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We feature each week Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.
We feature each week Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.
“THIS IS WHERE
THE WORLD ENDS” by Amy Zhang (Harper-Collins, $NZ22:99) ; “IN ORDER TO LIVE – A
North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom” by Yeonmi Park (Penguin-Random House,
$NZ37)
This
week I am looking at two books by young women of Asian ethnicity. Apart from
this fact, the two books have nothing in common and are of completely different
genres and intent. The first is a work of fiction, the second a personal
memoir. Call this the serendipity moment in reviewing, when different books
happen to come my way at the same time.
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Okay,
I admit it. In reading Amy Zhang’s This
Is Where The World Ends, I was stepping outside my usual interest area.
Chinese-born, but American resident and completely American in outlook, Amy
Zhang is a young woman, only about 20 years old, still in college and just a
year or two away from high school. Her first novel, Falling into Place (which I have not read) was apparently a “Young
Adult” novel – that is, one aimed at teenagers. It was a big seller. This Is Where The World Ends has thriller
elements, but with its senior high-school characters it too seems aimed mainly
at adolescents.
What interests
me is how and why it is intended to appeal to them and what, if anything, it
says about the state of current teen lit and of American teens.
Micah Carter and
Janie Vivian are in their last year at high school in a non-descript town
called Waldo in the Midwest. Micah and
Janie narrate alternate chapters, in the first person and in the present tense
– which seems de rigueur in books
aimed at teenagers. Micah is badly injured somehow and in hospital and his
memory is impaired, so that he cannot fully recall something very bad that has
happened. The chapters he narrates are called “After”, obviously meaning after
the aforesaid bad thing. In conversation with his friend Dewey, Micah tries to
reconstruct what has happened to him. But Dewey is not very helpful. In fact
Micah describes him thus:
“Dewey is an asshole. Some people are
musicians or dreamers; Dewey is an asshole. He smokes a pack of cigarettes a
day and wears his collars popped up and he does shit like play video games with
the volume all the way up while you’re in the hospital. He’s my best friend
because we are the only two inhabitants of the ninth circle of social hell. We
didn’t have options.” (p.5)
The chapters
Janie narrates are set a few months earlier and are called “Before”. They are
about Janie’s relationship with her parents, and her soul-mateship with Micah.
The two of them are loners, would-be artists, haters of high school and of jock
culture. They have special places they go together to brood and drink alcohol
and play games of dare. Their most special place is a pile of pebbles, which
they call “The Metaphor”, on the shore of an old abandoned and flooded quarry.
Many people have drowned in the quarry. Janie likes to quote Virginia Woolf,
and when we remember how Virginia Woolf died, we have a clue about where this
novel is going. The respective families and parents of Janie and Micah are
shadowy figures who barely enter the story, but they are somehow malign or
uncaring (especially Janie’s).
We know from
early in the novel that there has been a big fire connected with a teen party,
that the cops are asking questions and that, in the “After” sections, Janie has
disappeared, leaving Micah wondering if she really has gone of on that trip to
Nepal she was talking about. Far be it from me to provide “spoilers”, because
many bad things happen to these two teens before the novel is over; and it is,
after all, supposed to be a big climax when Micah at last remembers what has
happened. But I can say that at least part of the trouble has to do with Janie
being sexually attracted to a big and brutish jock called Ander Cameron,
despite her professed preference for arty and nerdy types. This leaves Micah
thinking he has been “used” and Janie buying a lot of trouble for herself.
I should note
that the “Before” and “After” chapters are not the only mode of narration in
this novel. We are also given extracts from Janie’s creative-writing journal,
in which she recasts herself as a princess in a fairy tale, and all those mean
and troublesome adults and jocks as the ogres and witches.
In one early
soliloquy by Janie, we can see that there is a mixture of feyness and paranoia
to this troubled teen:
“Like I said, the world isn’t always fair and
sometimes we have to help it along. Bad things should happen to bad people…
It’s easier like this to see how beautiful the earth and life and we are. We
are stars and the purple-red-blue sky is the background. We are streamers and
ribbons tied to trees and balloons that dance in the wind….” (p.22)
There
are the pretty streamers, ribbons and balloons, but there is also the
conviction that bad things should happen to bad people - and Janie is going to “help this along”.
So how is this
intended to appeal to teenagers and what does it say about the state of current
teen lit and of American teens?
There’s
star-crossed love, of course – always a popular theme. Micah’s feeling for
Janie isn’t requited. Janie’s attraction for the jock goes horribly wrong.
There’s the conviction that adults and parents are up to no good. There’s the
creation of a fantasy world as a refuge from the real world of adulthood that
is encroaching. (Janie’s fairy-tale journal reminded me of nothing so much as
the fantasy world that the matricidal Hulme and Parker invented for
themselves). And yet there is some ambiguity to the way Amy Zhang plays all
this. Teenagers might be attracted to all the above, but Zhang leaves it open
for us to see, first that Janie’s fantasy world is unrealistic, and then that
Janie might genuinely be mentally unbalanced. After many travails, Janie
herself draws the sour moral:
“We fall asleep to fairy tales, and the world
rotates and revolves and time passes, and we grow up and we understand that
they are false. There are no heroes and princesses and villains. It’s not that
easy. But I think I unlearned that too well. There are no wicked queens or
vengeful sorcerers, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t bad people. There
are. There are some truly, truly shitty people out there.” (pp. 226-227)
Later, it is
clear that this fey, poetic, soulful, abused teenage girl is vindictive and has
been highly manipulative of Micah. On the moral compass, it is interesting that
the young woman who wrote the novel is far harsher on her main female character
than on her main male character.
How does it
reflect American teens? Of course there is a lot of self-absorption. There’s
also a lot of effing and blinding in the dialogue, like Dewey’s typical reaction
when Micah throws an apple at him: “Oh
fuck it, Micah they were right about you. Goddam, goddam, you actual
fucking ass, what the hell? You’re going goddam crazy, man. You’re one
seriously fucked-up little son of a bitch, and – screw you, Micah….”
(p.116) Etc. Etc. Etc. Okay, teens do swear
and I’m not saying that this is an inauthentic depiction of some teenspeak, but
a lot of this sort of thing does become tiresome in a novel. And then of course
there is the promiscuous sex indulged in and the vast quantities of beer and
vodka and whisky consumed and the general impression that these are affluent
kids who don’t know how to fill in their time meaningfully.
Oops. I’m
getting grandfatherly and old codger-ish and reproving. I suppose all I’m
really saying is that this is a book for which I am not the intended audience.
Or could it be that I’m ahead of the kids who will read it because (in my
former life as a film reviewer) I’ve seen all the teen movies that it resembles?
Remember that 1980s hymn to teen self-pity, John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club, in which a jock and a nerd and a kook and a
party girl get together and decide that grown-ups just don’t understand? Or
remember that 1995 Drew Barrymore vehicle Mad
Love, in which the straight guy is at first beguiled and intrigued by the
playful, whimsical, kooky, rebellious girl until he realizes that she is
literally insane and in need of psychiatric help? Yep, This Is Where The World Ends is somewhere in that territory.
Gosh, I feel
old.
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In
America, some teenagers have the leisure to build fantasy worlds, engage in
considerable self-pity, drink, screw around etc.
Then
there are teenagers who have to live in North Korea.
Okay, that’s a
low blow. It’s unfair to compare two books which have such different purposes
as Amy Zhang’s This Is Where The World
Ends and Yeonmi Park’s memoir In
Order to Live. Still, reading them one after the other did give me the odd
ironic jolt. Far be it from me to belittle the angst of American teenagers, but
the phrase “First World Problems” did keep surfacing in my mind when I
considered Amy Zhang’s effort.
Briefly, In Order to Live is Yeonmi Park’s account
of growing up as a child in North Korea, escaping with her mother across the Yalu
River into China when she was a young teenager, and eventually making it to
South Korea, via Mongolia, after many horrific experiences. She states clearly
her present situation in her introduction:
“Like tens of thousands of North Koreans, I
escaped my homeland and settled in South Korea, where we are still considered
citizens, as if a sealed border and nearly seventy years of conflict and
tension never divided us. North and South Koreans have the same ethnic
backgrounds, and we speak the same language – except in the North where there
are no words for things like ‘shopping malls’, ‘liberty’, or even ‘love’, at
least as the rest of the world knows it. The only true love we can express is
worship for the Kims, a dynasty of dictators who have ruled North Korea for
three generations. The regime blocks all outside information, all videos and
movies, and jams radio signals. There is no World Wide Web and no Wikipedia.
The only books are propaganda telling us that we live in the greatest country
in the world, even though at least half of North Koreans live in extreme
poverty and many are chronically malnourished. My former country doesn’t even
call itself North Korea – it claims to be Chosun, the true Korea, a perfect
socialist paradise where 25 million people live only to serve the Supreme
Leader Kim Jong Un. Many of us who have escaped call ourselves “defectors”
because by refusing to accept our fate and die for the Leader, we have deserted
our duty. The regime calls us traitors. If I tried to return, I would be
executed.” (pp.3-4)
Yeonmi Park,
born in 1993, is only 22. She explains:
“The country I grew up in was not like the
one my parents had known as children in the 1960s and 1970s. When they were
young, the state took care of everyone’s basic needs: clothes, medical care,
food. After the Cold War ended, the Communist countries that had been propping
up the North Korean regime all but abandoned it, and our state-controlled
economy collapsed.” (p.15)
The 1990s were therefore
the years of famine, disguised by the pervasive propaganda of the state. The
propaganda is so relentless that “my
mother…. sincerely believed that North Korea was the centre of the universe and
that Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il had supernatural powers.” (p.34) We are
told of the relentless surveillance by the bo-wi-bu (“National Security
Agency”). We are told of the starvation and official brutality. We are told of
the young Yeonmi Park’s appendectomy in a North Korean hospital where corpses
are piled for days in the courtyard until there are enough for the removal men
to cart away. But - despite the surveillance – we are also told of a thriving
black market and of corrupt officials who will turn a blind eye to people
smuggling.
When Yeonmi is
13, her big sister Eunmi disappears, having apparently escaped to China. When
Yeonmi’s father is convicted of smuggling and his family is victimised, Yeonmi
and her mother make their escape. At first China seems a big improvement on
North Korea. Spartan though the lives of Chinese peasants are, at least they
have food and are not in danger of starving. But China is no paradise. As
Yeonmi notes:
“Virtually all defectors in China live in
constant fear. The men who manage to get across often hire themselves to farmers
for slave wages. They don’t dare complain because all the farmer has to do is
notify the police and they will be arrested and repatriated. The Chinese
government doesn’t want a flood of immigrants, nor does it want to upset the
leadership in Pyongyang. Not only is North Korea a trading partner, but it’s a
nuclear power perched right on its border, and an important buffer between
China and the American presence in the South. Beijing refuses to grant refugee
status to escapees from North Korea, instead labelling them ‘economic migrants’
and sipping them home.” (p.131)
Many North
Korean women refugees in China end up in the sex trade. Some are sold as
“wives” to peasant farmers. Yeonmi’s mother is twice raped by a people smuggler
and Yeonmi is almost enticed to work in a brothel. She and her mother spend
some time working for a gangster in a video-linked “chat room” for men who want
to talk dirty. Yeonmi also does not disguise the fact that (still aged 14,
remember) she at one time helped to groom other girls for this trade.
Finally, the
lives of mother and daughter are turned around when they meet Han Chinese
Christian evangelists, who help to smuggle them across the Gobi Desert and into
Mongolia whence, after some delays, they are finally able to fly to South
Korea. There Yeonmi Park now lives. The book does not end with a yelp of
triumph. Though grateful to now be living in a free society, Yeonmi does note
some of the difficulties of integrating as a Northerner into the South, and
some of the snobberies of South Koreans towards the (massively less-educated
and less worldly-aware) North Koreans.
Yeonmi now
conducts a television show for refugees in South Korean, and she does some
globe-trotting advocating human rights are various forums. She has, indeed,
become a celebrity, and you may easily go on Youtube and see her, with her
halting English, delivering speeches, including one very tearful one at a Youth
Summit in Dublin.
Now how do I
review a book like this?
As I noted once
before on this blog, personal memoirs have to be read as testimonies. We are in
the author’s hands and we have to trust the author to be telling us the truth.
Some of the usual critical faculties have to be suspended. This work is
confessional, so to judge it is in some sense to judge the author’s life and
veracity. (I also note that this work was written with the help of a
professional journalist, who doubtless polished up Yeonmi’s English).
I do not think
that any reasonable person can doubt that Yeonmi Park’s general portrayal of
North Korea - the closed, paranoid, totalitarian “hermit state” - is an
accurate one. Her accounts of its privations and its mistreatment of its people
can be confirmed from many other sources. There have, however, been some
quibbles about the accuracy of Yeonmi’s personal story. Some inconsistencies have
been found in various versions of herself and her family that she has given in
interviews. (You can easily find such quibbling articles on the internet). Of
course North Korean media have denounced the author, but that was to be
expected. It is the scepticism of a few Western readers that is more troubling.
Are we reading a truthful account or a fabrication?
I think I will
go along with Yeonmi Park’s own statement that there may be a few things that
she has misremembered, and a few incidents that she has not reported
accurately, but that these do not compromise the truthfulness of her general
account.
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