2022 - Discussion Thread Q3 - The Island of Sea Women

My first Lisa See novel and I listened to it on audio. I also nominated it for my book club and it won and received the highest rating we've ever had for a book of 4.9*/5

This was a fascinating story of the haenyeo sea women of Jeju Island off South Korea, I had heard of the diving women but not of the uprising of 1948. Their life was harsh diving in all weathers from very young until until 55 or in many cases much longer. Farming the sea, cooking, feeding children and farming the land when not diving.

Some brutal scenes depicted during the uprising in 1948 and the heartbreak that followed for many, many families. Fascinating and poignant story of two women and their friendship and diverging lives.

I gave this 5*, I also watched several videos afterwards and see that now women are diving in their 70's and 80's as their daughters and granddaughters do not want to continue the tradition.

I'd never have picked this book without the quarterly read, and yet...very pleased it was available in English from the library.
I knew nothing about the diving women or the tragic events that happened in Jeju after WW2. Actually I realised I know very little about Korean history of the 20th century.

I liked the book very much but found it a little slow in the beginning although the context setting was very important.
Some of the 1948 events were really terrible and will stay with me.
I loved learning about the different beliefs/religions in the area and about the diving women.

Good quarterly choice!

I loved the descriptions of the diving women on the island of Jeju, their perilous but highly-valued work, and their female-led society where most of the men stayed at home looking after the children. So much research had clearly gone into this aspect of the women's lives, and yet it was presented in a character-focused and engaging way that never felt heavily informational.

The book then deals with some terrible events in the history of the island, which lies almost equidistant from mainland Korea and Japan and so will always be a military target. I knew about the various Japanese colonisations but not about the decimation of the population by violence in the late 1940s and 50s. This was a hard read, but harder for me was the bitterness and anger of the main character against someone who wasn't even personally responsible for any of the deaths. I know these things do happen - like when a child is abducted and one parent blames the other instead of blaming the actual perpetrator - but I found it hard to identify with someone who goes on doing that for decades.

Like Adelyne I was intrigued to find that the American visitors were Young-sook's descendants as well as Mi-ja's. On the other hand, looking back, this makes it less surprising that Young-sook is willing to talk to them. So where for a while I thought she was moving towards reconciliation with Mi-ja's family, it was really only reconciliation with her own family.

I ended up with the impression that Young-sook had become rigid and unsympathetic because of her work, so the book came across as borderline antifeminist despite its very interesting description of a matrifocal society. But it was fascinating as a piece of fictional history.