The Island of Sea Women
by Lisa See (2019)
2024 reads, 3/22
(shout out to my friend Meesun for gifting me this book!)
Last year I attempted to read Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall, but ended up DNFing it, because it was a cursory look at decades and decades of geopolitics through a pro-U.S. militaristic lens. Seriously, the author had something negative to say about every country – except the United States 😬. But I only bring this up because after reading The Island of Sea Women, I realized that this (well-researched!) historical fiction had much more of an impact on my understanding of history than Prisoners of Geography ever could.
The Island of Sea Women follows childhood friends Young-sook and Mi-ja as they join their Jeju Island village’s diving collective as haenyeo (female divers). Early on, we are also introduced to the concept of sumbisori, the physical sound a haenyeo makes after resurfacing from a long dive. I loved this, and I believed it was a metaphor for the entire novel.
“The sumbisori is the special sound—like a whistle or a dolphin’s call—a haenyeo makes as she breaches the surface of the sea and releases the air she’s held in her lungs, followed by a deep intake of breath.”
We observe Young-sook, Mi-ja, and the village throughout the twentieth-century historical events that occur on Jeju (and Korea as a whole). Over a span of seventy years, we learn about the Japanese occupation of Korea, the People's Committees of post-WWII Korea, the Korean war, Jeju 4.3, the Bukchon massacre (this chapter was really hard to read), and Saemaul Undong (New Village Movement), just to name a few. We experience these events through Young-sook, so reading the last chapter feels like the sumbisori of the book itself: Young-sook’s deeply personal reaction to the trauma and hardships she experienced.
This book is an important one, and I believe that it covers many things that should be taught in history classes. Seeing these events through the eyes of Young-sook helps someone like me better understand the world – which is what Prisoners of Geography failed to do.
“‘Together our sumbisori create a song of the air and wind on Jeju. Our sumbisori is the innermost sound of the world. It connects us to the future and the past. Our sumbisori allows us first to serve our parents and then our children.’”