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Showing posts from April, 2020

Trampled Blossoms by Young Sook Moon

Trampled Blossom Fiction. Young Adult. Women's Studies. Asian & Asian American Studies. A young adult novel recounting the devastation of a victim of Japanese military sexual slavery. The first young adult novel to paint a vivid and realistic depiction of the "comfort women." The story of the young girls whose bodies and souls were trampled in their blossoming youth as they were dragged from their hometowns across foreign lands from Inner Mongolia and Shanghai, China, to Leyte Island in the Philippines. Many are familiar with the history of the "comfort women," the victims of Japanese military sexual slavery, but how much do they really know? Few fully understand exactly why and how the girls came to be "comfort women," the scope of the assault they endured at the "comfort stations" set up throughout regions colonized by Japan including Korea, and how they lived out their lives after they returned Korea post-liberation. There

At Dusk by Hwang Sok-yong

At Dusk with Bukhansan View at the Background Park Minwoo is, by every measure, a success story. Born into poverty in a miserable neighborhood of Seoul, he has ridden the wave of development in a rapidly modernizing society. Now the director of a large architectural firm, his hard work, and ambition have brought him triumph and satisfaction. But when his company is investigated for corruption, he’s forced to reconsider his role in the transformation of his country. At the same time, he receives an unexpected message from an old friend, Cha Soona, a woman that he had once loved, and then betrayed. As memories return unbidden, Minwoo recalls a world he thought had been left behind―a world he now understands that he has helped to destroy. From one of Korea's most renowned and respected authors, At Dusk is a gentle yet urgent tale about the things, and the people, that we abandon in our never-ending quest to move forward. *** Title: At Dusk Author: Hwang

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

  Before the coffee gets cold What would you change if you could travel back in time? Down a small alleyway in the heart of Tokyo, there’s an underground café that’s been serving carefully brewed coffee for over a hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers its customers something else besides coffee—the chance to travel back in time. The rules, however, are far from simple: you must sit in one particular seat, and you can’t venture outside the café, nor can you change the present. And, most important, you only have the time it takes to drink a hot cup of coffee—or risk getting stuck forever. Throughout one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of traveling to another time: a heartbroken lover looking for closure, a nurse with a mysterious letter from her husband, a waitress hoping to say one last goodbye and a mother whose child she may never get the chance to know. Heartwarming, wistful and delightfully quirky,  Before the Coffee Gets Cold  explores th