White Chrysanthemum

This book was brutal but beautiful, navigating haenyeo, han, comfort women, and Japanese occupation and suppression of Korea in the 20th century. As you can imagine, many trigger warnings related to comfort women. I thought the author deftly handled the complexities of WWII, the Jeju Massacre, and the Korean War, and also bringing other countries and territories into the dialogue without trying to assert expertise.

The book itself is about an important and difficult topic, and is worth the read if for no reason other then to further spread awareness of what happened to these women and girls, and to the people of Korea during the war.

However, narratively, I didn't love the switching two person (past and present) storylines every other chapter, especially when intermingled with the occasional throwback memory in the middle of a characters on-going story, which happens with Hana in particular quite a bit. It felt out of place and always took me out of the story when it happened.

All in all, I'm glad I read it but I don't see myself ever re-reading it.