Word: wu
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Harvard Salient is organizing a demonstration which will feature human rights activist Harry Wu...
...particularly illuminating scene, the bondmaid Chu, who has been charged since youth with the care of "The Old One," --an ancient and literally undying presence in the house of Wu--must come to terms with his demise. Although she suffered his abuse for years and has developed a keen resentment for the old man as a result, Chu finds herself, in his absence, wandering aimlessly around the palace is the days before her eventual suicide. Lim's portrait of this depressing symbiosis is but one way in which the dichotomy between slave and slave owner is blurred, and often, transcended...
...last resort before selling her daughter. But finally she is forced to realize that "Sky God has no eyes nor ears" for the helpless village women who "had cried to [him] from time immemorial" for relief from abusive husbands and yearly pregnancies. Han's own prayers that Wu will return her love are only answered when she constructs her own altar to an abandoned female idol she finds in the woods...
...representation of the greater, untapped power within Han herself: in the epilogue of the book the reader discovers that numerous miracles have taken place near the pond where Han saw her demise. As further proof of her immortality, in a tiny shack on the property, the Master Wu awaits the day when the "Goddess with Eyes and Ears" will return...
...reader, moreover, loses interest very quickly in Han's unabating devotion to Wu, especially when she overdramatizes every kind word he says to her and seems on the brink of death when he leaves to study abroad. Perhaps it is liberal feminist indoctrination, perhaps inadequate character development, that makes an American reader wonder, "Is he really worth all this?" Whatever its cause, weariness is perhaps the one feeling a reader should not have towards the protagonist of a novel of this caliber. But Lim's Han arouses not only weariness but also impatience--of the sort one feels towards...