Ten Thousand Sorrows

(Paperback)

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"I don't know how old I was when I watched my mother's murder, nor do I know how old I am today". So opens this memoir. The illegitimate daughter of a Korean peasant and an American GI, Elizabeth spent her early years as a social outcast, because of the Korean taboo against the mixing of races. Ostracized by her mother's family and village, she and her mother were regularly pelted with stones on their way home from the rice fields. Yet because of her mother's love and calm acceptance of fate, inspired by her deep Buddhist faith, there was a tranquil happiness in the intense and close bond between mother and daughter: untill the day Elizabeth's grandfather and uncle came to punish her mother for the dishonour she had brought the family, and hanged her in front of her daughter's eyes. Elizabeth was dumped in an orphanage in Seoul where the orphans were neglected, deprived of all affection and abused. After some time, she was adopted by an American couple. Brought to America, she found herself surrounded by fanaticism and prejudice: her strict Christian Funadamentalist parents forbade her to remember her own mother and the traumas of her past, and she suffered racial discrimination at school. After an unsuccessful marriage, she left with her daughter, and lived a live of poverty and isolation with her, thus mirroring her past life in Korea. Eventually she made a life for herself and found a career in journalism. After her daughter grew up and left home, she found the need to return to Korea for a vist, to exorcise the demons of the past.

Reviews

It is astonishing that Kim has survived...All one wants for this exceptional woman is that she be granted ten thousand joys to expunge all the sorrows that have been her life's companion. -- THE TIMES
Elizabeth Kim's remarkable life is tragic...More harrowing than any novel. -- ARTHUR GOLDEN, author of Memoirs of a Geisha
A magnificent tribute to the power of forgiveness. -- DAVE PELZAR, author A Child Called It

Author Bio

Elizabeth Kim works on a San Francisco Bay Area newspaper. Ten Thousand Sorrows is her first book.