San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Rich, if jumbled, tapestry of Korean history
This ambitious debut novel by Portland, Ore., writer Juhea Kim provides a kaleidoscopic view of Korean history from 1917 to 1965, depicting upper-crust courtesans, poor farmers, fast-track businessmen, gang members, Japanese occupiers and independence fighters.
“Beasts of a Little Land” begins with a flashback to a large tiger shadowing two hunters. In Korea, tigers are viewed as totem animals as well as dangerous predators. During the Japanese occupation, the beasts served as resistance emblems. With today’s burgeoning interest in Korean culture, we watch the tiger padding onto more and more international stages with K-pop music, films like “Parasite” and “Minari,” and other long sagas like Min Jin Lee’s “Pachinko” and Eugenia Kim’s “The Kinship of Secrets.”
Kim’s novel comes to life in 1918 Seoul, at Madame Dani’s Kisaeng, where women entertain men and young girls take training. At the story’s heart is 10-year-old Jade, who has been sold to help her starving rural family, and her best friend, Lotus. Jade has never before seen herself in a mirror. That discovery is followed by another astonishment: learning that courtesans must study for years in mathematics, languages, painting, literature and music. Jade particularly excels in reciting poetry.
While Kim recounts the bourgeois excesses of Seoul in the 1920s, devastating economic depression in the 1930s and wartime suffering in the 1940s, she also looks back 2,000 years to depict a Korean empire that stretched to Primorski (now in southeast
Russia). “They were hunters, mountain people, warriors — and their capital was PyongYang.”
The novel exposes Japanese atrocities from rape and murder to the wartime decree forcing Koreans to take Japanese names. Independence leaders beg for support from China, Russia and the United States. Warren G. Harding ignores pleas; Vladimir Lenin promises hundreds of thousands of rubles.
Into this complex history, Kim weaves daily details of Jade’s mercurial life. “Since Jade officially debuted at age fifteen, she’d had a steady stream of admirers who requested her at parties and even sought her out at home.
These men spent a fortune on spending a night with her and gave her periodic gifts of money without her even asking, as older and shrewder courtesans were apt to do. While this was going on, she would imagine that these men had true feelings for her, and that she herself was attracted to them.”
It doesn’t take long for Jade and Lotus to be discovered by larger audiences: Jade becomes a silent film star and Lotus a popular singer. They go on to meet and lose lovers ranging from rickshaw driver HanChol to President Ma of the Grand Oriental Cinema. The girlfriends’ loyalty turns to rivalry and then to estrangement until someone brokers a possible reconciliation.
Kim’s exhaustive research and expansive cast represent the novel’s strengths and flaws. There are too many characters, too much historical detail and not enough attention to language and storytelling. “Beasts” relies on easy coincidences and informational passages. The book is marred by harlequin phrasing and a sentimental ending. Even so, it’s being released with a major media campaign. Debut writers would be better served with attentive editing and mentoring that focuses less on marketability and more on literary quality.
Juhea Kim is as intelligent and intrepid as Jade, definitely a writer to watch for as she reaches her literary promise.
Valerie Miner is the author of 15 books, including her new story collection, “Bread and Salt.” She teaches at Stanford, and her website is www.valerieminer. com.