The Island of Sea Women
SynopsisPlot
Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends that come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger. Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook’s differences are impossible to ignore. The Island of Sea Women is an epoch set over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War and its aftermath, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers.
Story
About this book
On the Korean island of Jeju, women known as haenyeo have long worked as professional free divers, harvesting the ocean floor while men in their communities care for the children. Lisa See's novel follows two girls, Mi-ja and Young-sook, who grow up on Jeju and join their village's all-female diving collective as beginners. Young-sook descends from a long line of haenyeo and is expected to inherit her mother's role leading the group.
Mi-ja's father worked as a collaborator with the Japanese, an association that marks her for life. The story stretches across decades, beginning in the 1930s under Japanese colonial rule and moving through World War II, the Korean War, and its long aftermath, into the era of mobile phones and wet suits. Jeju's residents find themselves caught between warring empires, and the friendship holds through early hardships while outside pressures pull at it.
Diving is at the center of the book's structure. The haenyeo work without breathing equipment, going down repeatedly into cold water at real physical risk, and the group works under an experienced head diver. See places questions of loyalty, guilt, and inherited standing inside that daily labour.
