“Come join us,” she calls out to me, and tells my daughter, who really is gnawing at the fake food, “Let your mommy have a bite.”
From “My Mother’s Food.” Copyright ©1997 by Nora Okja Keller. First published in New Woman, September 1997. By permission of Susan Bergholz Literary Services, New York. All rights reserved.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Do you think that Akiko is “crazy”? Did she possess special powers? When Reno says, “Das how come she can read other people. Das how come she can see their wishes and their fears. Das how come she can travel out of dis world into hell, cause she already been there and back and know the way,” is she making a connection between the psychological trauma Akiko suffered as a result of her experiences as a comfort woman and her ability to communicate with spirits?
2. Both Akiko and Beccah seem to lead double lives. Akiko is torn between the spirit world and the world she occupies as a working single mother and Beccah between her life as an American teenager and as a person of Korean descent. How else is the theme of identity woven throughout the novel? Does either woman ever discover who she really is?
3. Why do you think Akiko keeps the truth about her past a secret from Beccah? How did this secret affect their relationship? How might it have changed their relationship had Akiko revealed the secret while she was alive?
4. There is so much tension between Akiko and Beccah, it’s hard to detect the love that they share. How is theirs a typical mother daughter relationship? How are the normal conflicts that flare up between mothers and their—especially adolescent—daughters made more complicated in Akiko and Beccah’s relationship?
5. Why do you think Akiko clings to her Japanese name—assigned to her in the army camp—instead of reclaiming her Korean name, Soon Hyo? What is significant about the fact that we don’t learn of this Korean name until near the novel’s ending?
6. Keller has set her novel in Hawaii, a place that is foreign to many Americans who associate it with images of pristine beaches and tropical delights. How is Keller’s Hawaii different from these cliched images? What did you learn from her portrayal of this state that has its own dialect and richly varied culture?
7. Discuss the character of Auntie Reno. Is she a real friend to Akiko and Beccah? Does she take advantage of Akiko’s vulnerability? What does she teach Beccah about her mother? How does she represent the clashing of cultures that is so prevalent in Hawaii?
8. Water, especially water that flows in rivers, is a recurring motif in the novel. What does it represent in Beccah’s memories, and in her passage from youth to adulthood? What role does water play in Akiko’s memories? Why do you think Beccah chooses to scatter her mother’s ashes in the river behind their home?
9. What do you think of the novel’s alternating narrative voices? Why do you think Keller chose to structure her novel this way? What are the advantages of knowing Akiko’s story before Beccah learns it? Whom do you think we get to know better: Beccah or Akiko?
10. The term “comfort woman” is painfully ironic given the agonies endured by Akiko and the other women forced into prostitution by Japanese soldiers. How does Keller extend the irony of this term throughout the novel? To what extent are Beccah and Akiko uncomfortable? How are their lives devoid of comfort? And how does each learn, ultimately, to be a comfort to—and derive comfort from—the other?
About the Author
NORA OKJA KELLER was born in Seoul, Korea, and now lives in Hawaii with her husband and two daughters. In 1995 she received the Pushcart Prize for “Mother Tongue,” a short story that is a part of Comfort Woman. In 1998 she received the American Book Award, and in 1999 the Elliot Cades Award for Literature. She is currently working on her second novel.
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Also from Nora Okja Keller
Fox Girl
Set in the aftermath of the Korean War, Fox Girl gives a powerful voice to the abandoned children of American GIs. Hyung Jin, “fox girl,” is disowned by her parents, but finds kinship in her fellow outcasts Sookie, a teenage prostitute kept by an American soldier, and Lobetto, who makes his living off the streets by pimping and running errands. Shunned by society, they dream of an American ideal that they will do anything to attain. Fox Girl is at once a rare portrait of the long-term consequences of a neglected aspect of war and a moving story of the fierce love between a mother and her daughter that will ultimately redeem Hyung Jin’s life in America.
ISBN 0-14-200196-1
Praise for Comfort Woman
“Lyrical and haunting…. A powerful book about mothers and daughters and the passions that bind one generation to another.”
“A beautiful first novel, lovingly written and lovingly told. Comfort Woman speaks eloquently for everyone who tries to imagine a parent’s past, who tries to piece together a history that involves as much the dead as it does the living. Told with great grace, poetry and, yes, even humor, Nora Okja Keller has honored her ancestors and her readers with this book. Comfort Woman is not simply a story, but medicine for the spirit.”
“Comfort Woman may have the elements of a classic mother-daughter tale, but it is so fresh and powerful that it reads like uncharted territory. And the storytelling is as rich as the story itself”
“Powerful and beautifully rendered.”
“Terrifyingly vivid… Comfort Woman is a novel that demands intense reaction. Disturbing and beautiful, it takes its place in the American canon as a unique and exquisite tale.”
“There is nothing comfortable about Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman. A beautifully orchestrated, elegiac novel about a mother-daughter relationship that survives holocaust, madness, and death. Nora Okja Keller can write her way into the heart of darkness without losing her way. Her sense of humor, her lucid and graceful writing, her spunky characters keep our hearts from breaking.”