Year of Impossible Goodbyes by Sook Nyul Choi

Year of Impossible Goodbyes by Sook Nyul Choi
This book is the other half of our paired text sets to compare and contrast different perspectives of the same event. Specifically, we are to discuss how war and tragedy is felt from a child's point of view. I was not a good student of history when i was in elementary school. But when I read this book (and the other paired text) I felt like I could understand a bit better about the war and a little bit of what families were going through. This story is about a Korean family living in Korea while the Japanese were in occupation. All throughout the book I did not want to believe that families were going through this. I could not understand living under the scrutiny of such a government. One part that was heartbreaking to read was before the Grandfather died, he asked Sookan to rub his feet with lemon oil. She never saw her grandfather's feet and when she looked at them, she realized that he didn't have any toenails. She connected that with the stories she remembers hearing about the Japanese cruelty. I think another challenging thing when reading the paired texts is that we are always looking for a "good guy" and "bad guy." But when someone reads these stories, the concepts of heroes and villans gets complicated. In this story the Japanese are "in charge" and ruling over the Koreans in their home country. In So Far From the Bamboo Grove, the Koreans were prejudiced against the Japanese who were in Korea. It is clear how war can complicate someone's schema of how things should play out in life. I've obviously learned that reading a book is so much more than just taking in a story; it can bring a rich perspective of a true human experience.