The Girl Son appealed to my tom boyishness when I was just starting to read. It was about a girl's struggle for freedom as she grows up in 19th century Korea. There are a lot of bits that are important. There was a scene that is very vivid to me in which she is all by herself for the first time and trying to make a bowl of rice. The driving and supporting force in her life has been her mother up to that point but her mother just said goodbye and left her at a boarding school. She is all alone now and has to make her own rice. She tries and fails several times before she manages to make some she can eat.
She is all grown up by the end of the book and she is arrested and put in solitary confinement because she is an advocate of women's education. There is a scene where she is being taken somewhere by a female guard and she reflects that she is more free in her small cell all by herself than the woman who is her captor. That idea intrigued me. The way she described her inner freedom was really beautiful.It's based on a true story though I didn't ever do much research on the real person. She must have been quite amazing.
2 comments:
That sounds like a great book...well, all the ones I haven't read that you talk about do.^^ I'll have to keep my eye out for them.
Karen, I thought you might like to know that Grandma Phyllis is the one that sent that book. We would never have known about it otherwise. By its cover, I was doubtful that it would be a good book. What do you know? Mom
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