Author | Lisa See |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Novel |
Publisher | Scribner |
Publication date | 2019 |
Pages | 374 |
The Island of Sea Women is a 2019 historical novel written by American author Lisa See. Set on the Korean island of Jeju, the novel tells the story of a friendship between Mi-ja, the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, and Young-Sook, the heir apparent in a family of haenyeo . Throughout the decades from Japanese rule to the modern era, the two become close but find their relationship strained as a result of their backgrounds.
See researched Haenyo during visit to South Korea for her next novel [1] [2]
The East China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean, located directly offshore from East China. China names the body of water along its eastern coast as "East Sea" due to direction, the name of "East China Sea" is otherwise designated as formal name by International Hydrographic Organization(IHO) and used internationally.
Jeju Province, officially Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, is the southernmost province of South Korea, consisting of eight inhabited and 55 uninhabited islands, including Mara Island, U Island, the Chuja Archipelago, and the country's largest island, Jeju Island. The province is located in the Korea Strait, with the Korean Peninsula to the northwest, Japan to the east, and China to the west. The province has two cities: the capital Jeju City, on the northern half of the island and Seogwipo, on the southern half of the island. The island is home to the shield volcano Hallasan, the highest point in South Korea. Jeju and Korean are the official languages of the province, and the vast majority of residents are bilingual.
Comfort women were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. The term "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese ianfu (慰安婦), which literally means "comforting, consoling woman". During World War II, Japanese troops forced hundreds of thousands of women from Australia, Burma, China, Netherlands, Philippines, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and other countries into sexual enslavement for Japanese troops; however, the majority of the women were from Korea. Many women died or committed suicide due to brutal mistreatment and sustained physical and emotional distress. After the war, Japan's acknowledgment of the comfort women's plight was minimal, lacking a full apology and appropriate restitution, which damaged Japan's reputation in Asia for decades. Only in the 1990s did the Japanese government begin to officially apologize and offer compensation.
HMS Scylla (F71) was a Leander-class frigate of the Royal Navy (RN). She was built at Devonport Royal Dockyard, the last RN frigate to be built there as of 2016. Scylla was commissioned in 1970, taken out of service in 1993 in accordance with Options for Change, and sunk as an artificial reef in 2004 off Whitsand Bay, Cornwall.
Yonaguni, one of the Yaeyama Islands, is the westernmost inhabited island of Japan, lying 108 kilometers from the east coast of Taiwan, between the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea. The island is administered as the town of Yonaguni, Yaeyama Gun, Okinawa, and there are three settlements: Sonai, Kubura, and Higawa. There have been discussions to establish direct ferry services with Taiwan in order to bolster tourism.
Ama are Japanese divers famous for collecting pearls, though traditionally their main catch is seafood. The vast majority of ama are women.
Island of the Blue Dolphins is a 1960 children's novel by American writer Scott O'Dell, which tells the story of a girl named Karana, who is stranded alone for years on an island off the California coast. It is based on the true story of Juana Maria, a Nicoleño Native American left alone for 18 years on San Nicolas Island during the 19th century.
Pearl hunting, also known as pearling, is the activity of recovering or attempting to recover pearls from wild molluscs, usually oysters or mussels, in the sea or freshwater. Pearl hunting was prevalent in the Persian Gulf region and Japan for thousands of years. On the northern and north-western coast of Western Australia pearl diving began in the 1850s, and started in the Torres Strait Islands in the 1860s, where the term also covers diving for nacre or mother of pearl found in what were known as pearl shells.
A light novel is a type of popular literature novel native to Japan, usually classified as young adult fiction targeting teens to twenties. The definition is very vague, and wide-ranging.
Haenyeo are female divers in the South Korean province of Jeju, whose livelihood consists of harvesting a variety of mollusks, seaweed, and other sea life from the ocean. Known for their independent spirit and determination, haenyeo are representative of the semi-matriarchal family structure of Jeju.
Eugenie Clark, popularly known as The Shark Lady, was an American ichthyologist known for both her research on shark behavior and her study of fish in the order Tetraodontiformes. Clark was a pioneer in the field of scuba diving for research purposes. In addition to being regarded as an authority in marine biology, Clark was popularly recognized and used her fame to promote marine conservation.
She Gods of Shark Reef is a 1958 B-adventure film directed by Roger Corman that was partially filmed on location in Kaua'i back to back with Naked Paradise in 1956. The film was distributed in 1958 by American International Pictures as a double feature with Night of the Blood Beast.
Lisa See is an American writer and novelist. Her books include On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family (1995), a detailed account of See's family history, and the novels Flower Net (1997), The Interior (1999), Dragon Bones (2003), Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005), Peony in Love (2007) and Shanghai Girls (2009), which made it to the 2010 New York Times bestseller list. Both Shanghai Girls and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan received honorable mentions from the Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature.
Ponyo is a 2008 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It was animated by Studio Ghibli for the Nippon Television Network, Dentsu, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Mitsubishi, and distributed by Toho. The film stars Yuria Nara, Hiroki Doi, Tomoko Yamaguchi, Kazushige Nagashima, Yūki Amami, George Tokoro, Rumi Hiiragi, Akiko Yano, Kazuko Yoshiyuki and Tomoko Naraoka. It is the eighth film Miyazaki directed for Studio Ghibli, and his tenth overall. The film tells the story of Ponyo, a goldfish who escapes from the ocean and is helped by a five-year-old human boy, Sōsuke, after she is washed ashore while trapped in a glass jar. As they bond with each other, Ponyo desires to become a human girl, against the devastating circumstances brought about by her acquisition and use of magic.
Sea of Blood is a propagandist North Korean opera credited to Kim Il Sung. It was first produced as an opera by Sea of Blood Theatrical Troupe in 1971. It was then later adapted into a novel by the Choseon Novelist Association of the 4.15 Culture Creation Group in 1973.
Carolyn See was a professor emerita of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of ten books, including the memoir, Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America, an advice book on writing, Making a Literary Life, and the novels There Will Never Be Another You, Golden Days, and The Handyman. See was also a book critic for the Washington Post for 27 years.
China Dolls is a 2014 novel by Lisa See. It depicts the largely forgotten world of Chinese American nightclubs and performers of the '30s and '40s. The book opens with a quotation attributed to Buddha: "Only three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." See organizes her narrative around these three elements – The Sun (October 1938 – August 1940; The Moon ; and The Truth. The novel briefly concludes with a reunion of many of the main characters in 1988.
Nautical fiction, frequently also naval fiction, sea fiction, naval adventure fiction or maritime fiction, is a genre of literature with a setting on or near the sea, that focuses on the human relationship to the sea and sea voyages and highlights nautical culture in these environments. The settings of nautical fiction vary greatly, including merchant ships, liners, naval ships, fishing vessels, life boats, etc., along with sea ports and fishing villages. When describing nautical fiction, scholars most frequently refer to novels, novellas, and short stories, sometimes under the name of sea novels or sea stories. These works are sometimes adapted for the theatre, film and television.
White Chrysanthemum is a novel written by Mary Lynn Bracht. It was published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 2018. The novel is based on comfort women, Korea, Japan, and history. The novel has fictional names, characters, places, and incidents. It is written in dual timelines that are split between the two women: Hana's life during the 1940s and Emi's life in 2011. The novel switches between the two women's perspectives intermittently during the novel. One chapter of the novel is told from the perspective of YoonHui, Emi's daughter. The novel includes a map from 1943, further readings, and a notable dates section.
The Women Divers Hall of Fame (WDHOF) is an international honor society. Its purpose is to honor the accomplishments of women divers, and their contributions to various fields of underwater diving. Full membership is restricted to nominees who have been found to meet the WDHOF's criteria, which include being an underwater diver and having contributed to diving in ways recognised as being significant.