Ten Thousand Sorrows: The Extraordinary Journal of Korean War Orphan Book

"I don't know how old I was when I watched my mother's murder, nor do I know how old I am today." So begins the incredible true story of Elizabeth Kim, born to a poor Korean woman in the 1950s after her affair with an American GI who promptly dumped her. Elizabeth's mother was condemned to a pariah existence on the edge of the village, virtually ignored and left to bring up her illegitimate daughter single-handedly. Elizabeth herself was spat at as a 'honhyol'--mixed-race, a non-person, an animal (anyone who thinks that racism is purely a Western disease should read this book). One day, two male relatives came to the hut, killed her mother, and subjected her hated child to a form of torture unimaginable in its barbarism. Elizabeth was sent to a Seoul orphanage where she was kept in a virtual cage, then--worst of all, psychologically--she was adopted by an American Christian fundamentalist couple and taken away to the mid-West dustbowl to be hammered into an all-American Girl. Although this may sound like no more than a catalogue of horrors, it is much more: a story of resilience, survival, and hope, and most importantly of all, of the rediscovery of love and trust when those values seemed quite extinguished. Elizabeth also found her true mother's religion of Buddhism and you can learn more about that creed from this book than from any number of glib Western DIY guides. This is Buddhism felt on the pulse and in the marrow. --Christopher HartRead More