Crystal Hana Kim's historical novel, The Stone Home, introduces us to a Korean "Home" for a wide range of people: men housed in the Big House and women, housed in the Little House. In 1980, they have been taken off the street for a wide range of reasons. Most have been
…more homeless. It was a Korean state -sanctioned reformatory, not a home in the usual sense, to make them "good citizens." They weren't criminal in the usual sense, just living outside the norms. Kim reveals the reality slowly.
It's Eunju and Sanchul who narrate the novel, and their fates are connected in unexpected ways.
The novel begins with a young woman, Narae, knocking on Eunju's door, holding a knife. She believes she has found her mother, Eunju.
Her father, Sanchul, has died, and he told her to take the knife to Eunju. Eunju was shocked, but she decides to tell Narae how she and her father meet, and under what painful circumstances.
Eunju was taken with her mother from the street to this place where they would be "reformed." Sanchul was "arrested" on the street with his brother. Both are young when they found themselves at Stone Home, and it took a while for them to understand the perimeters of their spaces.
They were closely supervised by other inmates who had been promoted to Keepers. The Keepers were supervised by Teacher, a man without mercy, should they fail in their assignments of getting the most work out of the group they supervised. Ironically, The Chapel was the name of the place where the offenders were punished. The priest was also the Warden. Ugly public punishments were one of the methods of control.
The women were in a gentler environment, and they were responsible for cooking for the institution. They ate last, but at least they had some more freedom. The boys were forced to provide large quotas of products for the state, and the violence they endured was memorable.
The results of the environment were lasting. Narae wants to expose The Stone House but Eunju is more hesitant. It would mean dredging the whole painful experience again.
It's not an easy read by any means, but exposing this reality is important lest we forget what we have done and still do to one another. Readers interested in social justice and government mistreatment of its citizens would appreciate it.
I did wish for a glossary of Korean words in the back. (less)
