Rutabaga's Reads 2021: Part 9

Although I had all three books read with plenty of time to spare in 2020, I did not get my nonfiction post onto my blog last year. And, considering it’s already November, I’m cutting it close getting it posted in 2021. If I impress myself, perhaps I’ll manage to get a second nonfiction compilation posted in these remaining weeks. As the saying goes, time will tell.

The Girl with Seven Names (July 2, 2015) by Hyeonseo Lee with David John.

She is the girl with seven names: Kim Ji-hae, Park Min-young, Chae Mi-ran, Jang Soon-hyang, Chae In-hee, Park Sun-ja, Lee Hyeon-seo. Hyeonseo’s life is chronicled from her childhood through the dogged struggle to get her mother and younger brother (Min-ho) to seek asylum in South Korea. As a child, she believed wholly in the Kim regime. As brutal and strict as it was, she trusted that the Kim regime had the North Koreans’ best interests at heart. They took care of them, unlike those unloved South Korean orphans in rags digging for grains of rice in the streets, being kicked by Yankees (a.k.a. Americans). At 17, when she travels to China, she does not return to North Korea. This begins an epic adventure of mostly lows over more than a decade, where she does not see her mother, nor her brother, save one very short reunion. She discovers how hard life is on her own, gaining ID when she isn’t using a legit name, saving money from menial jobs, immersing herself in learning Mandarin out of rushed necessity, keeping her feelings closed off from the public and not tending to trust anyone after all of the corrupt people she’s encountered, including those in the military and law enforcement in varying countries. So many bribes. So much extortion. Her account is horrific, which makes it all the more important that it be shared the world over.

            So much of what is in this book is so horrible that it must be fiction. Except it’s not. The things that happened to Lee, her family and countless others should never happen to human beings, but they did and likely still do. Lee is the epitome of fierce bravery and steadfast courage; it is definitely more than the Hyesan (North Korea, near China) stubbornness that kept her going over a decade before her mom and brother joined her in South Korea. Lee’s story is equally compelling and chilling, beautiful but monstrous, factual yet irrational. During points in the story when she’d mention a specific year, I’d reflect on what I was doing during that year, and the comparison was hard. For example, in the year that Lee was working tirelessly to get her mother and brother to South Korea, I visited South Korea as a tourist, loving the experience of it with no bigger worry than that was my first time on an international trip. I was living an adventure in the country that birthed me while she was trying to get her family there to save their lives. We grow up knowing that North Korea is not a good place, but I really knew nothing until I read this book. If you didn’t care about human rights before, read this story. As horrifying as it is, it needs to be known. Superheroes don’t have anything on Hyeonseo Lee.

            Light highlight: I chuckled at the paragraph where Lee’s mom was transfixed by the ATM, “She thought an extremely small teller was crouched inside a tiny room in the wall, counting out notes at high speed. ‘The poor thing, stuck in there without a window.’” (p. 279)

            P.S. I read this because the ophthalmologist in the department I previously worked in thought I should, “because you are Korean.” (His words are not something to take offense to when one is used to his blunt way of talking. It’s actually a compliment that he’d lend me one of his books.)

Naturally Tan (June 4, 2019) by Tan France.

Fashion and compassion make the man that is Tan France. In his memoir, Tan starts at his childhood, as people do, and works his way to present-day. He describes what it was like to grow up South Asian in a predominately white area in England. He talks about what it was like meeting his husband for the first time (Rob, not having met many people of color, thought Tan was Mexican) and his hair (it’s pretty iconic) and some major cultural differences between the U.S. and the U.K. (like supermarkets and their cereal aisles). There is a brief chapter where he shares that he had over 30 jobs between the ages of 16 and 27 (27 being the age he became an entrepreneur and started his own business).

            But perhaps my favorite chapter is when he talks about “The Art of Not Being a Bitch at Work.” For anyone who’s worked in jobs or is working in a job with a lot of women, we know that it can be a supportive, team-creative environment where women champion women, but we’ve all seen how women can knock other women down and be the biggest gossipmongers. I have been the woman knocked down, and it’s complicated to maintain positivity in a workplace when enduring that. You don’t understand why women aren’t building each other up. After all, doesn’t the success of all in an office or department or corporation reflect on everyone? Yes. Or, that’s how that should be perceived. When Tan states, “If you’re working at one of my offices and you dare to bitch about a colleague so you can one-up them, know wholeheartedly that the person you’re bitching about will be praised, and you, the bitching person, will be fired.” As soon as I read that, I was super bummed that Tan France was never my boss. Because, imagine, a boss who sticks up for you and doesn’t get swayed by toxic gossip?! Amazing!

            Tan also addresses serious points, like when he addresses 9/11. There are many who don’t like hearing about the “race card” being used, but, as Tan points out, sometimes it needs to be played. He wants more people to be aware that racial profiling and interrogation happen, even as he worries that a spotlight on the issue could also make it worse. As I’m typing this, we’re closer to two years out from the first confirmed COVID cases; we’ve been in this pandemic awhile. We’ve all heard cases about the uptick in hate against people identifying as AAPI, and it’s not exclusively a U.S. problem. No one should ever be infringed upon or made to feel less for any reason, certainly not on the basis of skin color or one’s facial features.

            I absolutely LOVE this book. Tan France is candid and funny, charming and frank, heartwarming and feisty. He doesn’t shy away from his colorful story and the struggles he endured on his way up. He’s also refreshingly transparent about “what it’s like to go from being a regular person with a regular income … to becoming wealthy.” Yep, he goes there. He will always have opinions about everyone’s outfits (it’s his thing, after all), which means I would both fear meeting him on the street, but also love it. I shall never be as fabulous as he is (it’s an impossibility, even if I had scads of money), but, like him, I can also work to “spread joy, personal acceptance, and most of all, understanding.” We all can.

Not Fade Away: A Memoir of Senses Lost and Found (Sept. 11, 2014) by Rebecca Alexander.

   With Sascha Alper.

“Breathe in peace, breathe out fear.” Rebecca Alexander was born with a rare genetic mutation, trickled down through her Ashkenazi Jew heritage. It’s called Usher Syndrome Type III, and she’s been going blind and deaf since she was a child. First diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa (or “donut vision”) at age 12, she was told she’d be blind and deaf by age 30. A driven individual, she was determined to be successful in everything she set out to do. Rebecca loves to live life big and is almost never still. Understandably, the impending hearing and vision loss did not set in right away. She also seemed to live by the idea that being young made her invincible. At 18, in the throes of a hangover and trying to navigate her room in the dark with her degraded vision, she fell 27 feet out of her French windows, breaking almost everything but her head and neck. She came back stronger than ever, starting college only one semester later than expected and took pride in her strength and fitness. She went on to earn double masters’ degrees from Columbia University and is a psychotherapist heading up her own clinical practice in Manhattan.

            Talk about profoundly inspiring! Whereas another might want to fade away rather than face the physical and psychological challenges associated with not one, but two, deteriorating senses, Rebecca Alexander is the opposite. Yes, she’s had to take those honest moments to let herself grieve over what she’s losing, but mostly she takes great strides forward, and she’d rather joke about what she’s going through than receive anyone’s pity. This memoir is remarkable and enlightening. With Sascha Alper, Alexander has written an articulate and candid novel. Hers is a grace that we should all wish we had. She lives intentionally and resiliently with a laser focus on storing memories and exuding love and compassion for others. She is a motivator, and she seems to have a great sense of humor. Alexander’s radiance is a light in her darkening world. It’s radiance we can all bask in, if only we take the time to notice it.

            Favorite quote: “My nose is like the love child of a pregnant woman and a truffle pig …” --Rebecca, in describing her sense of smell making up for her weakening senses (p. 136)

            Laughed out loud: “Caroline and I were having lunch with a friend one day, and he asked if either one of us had ever gotten toe fungus from showering at the gym, to which I responded, ‘Yeah! I had it on my bagel this morning.’ I had heard ‘tofu cream cheese.’” (p. 205)

            In the news: As of March 22 of 2019, there was talk that Emily Blunt was in talks to star as Rebecca in a movie adaptation of the novel. I didn’t find any new information, probably unsurprising during this ongoing pandemic.

            Thank you note: Thanks to my friend and former colleague, Faye, for lending me this book and opening my eyes (*pun intended*) to Usher Syndrome Type III. I’d not heard of it previously.