-fiction, literary-fiction, woc, historical-fiction, reviewed, 2016, diaspora, multiracial
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. (less)
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Aubrey
Jul 08, 2017Aubrey rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: antidote-think-twice-all, person-of-everything, r-2018, r-goodreads, reality-check, reviewed, 1-read-on-hand, antidote-think-twice-read, person-of-reality
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. (less)
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Ming
Nov 12, 2017Ming rated it really liked it
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." (less)
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Cindy
May 21, 2011Cindy rated it liked it
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. (less)
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Betty
Aug 03, 2014Betty rated it it was amazing
Shelves: american, asia, fiction
Sold by a sister to the Japanese, Akiko (as she is called by the Japanese) is enslaved as a comfort woman.
Angela Rose
Sep 13, 2021Angela Rose rated it it was ok
Shelves: woman-s-literature
I picked up this book thinking that it would dive a bit deeper into the experience of a comfort woman as she comes to terms with her past as she raises her daughter, but that’s not quite what I got.
The book uses both the mother and daughter as narrators, but the daughter’s chapters are significantly longer and more in depth. The mother’s chapters are short but heartbreaking, and sometimes incomprehensible, understandably, since her recollection of what happened during that traumatic time has warped as time passed.
I thought the beginning and the end, two places that heavily focused on their mother-daughter relationship, were particularly well done, but there was a significant chunk in the middle of backstory and stories about the daughters life after her mother passed that I had to force my way through.
There were points throughout the book that just felt downright demeaning to the characters. The mother, especially, is cast as a crazy woman who talks to ghosts and is taken advantage of for that fact.
I was hoping this book would treat her more as the survivor of a horrific event in history who was slowly going to open up about what she went through to her daughter. Though the mother does open up a little bit about her past, it just feels a little too late for the story I thought this would be before picking this up.
Also, the mother telling her daughter that the evil demon that she warned her about since she was a little girl was going to come for her once she started her period irked me. What was she supposed to do? Just stop her period by herself? Like its not a completely natural biological function? Ugh.
It also did not seem to me like the author had done any substantial research on comfort women. This history leading up to how comfort women came to be was glossed over and I feel like the mother’s incomprehensive passages of misremembering were used partially as a band-aid to cover up Nora Okja Keller's lack of in-depth knowledge on the subject. To me, I feel this is a hugely important subject to study and to understand and I feel like this book does a disservice to their history. Even if it doesn’t fit in the narrative, a little blurb at the beginning or the end of the book about the history would have been a nice touch.
On the plus side for this book, I thought the writing was really well done. I also enjoyed the two narrators utilized to tell the story. The ending felt particularly well crafted.
If you are thinking about picking up this book because you are also interested in reading a piece about comfort women, I do not recommend this piece unless you want to be really frustrated by the portrayal of the characters and the lack of accurate historical information like I was. If you are picking up this piece because you are hoping for a story about a mother-daughter relationship (and have little to no knowledge about comfort women) then I might recommend this book to you. It wasn’t for me, but I can see how the narrative in this book may appeal to some. (less)
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Ashley
Dec 25, 2021Ashley rated it liked it
Shelves: historical-fiction, asian-american
Though I appreciate Keller's portrayal of generational trauma through Akiko's expression of spirituality, I found that many of the fantastical elements of the plot ultimately detracted from the power of the subject matter. Comfort Woman definitely touches upon a heavy subject that is integral for people to learn about, but I found that I personally couldn't connect with its slow pace and its mixture of fantasy with history.
However, I truly enjoyed Keller's unique exploration of trauma through a lens centered around Asian culture and history, as I often find that our ideas of trauma and mental illness are very Western-centric. Saja (the Death Messenger) and the Red Death permeate the book like they have permeated Akiko's life (and therefore Beccah's). Induk, a manifestation of the camps that Akiko was placed in, never leaves Akiko and even visits Beccah in her dreams.
The book abounds with motifs centering the river, a place of both death but also rebirth. Comfort Woman thus takes this abstract idea of generational trauma and projects it into the physical world through Akiko's trances and spiritual beliefs. How should Beccah, then, forgive Akiko for her negligence, and the impact it has had on her, while cognizant of the traumas her mother has suffered through? Where is the line between accountability but also self-compassion and understanding? The entire book, in fact, grapples with this idea of forgiveness, as the reader learns more about Akiko's mother's own upbringing near the end and also the forgiveness Akiko needs to lend to her siblings. (less)
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❥
Dec 10, 2020❥ rated it it was amazing
Shelves: my-whole-heart
what an absolute rollercoaster of a book. 100/100.
it is sad to think that to this day, there is still so much to be said about the spoils of japanese imperalism, everything else considered. but probably most unnervingly - their still refusal to acknowledge the after effects of their "recreation camps" during world war ii. this is a global event that pans out not just to korea, but philippines and vietnam and almost every part of asia they dominated.
it's just heartbreaking having to read this, and feel in my gut, that i could very well be reading a non-fiction book what with the reality of what i was reading. it is absolutely poetic, accurately morbid, and undeniably heart shattering having to reflect on what it means to be a woman regarded to for only superficiality. the fact such prejudice exists today speaks to the level of "progression" society has really pushed for.
all of that, mixed in with the innately complex mother-daughter relationship that no amount of words will ever be able to accurately describe as it is something someone has to live through to fully comprehend, then i really felt this book on an emotional level.
i would recommend this to just about anyone looking to really understand the gravity of what being a comfort woman in warring times meant, and how that trauma carries through generations, and the heartfelt devotion and unwavering love a mother has for a daughter. (less)
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Steph
Dec 30, 2017Steph rated it it was amazing
Read this for a class this semester.
When first introduced to this book, the teacher forewarned us of how graphic the details in certain scenes can get. She was aware that some people are more sensitive than others, thus she offered to work with students to come up with an alternative if they couldn't get through the reading.
Given that, I expected to have difficulty getting through the book at some point. Fortunately, although there were certain passages I came across that left me shook, I took it as a part of what contributed Akiko's strength as a survivor.
With Beccah, I found myself resonating with her experiences of disconnect with her mother. As a child of an immigrant, I sometimes categorize my own mother's erratic behavior as "otherness," because I'm given no context to go off of when she has acts up. Hopefully, like Beccah, I'll come across something of my mom's past that'll provide me with the much-needed context on who she is - enabling me to fill the missing pieces of my own identity.
This book was a pretty decent read. I just wish I didn't have to rush through it. If I could recommend it to anyone, i'd recommend this to those who find that they have issues of miscommunication with their immigrant parents - particularly, their mother. At some points in the story, you'll find that it can hit somewhat close to home. (less)
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Bree Pye
Mar 01, 2017Bree Pye rated it it was amazing
Shelves: college-reads, historical-fiction
I've already written about how difficult this book was to read because of how deep Keller takes the reader into trauma. Also because we rarely get an Asian/Asian-American perspective of history, so it's hard to stomach that the snapshot we get in this text minimalizes some of the tragedies we are familiar with in our own histories (from the perspective of privilege, of course).
In these ways, this novel provides a dark chapter of history on Imperial Japan's occupation of Korea and the horrors enacted by its soldiers - such as the construction of "comfort stations" in its occupied territories. The story of one woman who endured life as a "comfort woman" shows the generational affects of trauma while detailing a beautifully complicated relationship between a mother and daughter who can only understand each other through their shared history.
The novel is incredibly well-written. The Characters are deep and relatable and the story brings to life a part of history that Japan still won't openly admit happened. I highly recommend this read - just make sure you have a box of tissues handy! (less)
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Comfort Woman
Nora Okja Keller, Author
Viking Books $21.95 (224p)
https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-670-87269-5
MORE BY AND ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
This impressive first novel by a Hawaii-based writer of mixed Korean and American ancestry depicts one of the atrocities of war and its lingering effects on a later generation. An intense study of a mother-daughter relationship, it dwells simultaneously in the world of spirits and the social milieu of the adolescent schoolgirl who later becomes a career woman with lovers. Beccah is a youngish, contemporary Hawaiian whose Korean mother, Akiko, was sold into prostitution as a young woman and sent to a ""recreation camp'' to service the occupying Japanese army.
Akiko developed a resilience that allowed her to distance herself from the daily plundering of her body; she also developed an intense communication with the spirit world that helped her survive the horror of her experience--and helped her, too, to catch the attention of a visiting American missionary, who married her and fathered Beccah.
After his death, mother and daughter live together in Honolulu, Beccah striving for a normal life, Akiko, often possessed, screaming and wailing, by her ghosts and visions. With the help of a flamboyant, ultra-worldly friend who calls herself Auntie Reno, Akiko becomes a seer and fortune-teller. Akiko's flashbacks to her haunted past and Beccah's account of their lives together are told alternately, and it is one of Keller's several triumphs that she is able to render the two worlds so powerfully and distinctly. Though piercing and moving in its evocation of feminine closeness, however, the narrative becomes somewhat claustrophobic, so that the occasional interventions of the cheerfully vulgar Auntie Reno are hugely welcome. A striking debut by a strongly gifted writer, nonetheless. Author tour. (Apr.)
DETAILS
Reviewed on: 03/31/1997
Release date: 04/01/1997
Genre: Fiction
Open Ebook - 240 pages - 978-1-101-12183-2
Peanut Press/Palm Reader - 240 pages - 978-1-101-12329-4
Paperback - 240 pages - 978-0-14-026335-0
Hardcover - 213 pages - 978-0-7145-3046-8
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