Words of Wisdom

Two weeks ago American University's campus was visited by a prominent Korean author, Min Jin Lee, to speak on her 2017 book "Pachinko". Lee weaves a family history spanning four generations during the course of the novel, all stemming from the book's first focal point Sunja. After becoming pregnant by a man only to be betrayed, Sunja takes the aid of a minister on his journey to Japan to start a new life divorced from her pain in order to avoid bringing hardship to her unborn child. What follows is a tale that, although primarily focused on the evolution of a Korean family in Japan, grows to encompass history and Japan itself in a much wider scope. It is a work of great pain and grief, yet also one that embraces the resilience of family and love.

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Min Jin Lee gave an emotional reading of one of the story's integral moments, but she also utilized her position to advocate another message. While the focus of her visit was to talk on Pachinko, Lee opened on a divisive topic particularly close to her: Immigration. Coming from Seoul, South Korea with her family as a child, she describes her initial arrival as wonderous. Despite the fact that her family was forced to live with relatives in a cramped apartment, she found joy in the new experiences she had. A memory that stood out to her was on her plane from Seoul to the United States, where she learned her first words in English. After telling her father she was thirsty he told her to go up to a flight attendant and to say the words "Juice, please". Lee recounts her amazement at trying orange juice for the first time and her repeated trips to the attendant to get drinks for her entire row, in quote "taking care of her tribe". Upon her arrival to her uncle's house he gifted her family with a crate of bananas, which were then a rarity in Korea. He told her family "Eat as many bananas as you like and when you're done? I'll buy more.". Young Lee's America was a place of plenty and splendor, leaving her to mourn the loss of any such optimism now. She urged the gathered audience to work to repair this problem and mend the broken bonds of American society.

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Min Jin Lee's message can be summed up in the words she signed each book with: "We are family".