A review by existenchellecrisis
Daughters of the Dragon by William Andrews

2.0

I'm extremely torn on this book. First and foremost, I absolutely applaud bringing to the table the trauma endured by the 'comfort women' of South Korea. This is a much overlooked atrocity. I do believe, after reading the afterward by the author that this book was written for the right reasons. Unfortunately, the book falls extremely flat in it's execution. This is a book written about South Korea by someone who has clearly never lived there, much less been there. Every opportunity to describe something that would clarify the location as specifically Korean was missed. The dialogue was clunky at best, and often often threw out phrases such as "in Korea" when two Korean people, who are in Korea, are talking to each other. The phrase 'typical Korean' made me uncomfortable in the way it was used. So many different very western thinking descriptions were used or actions taken. You can't simply throw out a few words in Hangul in italics and expect that to cover the Korean-ness. Most if not all of the character development between Ja-hee and anyone were missed or explained in retrospect. Rarely were her emotions explained, or her survival instincts explained clearly. She makes an incredibly far walk directly after extreme trauma and it's summarized in one page without any logistical descriptions and little to no explanation of her emotions, thoughts or lack of emotions. I've read many male authors that have managed to pull off complex female emotions and thought processes but I did not feel this was the case with this story. I did find the parallel between the US coming in and using the juicy bars both realistic and upsetting for it's realism. Juicy girls are still common in Korea, only now you find it's more Korean run bars with Filipino girls. Although the author missed the whole reason they are called juicy bars is because to buy time with the women is to buy them expensive non-alcoholic juice drinks. Many things indicated to me that this book was written by someone who read the history but didn't understand the culture. I don't want to pick the book apart, but I will say that the last thing towards the end that really irked me was the idea that with enough money you can just buy a reunion at the DMZ. Furthermore, the idea that any a solider would be working at such a highly charged and politically sensitive area as Panmunjom would be without the slightest awareness of the culture of the local country was simply too much. I realize that moment was completely engineered to show Anna gaining courage, but it was just ridiculously unbelievable. I found the 'dragon comb' distracting, from the main story line of a woman's incredible survival in a time of great upheaval in her country. I do not foresee myself reading the second book.