The Girl with Seven Names is an incredible memoir filled with suspense, drama, and bravery from a young girl who couldn’t even keep her name but overcame every obstacle in her path. After escaping North Korea, crossing China, and finally reaching South Korea, Hyeonseo Lee tells us her passionate story about every experience leading up to her arrival in South Korea, hunger, cold, fear, threats, and other complicated events took place in Lee’s Journey to obtain the freedom she deserved. As a North Korean defector, Hyeonseo Lee delivers an ambitious and powerful story about her escape from North Korea and the struggles to adapt into a completely different society. As a young girl, Hyeonseo Lee grew up believing that her country was “the best …show more content…
on the planet”. The Great leader and his upbringing of North Korea was imprinted in everyone's daily life. Kim’s family and their greatness is the foundation of everything in North Korea. Hyeonseo Lee, from the day she was born in 1980 to the day she escaped, consisted of both her childhood and teenage years within North Korean propaganda. Her daily life included school, mandatory government programs, and participation in the National Socialist Youth League. Everything she learned involved the greatness and overall power North Korea has in the world. ”History lessons were superficial. The past was not set in stone, and was occasionally rewritten,” as a child Hyeonseo Lee has both faith and trust into everything she has learned in school and everywhere else in her society. She understood that her home country was the best in the planet and that everyone else was simply envious of North Korea. Furthermore, Hyeonseo Lee gives the readers an insight to the North Korea government structure and the conditions of the country. “In North Korea the only laws that truly matter, and for which extreme penalties are imposed if they are broken, touch on loyalty to the Kim dynasty,” She gives us an insight to the priorities and ignorance that the citizens of North Korea have engraved in their minds. But due to the lack of exposure to different government structures the readers also understand the unfazed reaction of the North Korean citizens. As Hyeonseo Lee perfectly stated towards the end of the book, “ One of the main reasons that distinctions between oppressor and victim are blurred in North Korea is that no one there has any concept of rights. To know that your rights are being abused, or that you are abusing someone else’s, you first have to know that you have them, and what they are.” Once she becomes aware of the imperfections of her country, Hyeonseo Lee begins to question the Great Leader’s actual contribution to the bettering of her country. The famine of 1990’s generated the one of the biggest death tolls in North Korea and with no action being taken over the matter many people began to question the government’s support and the Great Leader’s authority. After being a witness to many tragic events in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee becomes very curious and aware of the country near the border city of China and North Korea, Hyesan. Before her 18th birthday she crosses the river separating the two different countries, she soon begins her journey through China and later on. reaches South Korea. Through strong ideas, tenacious form, and vivid style, Hyeonseo Lee explains her successful but painful journey towards freedom to give her readers a description of an average North Korean life so that later she may advocate for North Korean human rights and refugee issues all over the world. Hyeonseo Lee presents her readers with various strong ideas that focus on her overall messages in her biographical piece. The Girl With Seven Names takes place in many diverse settings. The introduction of the memoir is based on one of the many milestones of Hyeonseo Lee. “This is the first time I will tell my story in English, a language still new to me. The journey to this moment has been a long one,” she delivers her ideas in a precise and accurate way that allows the readers to engage in her thoughts and the messages she transmits through the different points of her journey. “After years in the Chinese workforce, I had developed an emotional attachment to money. My earnings were my hard work and long hours; my savings were comforts deferred,” Hyeonseo Lee allows us to understand the new values she acquired through her settlement in a new society. The quotation she describes everything she has learned so that she may convey the differences or the struggles to adjusting to a new society. Her ideas throughout the entire book are strongly focused on ideas she wishes to convey to her audience. Additionally, her tenacious form through the entire book ties her entire story together. She does a beautiful job of staying focused and being particular on the flow of the entire piece. The clear cut form adds to the organized structure of the book. Hyeonseo Lee divides her book into three sections: The Greatest Nation on Earth, To the Heart of the Dragon, and Journey into Darkness. She begins by describing her life in North Korea and than leads with describing her life in China, and she ends with describing her arrival in South Korea. Her order allows the reader to comprehend each section of her life smoothly. She uses her transitions diligently and excels in conveying the messages she wishes to convey perfectly. The author’s style provides the beauty and passion of her work.
She uses vivid descriptions, images, moods, symbols and word choices. For example, Hyeonseo Lee is not the name she was born with, or a name she was forced on, the name she carries is a name she choose for herself so that she may live the life she wants. The symbolism behind her many names adds to the identity she gained through her personal journey. Everytime she was forced on to take a new identity she felt further away from who she was, “I was already hiding beneath so many lies that I hardly knew who I was any more. I was becoming a non-person,” she portrays the internal struggles she felt because of her inability to keep anything as simple as her name so that she may overcome all the obstacles and attain her goal to be free. The author uses her style as a way to incorporate her ideas smoothly. She describes anything from her clothes to her goverment in great detail so that she may add the images the readers may need to understand the ideas as a whole. “It was an aspiring neighbourhood that retained a faint edge of slum, typical of Shanghai. Pensioners in Mao-era padded jackets would sit on doorsteps playing mah-jong, oblivious to the Prada-clad girls sweeping past on their way to work”as she describe a city in China her style gives the readers a clear image of what she witnessed. Hyeonseo Lee’s vivid style contributes to the success of her
memoir. As a reader, the appreciation for this book is tremendous. Hyeonseo Lee beautifully painted a credible source on North Korean ordinary life and the struggles many North Koreans refugees face after or before their attempt of escape. This is a sad yet passionate story of a girl whose journey and goal was to obtain nothing less than what she deserved. This piece of work, through strong ideas, tenacious form, and vivid style, explains her successfully delivers a beautiful story that supports her avocation for North Korean human rights and refugee issues all over the world.
This story goes on talking about the past in the concentration camp all of a sudden. Hannah is back at the dining room table and notices the tattoo on Aunt Eva's arm and recognizes it. She says the numerical significance of the number to Aunt Eva, who says that when she was young she was known by another name, Rivka. After coming to America, many of the survivors changed their names. Grandpa Will, Eva's brother, was known as Wolfe before.
Shin Dong-hyuk was born in a labor camp, more specifically known as Camp 14. In this camp, Shin was considered to be living “below the law” (3) because of his father’s brother’s crimes. In this camp, Shin went through things many people couldn’t even fathom. He survived on his own. His mother would beat him, his father ignored him, and he trusted no one. “Before he learned anything else, Shin learned to survive by snitching on all of them.” (3). In this camp, the word “family” did not exist. All of this sounds horrific to many people living outside of North Korea, but that’s just the beginning of it. His life became increasingly worse when his mother and brother made the decision to try and escape the camp. On April 5, 1996, Shins older brother, He Guen, came home. As He Guen was talking to Shin’s mother, he overheard that “his brother was in trouble a...
By juxtaposing both the English and Mandarin language, Wong is effectively showcasing and questioning the institutional dominance the English language may possesses over both worldwide linguistics as well as individual’s freedom of expression; Stating we may need to break free from the constraining borders English may pose on an individual, and instead write or speak in any way we wish in hopes of effectively getting our point across. The narrator wants herself and others to break free from the strict dominant borders, empowering others to live a life filled with full freedom of expression regardless of one’s style of writing or minority
Born in 1894, Hee Kyung Lee grew up in Taegu, Korea. Although the details of her early life are not given, the reader can assume that she came from a decent middle class family because her parents had servants (Pai 2, 10). In the early 1900’s, Japan exercised immense control over Korea, which by 1910 was completely annexed. Her twenty-year-old sister and eighteen-year-old Lee were introduced to the picture bride system, an opportunity to escape the Japanese oppression (Pai 4). Unlike her older sister, Lee made the decision to immigrate to Hawaii in 1912 as a pictu...
This is evident in the persistence of elderly characters, such as Grandmother Poh-Poh, who instigate the old Chinese culture to avoid the younger children from following different traditions. As well, the Chinese Canadians look to the Vancouver heritage community known as Chinatown to maintain their identity using on their historical past, beliefs, and traditions. The novel uniquely “encodes stories about their origins, its inhabitants, and the broader society in which they are set,” (S. Source 1) to teach for future generations. In conclusion, this influential novel discusses the ability for many characters to sustain one sole
In analyzing these two stories, it is first notable to mention how differing their experiences truly are. Sammy is a late adolescent store clerk who, in his first job, is discontent with the normal workings of society and the bureaucratic nature of the store at which he works. He feels oppressed by the very fabric and nature of aging, out-of date rules, and, at the end of this story, climaxes with exposing his true feelings and quits his jobs in a display of nonconformity and rebellion. Jing-Mei, on the other hand, is a younger Asian American whose life and every waking moment is guided by the pressures of her mother, whose idealistic word-view aids in trying to mold her into something decent by both the double standards Asian society and their newly acquired American culture. In contrasting these two perspectives, we see that while ...
Adams Johnson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Orphan Master’s Son, amazingly depicts the disturbing lives of North Koreans and government horrors through its simplistic language with relatable characters. The Orphan Master’s Son takes place in North Korea and revolves around Jun Do, who is the son of an orphan master, but who receives the shame that Koreans place on orphans. Then he enters the military where he learns different fighting tactics and becomes a professional kidnapper for the North Koreans. For his reward, the government assigns Jun Do to a listening position on a fishing boat where he becomes a hero for fighting the Americans with a story that the fishing crew and he invented to keep from getting placed in a prison camp after to one of their crewmates defects. Jun Do then goes to Texas as a translator, where he learns about freedom and other cultures. When the mission fails the government sends him to a camp where Jun Do’s name and identity die.
“Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strengths to establish realities”(5). In the book “The Woman Warrior,” Maxine Kingston is most interested in finding out about Chinese culture and history and relating them to her emerging American sense of self. One of the main ways she does so is listening to her mother’s talk-stories about the family’s Chinese past and applying them to her life.
...in her essay “No Name Woman”. The Chinese tradition of story telling is kept by Kingston in her books. Becoming Americanized allowed these women the freedom to show their rebellious side and make their own choices. Rebelling against the ideals of their culture but at the same time preserving some of the heritage they grew up with. Both woman overcame many obstacles and broke free of old cultural ways which allowed them an identity in a new culture. But most importantly they were able to find identity while preserving cultural heritage.
By any measure, The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong, known as Hanjungnok (Records written in silence), is a remarkable piece of Korean literature and an invaluable historical document, in which a Korean woman narrated an event that can be described as the ultimate male power rivalry surrounding a father-son conflict that culminates in her husband’s death. However, the Memoirs were much more than a political and historical murder mystery; writing this memoir was her way of seeking forgiveness. As Haboush pointed out in her informative Introduction, Lady Hyegyong experienced a conflict herself between the demands imposed by the roles that came with her marriage, each of which included both public and private aspects. We see that Lady Hyegyong justified her decision to live as choosing the most public of her duties, and she decided that for her and other members of her family must to be judged fairly, which required an accurate understanding of the her husband’s death. It was also important to understand that Lady Hyegyong had to endure the
Chang portrays the complexity of Henry’s character by showing the conflict that he faces both in his personal and professional life. His confusion towards his own Cultural identity is noticed in his relationships with his co-workers as well as with his family. His personal relationship with his family, especially with his father and his wife exemplifies the clash between the two cultures which seems to tear Henry apart. Leila, Henry’s wife, seems to epitomize the traditional American Culture which Henry tries very hard to be a part of. Her forthright nature along with the independence and individuality contradicts the stereotypical qualities of an Asian wife. However, Henry’s desperation is seen in his forgiving attitude towards Leila’s action and behavior. His deter...
The narrator's struggle to make sense of the story through her Americanized perspective also helps to reveal a great deal about traditional Chinese culture, the aunt and mother's traditional viewpoints allow us to better explore and understand the Americanized view of the daughter. What she discovers is that the Chinese women back in the Old Country, like their male counterparts, had to sacrifice their individuality, personal goals, desires, and loves in order to more fully harmonize with the community. This is a problem for Kingston because she was raised in a nation that emphasized individualism and assertiveness. As a result, she is caught in a struggle to find meaning in her cultural roots as a Chinese woman and in her American upbringing.
In the novel, “The Girls with Seven Names” by Hyeonseo Lee, one can identify the adversity the author encounters, leaving North Korea and discovering the truth about her country. I characterize her as a courageous, smart, independent, and a survivor. Through her book, one can identify the corruption within the government, contrabands, the persistent fear over North Koreans, and importance of someone’s songbun. I really liked this novel because it reminded me of my mom’s experience leaving Guatemala and her experience in the United States.
Uncertain about her identity, Kingston relied on her mother’s narratives to aid her in the process of finding her independence and discovering who she was. Although Brave Orchid frequently enforced Chinese customs amongst her daughters, she often contradi...
The people of Hee's village deal with crippling poverty and hunger, and struggle to feed their families. They deal with joblessness, and those who do find work deal with terrible working conditions or jobs that are otherwise distasteful, like prostitution. They deal with pollution and bedbugs and death, and too many horrors to mention. However, based on Hee's presentation, the story seems less about the terrible conditions which all the people must face, but rather about the fact that the people persevere and overcome these challenges, even as they are tortured by them. Chinatown by Oh Jung Hee is a coming of age story which describes the author's experience of learning about birth, life, and death while living in a Korean shanty