Name: Lark and Termite (Vintage Contemporaries)
ISBN: 9780375701931

Jayne Anne Phillips

Lark and Termite (Vintage Contemporaries)

Karis Ryu

How do I describe the experience of reading this book?

Objectively, it is not an easy read. It's a frustrating process at times. There were parts that made me extremely uncomfortable, parts where the language thrust me beyond my depth. I have no doubt that Phillips, an amazing writer, knows what threads are being tugged into the larger framework by each word she places, and how all of these threads weave together. But my question, then, is whether I feel like I know the characters, and feel the stake of the story. At times it was like looking through a telescope at something fuzzy and far away. And then at other times the passages created such vivid images, threads wove back to their beginnings, and these lucid glimmers of clarity made the novel a deeply moving experience. My heart ached in those moments.

In terms of history, it is always strange, for me, to read about the Korean War through the eyes of white Americans, particularly because it took me so long, as a Korean American, to be able to see the Korean War as a representation of the fight of my people. The Korean War is history that aches in me constantly, that I feel incredibly, almost spiritually, attached to, to the persistent cries of a language, culture, and people refusing to give up. I understand that the Korean War was traumatizing for the non-Korean people who were thrust helplessly into the power politics of Western nations vying to suffocate the spread of the other. When such a narrative is put out into the world, however, I wonder whether it is a story that is significant and important on its own, or whether its existence, as painful and real as that experience is, overshadows (without ill intent, but nevertheless overshadows) the Korean voices that, in the U.S., have yet to be recognized and respected as equal narratives.

I'm still parsing out my understanding of the novel, but in the end, it makes its mark as a haunting and beautiful book.

Lark and Termite (Vintage Contemporaries)

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