Title: Comfort woman
First published: 1997
Description: Possessing a wisdom and maturity rarely found in a first novelist, Korean-American writer Nora Okja Keller tells a heartwrenching and enthralling tale in this, her literary debut. Comfort Woman is the story of Akiko, a Korean refugee of World War II, and Beccah, her daughter by an American missionary. The two women are living on the edge of society—and sanity—in Honolulu, plagued by Akiko's periodic encounters with the spirits of the dead, and by Beccah's struggles to reclaim her mother from her past. Slowly and painfully Akiko reveals her tragic story and the horrifying years she was forced to serve as a "comfort woman" to Japanese soldiers. As Beccah uncovers these truths, she discovers her own strength and the secret of the powers she herself possessed—the precious gifts her mother has given her.A San Francisco Chronicle bestsellerIn 1995, Nora Okja Keller received the Pushcart Prize for "Mother Tongue", a piece that is part of Comfort Woman.
Subjects: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Korean Americans, Mothers and daughters, Romance, Korean American children, Children, Mother-daughter relationship, New York Times reviewed, Comfort women, Korean American women, Korea, fiction, Fiction, general, Hawaii, fiction, Mothers and daughters, fiction
Places: Hawaii
LC classification: PS3561.E38574 C66 1997