September 11, 2019
Notes
In attendance:
Liz, Janice, Lois, Meta, Sharon, Barbara, Tina, Marilyn, Joan.


Book & Author: Educated, by Tara Westover.


Before getting down to a lively discussion of the book, the group got caught up with each other’s latest news. We all hoped that Vivian was having a grand time in Portugal. Meta was delighted to have moved into a new place, close to her Paramus home but with amenities to make life easier for both her and Vinnie. Barbara (who claims not to like to travel) announced that she had plans to visit Spain next spring. Lois lavished all with a copy of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea on the 50th anniversary of its publication. Lois had missed the August meeting because she was at the beach and felt inspired to share the book, which had been a favorite of her and Gene’s Aunt Sport.


Questions and Comments:
• Barbara began the meeting by asking if the book had reminded us of other books we’d read recently. Most agreed that it was, especially in the way it depicted parents doing amazing and horrible things to their children.
• Lois wanted Tara to talk more about how she taught herself subjects such as algebra and geometry.
• Janice pointed out that Tara was brilliant, as were her parents. The mother managed to create a thriving business based on healing herbs.
• We discussed bi-polar disease, where one is either very high or very low, and agreed that Tara’s father seemed to suffer from it.
• The issues of religion and religiosity were discussed. The father took Mormonism and perverted it, believing it was the end of days. He took what happened at Ruby Ridge and changed it to suit his need. Yet, his not believing in standardized medical treatment and intervention led the mother into her lucrative business.
• The issue of family is central to the book. Tara had to leave home but she loved her family and felt a strong bond with them. The mom wouldn’t let her come home because she wouldn’t see the dad as well. Everyone agreed that they would never have done that!
• The father could, perhaps, be forgiven because essentially he’s mentally ill. The mother, on the other hand, is more of an enigma. Her mother wanted her to be a certain way and she rebelled against that. She marries and initially seems to be capable of some strength against her husband’s will. Eventually, she gives in and avoids doing anything that would displease or provoke him.
• The relationship of Shawn and Tara was distressing but less troublesome than their mother’s reaction to Shawn’s violence against his sister. Pushing her head in the toilet bowl, punching her, twisting her arm were just some of his sadistic acts. The mother pretended not to notice. Should Shawn be forgiven because he, too, is mentally ill?
• Though it took great courage for Tara to write this book, it is not surprising since all through her life she showed grit and determination. The key, of course, was education.
• What does education do for us as women? Does it endanger our relationships with people? Does it make us see everything differently? Are educated women daunting?
• What would have happened to Tara if she hadn’t left home and become “educated?”


The book was given a rating of 3.5.


Next Meeting: Scheduled for Wednesday, October 2, in Joan’s house. Book to be discussed is Island of Sea Women, by Lisa See.


Next Book: Lois has chosen Ask Again, Yes, by Mary Beth Keane for the November 6 meeting. Meta will choose for December.
Submitted by Tina Segali
September 22, 2019


NY Times Review of October book
THE ISLAND OF SEA WOMEN
By Lisa See
“Jeju is her home, an island known for Three Abundances: wind, stones and women.” Thus begins Lisa See’s newest novel, “The Island of Sea Women,” which is set on a Korean island and draws on the centuries-long history of the haenyeo, female divers who have effectively created a matrifocal society — they are the breadwinners of their families, while their husbands take on the domestic duties of cooking the meals and raising the children. After her nonfictional debut, “On Gold Mountain,” and a series of three mysteries, all of See’s subsequent novels have been historical, yet history never seems to be her main focus. Instead, underlying all of See’s work is the theme of female friendship. Throughout her oeuvre, which spans periods from the 19th century to the mid-20th and backdrops from Shanghai to San Francisco, See excels at exploring the bonds between women, whether friends or family.
Much like her last novel, “The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane,” which explored the lives of the Akha hill tribe and the tea trade in the remote Yunnan province through the lenses of a mother and daughter, “The Island of Sea Women” tells its own story through the friendship of Young-sook, the daughter of the head haenyeo diver, and Mi-ja, the orphaned daughter of a Japanese collaborator. See’s vivid prose and thorough research together bring to life the seafaring existence of these women: “The boat dipped and swayed in the light chop. I attached my bitchang to my wrist and grabbed my net and tewak. A light wind blew, and I began to shiver. I was feeling pretty miserable.”
The narrative alternates in time between 2008 — when an aging Young-sook sits on a beach sorting algae, fielding the incessant questions of onlookers (“Are they scholars, journalists or documentarians?” she wonders), her life having been transformed into a kind of living diorama — and her early childhood years, starting in 1938 during the Japanese occupation of Korea, which began nearly 30 years earlier. In her depictions of the harsh colonization, the power of See’s words shines through: “We hated the Japanese, and they hated us. … They’d killed Grandmother’s parents, and she called them chokpari — cloven-footed ones. Mother always said that if I was ever alone and saw colonists, whether soldiers or civilians, I should run and hide, because they’d ruined many girls on Jeju.”
The girls’ friendship begins to fray when their marriages are arranged, beautiful Mi-ja’s to the wealthy son of a Japanese collaborator who lives in the more urban Jeju City rather than the hardscrabble countryside, Young-sook’s a humbler marriage to a neighbor boy, Jun-bu. As in many of See’s plots, we have little hope that the men will bring happiness. Mi-ja quotes a proverb that all but guarantees bad times ahead: “When a woman gets married, she has the best food for three days. That must last her a lifetime.”
Abuse of male power is indeed as much a through line in See’s fiction as are female bonds — by bosses, fathers, brothers, husbands, lovers. See’s heroines are uniformly resilient in facing these misdeeds, although she does allow rare periods of marital bliss between Young-sook and Jun-bu: “Sometimes we went to the water’s edge. Sometimes we strolled through the olles. Other times we’d climb an oreum, stare out at the view, talk, and sometimes do nighttime activities in the broad daylight.”
See’s meticulous research is perhaps most apparent in the magical, strange passages when Young-sook and Mi-ja, both married and pregnant, go for “leaving-home water-work,” a.k.a. contract diving jobs, in Vladivostok: “The moment of submersion into that cold seemed to calm my baby, put him to sleep, freeze him in place. As the months passed and our bellies grew, water offered new comforts. As soon as I was submerged, my aches were massaged, and the weight of my baby was buoyed. I felt strong.” Mi-ja gives birth on the job, climbing out of the water only to deliver her son on the deck, and once Young-sook’s daughter is born they take care of the infants together during breaks on the boats, the cradles tied to the rocking deck.
Less successful are See’s treatments of larger historical moments, during which the characters are often reduced to mouthpieces for exposition. On the heroines’ return from Vladivostok to Jeju City, dockworkers clunkily inform them of the impending Allied invasion: “Ten Japanese army divisions are here — many of them hiding! In caves! In lava tubes! And in special bases they’ve built into the cliffs right at the shoreline!”
The second half of the novel chronicles the largely unknown, horrific violence of the 4.3 Incident (named for the date it began, April 3, 1948, three years after Japan surrendered occupation of Korea), in which a communist insurgency was suppressed by the United States-installed government and the police in a campaign that killed tens of thousands of people. See dramatizes atrocities committed by the military during the Bukchon massacre in a harrowing scene in which Young-sook loses both the majority of her family and her friendship to Mi-ja.
This is not the only passage in which the narrowness of the novel’s focus (solely on this one friendship) underserves the importance of the events that are its backdrop. At the outbreak of the Korean War, in 1950, the United States had command of the South Korean military but stood aside, documenting the bloodshed but not defending civilians. South Korea’s call for “pre-emptive apprehension” of suspected communist insurgents, as well as its subsequent 50-year denial of the war crimes, has chilling parallels to more recent and current wars. The National Committee for the Investigation of the Truth about the Jeju Incident has laid blame on both the American and Korean militaries.
Historical fiction can be as political and as pertinent to today’s world as it is illustrative of the world it depicts. As of 2019, neither government has yet made good on their promises of reparations to the victims of Jeju. See’s thoughtful and empathetic book sheds necessary attention on this largely ignored event.