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The Korean Word For Butterfly (2013)

by James Zerndt(Favorite Author)

3.53 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1483997472 (ISBN13: 9781483997476)

languge

English

genre

Poetry

publisher

Createspace

review 1: I thought long about the correct rating to give this book...in the end going 3, although in all fairness there were parts that merited a 5 and others a 1. Having experience with Korean culture, language, and the nations people...I found that the author did a good job of handling the characters and situations in a realistic way.I think part of what got me was that I felt unable to truly engage or connect with many of the characters. There were a few I did (Moon for example), yet even still I was left wanting more. The book ends without ever tying up some issues throughout the story, and though in some books I find this works well, in James Zerndt's case this was not the case. Yet, I'm glad I read this book...as it did bring up things that are worth thinking about. How do ot... moreher cultures view one another? Can there ever be a true understanding of personal and cultural differences...or does it inevitably fall apart? Is there a way to overcome personal bias? Is there redemption for what we do? This is not a book I imagine I will ever read again, but it was a book worth reading.
review 2: As a waygookin in Korea, this started off very bizarrely for me; it was like someone had filmed my first 48 hours in Korea and put them in this book (though I remain grateful that I arrived on a Friday evening and had a full weekend to adjust--I've seen a lot of new teachers go through the "Arrive and hit the ground running" motions) If you want an accurate account of what it's like in living in a foreign country, this is fairly spot-on. (though how the hell did they get such a large apartment, no migukin on a teacher's visa has an apartment that big)I'd rather give this 3.5 stars. To me it felt like the book wasn't sure what it was going for, and so it went for a lot of things. The dual pregnancies and how they're dealt with, the World Cup, the death of the girls, being an expat living abroad, sobriety... At the center of it all is family and how everyone deals with problems, but every time I found myself wondering a little more about one story thread, we veered off into another one.HERE BE SPOILERS------The part that truly rubbed me the wrong way was Billie's storyline dealing with her (revealed later) second abortion and how her life kind of falls apart after that; the contrast against Yun-ji's pregnancy also makes me roll my eyes a little. We've learned that Billie is kind of an unreliable person, but she's an unreliable narrator as well. She claims later in the book that Joe is the one who shut down after the pregnancy, but we witnessed through her descriptions and his actions that he did reach out to her, but she shut him down. She wants to know why he needs to talk about it, but she doesn't understand that he needs to discuss and grieve and move on with things. She's not letting him in to talk, and so it hurts him, and that's ultimately what drives the wedge between them.I know, she's like, 19 or 20 at most, so she's not going to make the best decisions. Clearly, as her storyline reveals, she is very good at making stupid decisions and not really knowing how to handle the aftermath.In contrast, Yun-ji's pregnancy feels... too good? It's a stark contrast of black and white with how Yun-ij and Billie handle these pregnancies, and there's undertones of political leanings to the writing of it. Billie gets the abortion and her life kind of falls apart. Yun-ji does an extreme sport in the hopes of triggering a miscarriage, fails to do so, and then many bad aspects of her life (though not all) are turned towards a positive spin by the end of things. It was interesting to watch the story of the murdered girls become more of a focus point with Yun-ji than the other characters. She feels for their parents, as a mother-to-be, but as someone not far from girlhood herself, she feels for the girls herself; she's closely tied to both parts of the story, which is why it consumes her.I haven't talked about Moon, but his storyline was kind of a nice break between Yun-ji and Billie. I'd've liked a book with Moon as the main character, we didn't really get in deep with him.It's possible that I went in to this expecting more of it to be about expat teachers, and that it went in a different direction is part of the reason why it was just okay for me. (though "they've turned into the two best teachers we have"? When did that happen?? For two kids who didn't know what they were doing?? Show, don't tell!) There's some uncomfortable truths within the school aspect of the story (overbearing directors, kids saying things about you in Korean behind your back, Korean teachers refusing to translate something fully so you don't know you're being insulted...), but there's a lot of uncomfortable truths about the other aspects of the story as well. It's a decent read, and a short one--I buzzed through this in a few hours. less

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