Black Flower
A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
In 1904, a group of Koreans seeks a new life in Mexico, in this “powerful, sweeping” novel based on a little-known chapter in history (List Magazine).
In 1904, facing war and the loss of their nation, more than a thousand Koreans leave their homes for the promise of land in unknown Mexico. After a long sea voyage, these emigrants—thieves and royals, priests and soldiers, orphans and families—discover that they have been sold into indentured servitude.
Aboard the ship, the orphan Ijeong falls in love with a nobleman’s daughter. When the hacendados claim their laborers and the two are separated, he vows to find her. But after years of working in the punishing heat of the henequen fields, the Koreans are caught in the midst of a Mexican revolution . . .
A tale of star-crossed love, political turmoil, and the dangers of seeking freedom in a new world—from an author who is “at the leading edge of a new breed of South Korean writers”—Black Flower is an epic story based on a little-known moment in history (Philadelphia City Paper).
“‘Can a nation disappear forever?’ . . . [In] a tale of collective loss, political revolution and the individual quest for self-determination . . . Kim brings us the souls caught up on the ground of this larger drama.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Spare and beautiful.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Readers who remember the historical fiction of Thomas B. Costain, Zoe Oldenbourg [sic] and Anya Seton will appreciate [Kim’s] extensive research and empathic imagination.” —Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Popular Korean novelist Kim (I Have the Right to Destroy Myself) chronicles the woeful tale of 1,033 Korean immigrants, who unknowingly sold themselves into indentured servitude. In 1905, lured by the promise of abundant food and work and eager to escape a regime in sharp economic decline on the eve of Japan's impending invasion, these Koreans travel to Mexico's Yucatan, where they're made to toil in fields under harrowing conditions and given funds insufficient to feed their families. The story is told from a multitude of perspectives, ranging from the tyrannical overseers to the lowest Korean field workers (among them thieves, former soldiers, a fallen priest, and aristocrats). Orphan Ijeong dreams of saving enough money to return to Korea to become a landowner. Yi Yeonsu, a beautiful aristocrat's daughter, hopes to attain some independence in Mexico. Ijeong and Yi Yeonsu fall in love, but without the ability to ensure that they are sold to the same hacienda, their romance seems doomed. This sprawling epic novel dips heavily into the concurrent Mexican revolution and the treatment of the Mayans. Spare and beautiful, Kim's novel offers a look at the roots of the little-known tribulations of the Korean diaspora in Mexico.
