Year of Impossible Goodbyes

Year of Impossible Goodbyes, written by Sook Nyul Choi, is the same war that dictates the story events of, So Far From the Bamboo Grove, however, instead of the story being told from the point of view of a Japanese family,Choi speaks from a voice often left out in the history books, the Korean nation which was under the Imperial Japanese rule. It was so interesting after reading So Far From the Bamboo Grove to hear the story from the Korean point of view. The best part about this book was that it did not stop with the Japanese surrendering to America, but went on to talk about how the Russian Marxist parties essentially claimed North Korea as their territory. If I were teaching this book I would want to point out what the Russian people were experiencing during this time, so they get a better understanding of how extremist such as the Reds were only a small number of people, and that the Russian people were actually starving and trying to escape out of Russia. I believe that by showing kids a broader view they will see a consistency tied to war and conflict as being initiated by a minority, and is not representative of the nation as a whole. There is so much to discuss about the multi-sidedness of war, there simply is not enough time or words to describe the impacts. What I can discuss immediately are some of the comparisons I made with this book and Watkin's. Near the end of Choi's book she describes escaping across the 38th parallel; I just remember Watkin's account of how her and her sister and mother crossed the same rail road track to freedom, and how later her brother had to swim the river to get across. What's really interesting is how the rails are described as being so far apart; it's uncanny how similar both authors felt about that railroad track. It's funny how in Watkin's book, from the Japanese perspective, the Koreans were so joyful and almost riotous, but that must have been further south, because Choi paints a picture of scared caution followed immediately by the invasion of communism. I think after reading both books I would want my students to read both and see the differences and similarities of the two "sides", and also to show again that the purposed "bad guy" of the war isn't an entire nation, but merely a few extremists, that these kinds of wars destroy the people and families on both ends, maybe then they could do better than the past and try to see things from other point of views.