Count your blessings!
 Sep 18th, 2006
Advantages:
To be able to count our blessings !
Disadvantages:
Will charge your emotions one way or another
Recommendable:
Yes
Detailed rating:
Would you read it again?
Story
Characters
How does it compare to other works by the same author?
more
  cheepcheep1
About me:
Currently studying towards a Diploma in Dyslexia management to eventually help those who struggle ...
Member since:26.08.2006
Reviews:20
Members who trust:6
Review rated by 19 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
This review received a counterstatement by a party concerned
Read Comment
'Ten Thousand Sorrows' is sure to bring tears to your eyes. I have never read anything quite as explicit as this story, of a child born out of wedlock to a Korean peasant girl and an American GI. The subsequent suffering she encountered and experienced at such a young age would have the hardest of people crying. The prologue indicates that to this day the author does not know how old she is; she has no idea what age she was when her mother was murdered; there is no record of her mother's short life; and there is no certificate to record her mother's death, which having occurred at the hands of family members was regarded as an 'honour killing.'
The author, Elizabeth Kim, spent her early childhood years living as a social outcast in a rural Korean village. Living like lepers they were ostracised by family and neighbours and regularly bullied by onlookers as they were bombarded by stones on their way home from the paddy fields. Elizabeth and her mother, Omma, had an intense bond between them and the author describes her mother as a 'storyteller, playmate, confidante, and defender.' What a wonderful package of maternity!
This
was to be maliciously taken away leaving Elizabeth a legacy of hurt, pain and violence that would stay with her for many years. Omma's punishment for sleeping with an American GI out of wedlock, was death at the hands of her grandfather and uncle in full view of her young daughter who was hiding in a woven bamboo basket at the time of this horrendous event.
The next few years would be a roller coaster for the orphaned child. She was sent to an orphanage run by missionaries, and there she stayed for months until, one day, an American couple visited and decided to adopt her. Hope seemed to be looming on the horizon for this emotionally scarred child who was in need of a lot of love and care. However, like the short time she had with her mum, so was this hope that had birthed inside, with the thought of starting a new life in America. That hope was shattered, when the couple who had adopted her impressed their religious, fanatical, legalistic form of Christianity on her, which was anything but what true Christian love really is. In her new home it was shameful to cry or fear and they even tape recorded many hours of her disturbed childhood on a big reel-to-reel tape machine. For every scolding the tape would be ready to run. A few years before this book was released, Elizabeth was given a leather bound portfolio of those times, which had been transferred on to cassettes, as a Christmas present from her dad!
At seventeen she married a guy whom the family thought was a good man, who attended and participated in the church that they all belonged to. All Elizabeth had ever wanted was to be loved. Maybe, this time, this was it! Maybe, just maybe, this hope would not be dashed. Oh how wrong that thought was! On her wedding night, she discovered the real man she had married, and he was not the loving person she had hoped he would be. That first night was the discovery that he was an abuser. This continued regularly and even during her pregnancy.
In due course her daughter was born, and Elizabeth named her Leigh; a child much loved by her the author; the sort of love she had been given by her real mum Omma. Then one night, her husband decided to callously abuse her in their daughter's room while she slept, and this finally broke the camel's back. Later that night, Elizabeth wrapped up her daughter in blankets and left….for good. I do not want to review any further than this, as I would be giving the whole story away. Thank God, it doesn't end with hopelessness. The author does find hope and she does come to know that there is joy in life. Omma had always told Elizabeth that life was made up of Ten Thousand Sorrows but Ten Thousand Joys would balance it out too.
I really was not sure as I started to read this book, whether I could bear to read of Omma's murder or the sick abuse that followed the author's life for many years. As a Christian, I was personally sickened by the way she was mistreated by her so-called Christian adoptive mum & dad and future husband, and I could fully understand her aversion to the religious life that she had been 'baptised' into. The highly emotional written pages of the time leading up to and including her mother's murder would make even the most die-hard of people weep! This book will highly-charge your emotions from anger to deep sadness. Many a time I reached out for a tissue and other times my hackles would rise….very high! But most of all, I realised just how fortunate my own life really is, and how thankful I should be.
Elizabeth, now a Buddhist, is a journalist in the San Francisco bay area, and is living her life with hope and love after all this time. She absolutely deserves it! This book is available in most bookstores and online. It was published by Doubleday in 2000.
Why would I recommend this book? I think we all need to come out of our comfort zone from time to time, and get a feeling of the real world. It's not all sweetness and light 'out there' and having read this book I am so grateful and very humbled about who I am, how I have been brought up and just how fortunate my life is, knowing that I have been protected from such extensive abuse.
I would not go as far to say that this book is an enjoyable read but it IS worth reading. What a 'soldier' this woman truly is!
THAT's why I recommend the book! It is a definite learning curve.
Compare Prices
sorted by Price
Read more on this product
Products you might be interested in
|
|
This product has not yet been reviewed.
19.09.2006 23:49
This sounds a very detailed and graphic book. Great review, ian.
19.09.2006 14:19
Great review.
18.09.2006 23:04
Sounds like a book i'd really enjoy perhaps, a great review though, well done.