I didn't realise it could have taken me longer than the trip to finish the book. What took so long? That's indeed a long story spanning nearly 100 years of history. A moving novel about identity and struggle with discrimination.
There are countless examples of fighting for identity in the story. Sunja, the daughter of a crippled fisherman in this novel, was told, "For a woman, the man you marry will determine the quality of your life completely. A good man is a decent life, and a bad man is a cursed life." Many people like Sunja can't reverse a curse, and more so when they believe there is a curse in their blood. In a macabre environment of Japan-versus-Korea thinking, some of the Koreans had to to choose a Japanese surname to hide their blood.
The worldview that saw people born with a curse is metaphorically a game of pachinko. In this game of pinball, the first strike of the ball against the flipper more or less determines how the game will play out. Sunja thought that there was a curse in her blood, similar to the way the fate of pinball is decided at the moment of plunger hitting the ball.
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