White Chrysanthemum

White Chrysanthemum is the story of two Korean sisters- Hana and Emi, separated by the second world war. Hana is dragged away by a Japanese soldier to a life of sexual slavery while Emi is left to grow up in war ravaged times. The book is divided into two narratives- Hana’s narrative covers the war years, while in Emi’s chapters it is 2011, and the elderly Emi is still looking for her sister.
The sisters are part of the haenyeo community, female sea divers.
The book is an account not of war but how war affects people, how wars bring out the worst in men. It isn't an easy book and I found myself crying a lot over the days it took me to go through it. It is an immensely well told testimony of the brutalities of war and it has attempted to recognise the plight of the comfort women, who are yet to receive an apology for the atrocities committed on them.
The characters are fictional but the truth it has attempted to show needs to be recognised, so we do not end up denying or minimising the truth.
The book gives us a viewing of the suffering of others affected by the war – the Japanese soldier desensitized by the starvation of his son and suicide of his wife, and the kindness of the ageing Japanese “comfort woman” to Hana – but the bulk of the book’s attention and sympathy is for the Korean victims, the women whose stories are in danger of being lost for ever. 

Suspenseful, hopeful, and ultimately redemptive, White Chrysanthemum tells a story of two sisters whose love for each other is strong enough to triumph over the grim evils of war.
This is the author Mary Lynn Bracht's debut novel and one that should be on our reading lists. 

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