Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
In 1953, on a small island in Korea, a young boy stows away on the ferry that is carrying his older brother and his wife to the mainland. Fifty-two years later, Han Hyun-kyu is on a plane flying back to Korea, leaving behind his own wife in America. It is his daughter, Jane a war photographer recently injured in a bombing in Baghdad and forced to return to New York who journeys to find him in the small town in South Korea where his brothers have settled. Here, father and daughter take refuge from their demons, flirt with passion, and, in the wake of tragedy, discover something deeper and more enduring than they could have imagined.
Just as Monica Ali's Brick Lane introduced readers to a world that is both exotic and immediate, Long for This World illuminates the complexities and the richness of family bonds and establishes Chung as an exciting new voice in fiction.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781416599678 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Scribner |
| Publication date: | 02/23/2013 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Flight (1953)
The eldest brother was twenty years old when he left the island. His wife was eighteen. It was good fortune, the heavens smiling down upon him, that he was offered the position teaching sciences at a junior high school in Kyongju. He was young for the position, and less qualified than the other candidates, but the principal of the school was his wife’s great-uncle and wanted to give the young couple an opportunity to move to the city.
The eldest brother hated the island. He felt trapped, did not like the feeling of being watched, and known. He wanted his independence, to start his own family afresh, and did not want his children to suffer the boredom and small-mindedness of island life. He knew everything there was to know about everyone in the village and did not like any of it. He did not like that nobody cared what was happening in the rest of the world. He did not like that every young man knew his future from the time he was a young boy—that he would take over his father’s rocky plot of land, or rickety fishing boat. He did not like that learning to read and write Chinese characters, the standard pen for literature, was seen as a betrayal by the older generation. He did not like that the girls and boys were paired off when they were fifteen and sixteen years old—like animals, good only for procreation. He did not like that sometimes his uncle took one of his girl cousins into the back room and pulled the curtain closed, and that other men did the same with their daughters and nieces.
So when the opportunity came to leave the island, the eldest brother took it without hesitation. He and his wife packed a small trunk and were ready to leave within days of accepting the position. They did not yet know where they would live, but his wife’s great-uncle would allow them to stay with him until other arrangements could be made.
His younger brother Hyun-kyu—next in line among the three sons—was about to start high school. Hyun-kyu begged his brother to take him along to Kyongju, to the city. He was a good student and had been studying hard. He wanted to leave the island as well. He wanted to go to college. From the beginning, the eldest brother had discouraged him from clinging to such far-fetched ideas, but Hyun-kyu was determined. Now that he was almost fourteen, he knew that the village high school—ten slothful boys and an ajjummah who knew little more than her students—would be of no use to him. And the village library was running out of books for him to read. Hyun-kyu begged and begged, but his brother refused him. There would be no room at the great-uncle’s house, and certainly he and his wife would not be able to afford more than a one-room apartment. The eldest brother needed to make his own plans; he could not look out for anyone else. It pained him to think of it, leaving his sisters and brothers to fend for themselves, but he swallowed his guilt. He turned toward his own life.
The eldest brother and his wife arranged for the ferry to take them across the sea—a passage of some five hours, in good weather—early one Sunday morning. It was barely light out; the ferryman preferred to make the journey early, when the sea was at its calmest. The darkness of that morning was Hyun-kyu’s saving grace: no one noticed as he slipped onto the boat and hid underneath a wool blanket that was thrown over a pile of rope and life preservers. By the time his brother discovered him, they were too far along to turn back.
The eldest brother was angry to discover Hyun-kyu’s trick; but underneath his anger, he was also a little bit pleased. This boy knows what he wants, he thought. His wife defended the boy and pleaded with her husband for compassion. The eldest brother feigned an even greater rage at her defense, and then relented. “Very well,” he said, keeping back a smile. “We will help him along.”
© 2010 Sonya Chung
What People are Saying About This
"An intricately structured and powerfully resonant portrait of lives lived at the crossroads of culture, and a family torn between the old world and the new." —-Kate Walbert, National Book Award finalist and author of A Short History of Women
Reading Group Guide
This reading group guide for Long for This World by Sonya Chung includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
After 52 years away from his homeland, Han Hyun-kyu is returning to Korea. As a boy, he was a stowaway on a ship, sailing to the mainland in search of an education and, eventually, a medical practice in America. Now, with his children grown and his wife increasingly indifferent, Han Hyun-kyu travels to visit his younger brother in South Korea. But his concerned hosts, Han Jae-kyu and his wife Han Jung-joo, aren’t sure when – or if – their houseguest will ever return home.
Han Hyun-kyu’s daughter, Jane, is also in a state of uncertainty. She has just returned from a grueling photojournalism assignment in Baghdad and recovering from a near-fatal bomb blast. Her brother Henry, recently out of rehab, takes Jane in, until they hear of their father’s abrupt trip to Korea. Jane decides to join her father, curious about the urges that propelled him back to the country of his birth. In this serene South Korean village, Jane slowly gets to know the rest of the Han family: her straight-laced uncle, her imperious aunt, and her disturbed cousin, Min-yung, who seeks an escape from her tenuous relationships and circumscribed life. Then Jane meets Chae Min-suk, her aunt’s younger brother and an artist, who helps Jane see herself in a new light. As two members of the Han family, Henry and Min-yung, succumb to quiet desperation on separate continents, the rest of the Hans must learn to cope with the distances – and jolts of intimacy – within their far-flung family.
Discussion Questions
1. Long for This World opens with a few lines from Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone.” How does this poem reflect the tone and major themes of the novel?
2. Compare the two mother-daughter relationships in the novel: Lee Woo-in and Jane, and Han Jung-joo and Min-yung. Why do you think Jane calls her mother “Dr. Lee?” What distances lie between Han Jung-joo and her housebound daughter? What other depictions of motherhood did you notice in the book, and what do you think are some of the questions and issues about motherhood being raised in the story?
3. Two stories are repeated a few times over the course of the novel: Han Hyun-kyu’s stowaway escape to mainland Korea, and the day Jane abandoned Henry in the woods near their childhood home. How do these stories change with each new telling? What significance does each story have for its teller?
4. Discuss the formative steps in Jane’s career as a photographer. How does her art evolve over the course of the novel? What lessons of “love and lust” (70) does Jane learn from her mentor, Eloise Martine? What are Chae Min-suk’s insights into love and lust? (224) What emotions are revealed in Jane’s photography exhibit about the Hans, Accidental Family?
5. Consider Han Jae-kyu and Han Jung-joo’s new, Western-style house. How does the house represent the family’s status in their Korean village? What do the children’s reactions to the house – Min-yung, Hae-sik and Hae-joo, Ji-eun and Yoo-mee – reveal about the younger generation’s cultural experiences and perspectives?
6. Discuss the relationship between Han Hyun-kyu and Han Jung-joo. How do these in-laws regard each other? What inspires their moments of physical connection? There are other relationships non-blood family relations, like the relationship between Jane and Chae Min-suk. What themes of familiarity and discovery do these relationships convey?
7. Consider Cho Jin-sook’s role as a hired worker within the Han household. What does she witness within the family, and how does she react to the Hans’ family secrets? What do her and her husband’s outsider’s perspective add to the novel?
8. Compare the attitudes of the Korean-American Hans toward their heritage. Among Han Hyun-kyu, Lee Woo-in, Jane, and Henry, who seems closest to his or her roots? What do you think accounts for their varying degrees of connection to their heritage?
9. One of Sonya Chung’s particular gifts is illuminating the relationship between world affairs and personal experiences; she depicts whole worlds through the details of a carefully prepared meal and, through the lens of Jane’s work, she moves around the world—Iraq, Darfur, Syria. Discuss the effects of tragedy, both personal and global. How does Jane deal with each? Why do you think Chung set up this relationship between private life and the global stage?
10. “Some people are not long for this world. The rest of us survive. For whatever reason, we are still standing, the last ones.” (255) Which characters in the novel are not “long for this world?” What does the title of the book imply about tragedy and survival?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Visit Sonya Chung’s blog, http://sonyachung.com, to read the author’s short stories, find out what’s on her bookshelf, and browse her posts on reading and writing.
2. Photography and family are central to Long for This World. Ask each member of your book club to bring in a family photograph to share at your meeting. Have each member explain what he or she sees in his or her photograph: what emotions are visible in the photograph, and what might be invisible?
3. The descriptions of food in Long for This World are mouthwatering! Try your hand at some Korean recipes. Browse the recipes at http://koreanrecipes.org, and prepare a batch of kimchi, japchae, or other treats for your book club meeting.
4. Get inspired by the art and architecture that come to life in Long for This World. Check your local listings for an art or architecture exhibit in your area, particularly arts of unfamiliar cultures, and take your book club out for an afternoon of international art appreciation!