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The Global Pages -> April 2004 -> Book - House of the Winds
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House of the Winds
Mia Yun (Penguin, 2000) |
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This is a story of
women. The backdrop is the torn,
faded, tragic, yet contiguous, colorful, and uplifting story of
mid-twentieth century Korea. Women are uprooted, transplanted, and tossed
aside by successive wars meant to create a better more stable geopolitical
environment. For Mia Yun, however, it is a story of women, told with a
woman’s voice with images and metaphors of women, spanning many
generations, woven together by different threads from different times to
create a journey rich in sorrow and happiness but never indifference.
House of the Winds is a woman’s reminisce about her life in Korea, but
more importantly, about the women in her family, the women neighbors, and
the fleeting women acquaintances: this is a story of these women, who
almost no one remembers – the women of Korea.
Mia Yun, the author, grew up in
Korea, graduating with a degree in Foreign Studies from Hankuk University
in Seoul. She received her MFA in creative writing from City College of
New York, where she currently resides and works as Korea correspondent for
the Evergreen Review. She has called Korea an Eden bloodied by the
voiceless souls of women.
In this, her first novel, Yun
gives voice to these souls. Women describe the world with metaphors rich
in texture and imagination: butterflies become the souls of children who
have died while sleeping. Birds do not sing; rather, they cry, evoking
Marquez’ playful yet haunting constructions of magical-realism.
Bittersweet and touching, powerful in its imaginative images, House of
the Winds is a novel lush in its depictions of Korean women, so long
forgotten yet so lovingly and poetically remembered.
Ms Yun’s second novel,
Translations of Beauty is slated for publication in June 2004.
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The Global Forum |
Reviewed by
Lawrence Checkett
SCC English
Associate Professor
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This page updated
04/16/2004
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