Hidden Treasures: Lives of First-Generation Korean Women in Japan, by Jackie J. Kim (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004, $29.95 paperback)

Set during the Japanese colonization of South Korea in the early twentieth century, Jackie J. Kim’s Hidden Treasures: Lives of First-Generation Korean Women in Japan intimately leads its readers through the hardships encountered by first-generation Korean women who immigrated to Japan. Piecing together the stories of their struggles, the book successfully brings life to an otherwise overlooked, and disturbing, chapter of immigrant life in Japan.

Kim uniquely structures the book as a series of informal interviews held with a variety of Korean women who settled across Japan. The narrative approach personalizes the women and their experiences, creating a conversation-like effect for the reader. As their stories unfold, the women’s different experiences converge at a single turn of fate: their immigration to Japan. Finally given a chance to share their forgotten story, each woman explains her own journey through discrimination, severe poverty, blatant exploitation, and abuse as she fought for her very survival in a foreign country.

The book is divided into different sections that distinguish the varied reasons that led up to each woman’s immigration and the struggles that ensued thereafter. As women, they became targets not only of the ingrained patriarchy within their Korean households, but also prejudice by virtue of their second-class status in Japan. The progression of each individual narrative illustrates the way in which, the women were slowly forced to dissolve their Korean identity, from giving up their traditional names to losing their native tongue itself.

The loss of their Korean identity was only one of the many challenges for these women, who also faced abusive relationships and jobs requiring such intense manual labor that they were rendered prematurely aged and ill. The women are warriors of their own kind, and each of their lives is characterized by sacrifice. One woman remarks that “people…told [her] that if [she] wrote a book about [her] life, it would surely become a movie.” The generally resigned and exhausted attitude of the women reflects the depth to which they seemingly burnt every ounce of their living energy in their earlier years. Now living alone for the most part, all of them are left with memories of their painful past.

Kim’s intimate interviews with the Korean women allows for a better understanding of an important aspect not only of Japanese history, but of also the struggles faced by immigrants in general. While time may have cast the stories of these women under the shadows of the past, Hidden Treasures allows their courage and determination remain alive even today. (Saman Hussain)

Mary Ingraham Bunting: Her Two Lives, by Elaine Yaffe (Frederic C. Beil, 2005, $29.95 hard cover)

Yaffe chose a remarkable, yet relatively unknown, woman to chronicle for a biography. Bunting was influential in higher education, beginning in earnest with her position as dean of Douglass College in 1955. She subsequently became president of Radcliffe College and, upon retirement from that post, served as an advisor to the president of Princeton University until 1975. In addition to her administrative accomplishments, Bunting was an enthusiastic scientist and researcher, as well as a mother of four. All of these accomplishments – personal and professional – are thoroughly chronicled in Her Two Lives. 

While clearly tracing the path of Bunting’s career, Jaffe pays particular attention to the more decisive and impressive actions in the life of this early feminist. Bunting earned her PhD by age 23, built and ran a working farm, and had four children before accepting the position of dean of Douglass College. Douglass was the start of her academic life (termed her “second life” by Jaffe), where her approachable demeanor and efficient habits aided her in gaining increased recognition for women’s colleges and female scholars. Under her leadership in various positions, Douglass integrated with Rutgers University, Radcliffe merged more fully with Harvard, and numerous institutes and programs were created to advance female scholars, from the young microbiologist to the working mother. 

Bunting is a deserving subject of such an extensive biography – her accomplishments run throughout higher education, science, and second-wave feminism – and yet the quotations from Bunting herself make it clear that she does not consider herself an elite academic or political figure. Jaffe’s portrait of her, however, reflects the author’s own admiration more strongly than it should. Jaffe’s recounting of situations lacks the unbiased perspective that would have created a more rounded picture of Bunting, who, while inspirational, was surely human as well. Although Jaffe did extensive research (she had lengthy interviews with Bunting as well as full access to her daily journals), the authority this background gave her, combined with her evident admiration of her subject, seems to have made Jaffe hesitant to explore both sides of controversial situations or decisions in Bunting’s career. (Ursula Gross)