Despite having read this multiple times, each character’s development through their successes, failures, gains, and losses still grips me tightly. For some, the dissonance takes them far away from home yet others find themselves unable to leave. Some members of the family try to be model citizens to fight negative stereotypes, while others lean into them in their own personal rebellion. Through it all, they experience the ways Japanese attitudes towards Koreans (don’t) change shadows cling to every corner and stick to their ribs like a disease.

Sunja, Isak, and their relatives and descendants live through World War II, the end of the occupation, the Korean War, and the beginning of the economic bubble.

Lee follows several generations of the Baek family as they struggle to survive in a country that hates them, and one they did not exactly come to by choice. Koreans are seen as dirty, poor, violent, and as such are left on the fringes of society in destitution. She eventually becomes pregnant with his child, but he is already married instead, she weds Christian minister Baek Isak, and together they move to Osaka, Japan, in search of a better life. Sunja, the daughter of a boardinghouse owner, becomes involved with an older businessman, Koh Hansu, who comes to her aid when she is harassed by Japanese men in occupied Korea. The Korean diaspora in Japan is fraught, as we learn through Lee’s sweeping multigenerational epic. I did my own light research, which led me to this life-changing book. Through family stories, most from my mother, some translated from family members, I learned my history piecemeal.

This selection is a bit personal for me: my mother is a third-generation Zainichi Korean, something I didn’t understand until close to my high school graduation. However, our choice of Pachinko was rooted in its status as the first English-language novel depicting the history of Koreans in Japan, known in Japanese as Zainichi (literally, “existing in Japan”) Koreans. The sun has already shone on bestsellers, which is why they are seldom included in our boxes. And unlike many other books we’ve included, it’s a bestseller - the sort with lots of laudatory quotes on the cover about Lee’s refined storytelling, the intricacy with which she crafts her characters and their world, and her inimitable ability to draw you into this family’s struggle. Those pages span over half a century and four generations, from Korea to Japan to the United States. Pachinko is a big book, in many senses of the word.

Pachinko book cover