Posted By: Matthew Sudnik
Posted On: April 9, 2010
Matthew Sudnik
Grades 9-12
Honors World History & Geography I
Central Catholic High School
Book review: Lost Names
The material and reading level of Richard E. Kim’s Lost Names is appropriate for high school students from grades 9-12. At Central Catholic, all of our freshmen read classics such as Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird. Lost Names fits well among these texts. It is a serious coming-of-age story, rich with images from a Korean boy’s experience of Japanese occupation. The content would also fit in our senior World Literature course along texts such as Night and The Kite Runner. There is nothing in this text I would not share with students from fifteen to eighteen years of age. It is engaging and challenging to freshmen and seniors alike.
The book reads like a memoir of boyhood and adolescence under Japanese occupation. The narrator describes his formal education in which the Korean children were instructed to perform ceremonial bowing toward the Emperor, perform a school play about Japanese military triumphs, and, give up the study of the Korean language and even their own names for new, Japanese names. While the Korean culture is disappearing in all institutions of society, the boy’s family unit remains a refuge for Korean ideas and culture. The narrator’s father was a political activist who spent years in prison for organizing a resistance movement against the Japanese. Throughout the book, the father is held in high regard by his son’s teachers and other members of civil society for his courage and activism again the Japanese. The father’s past also causes difficulties for his son who is beaten by teachers on two occasions. Throughout the story, the reader is presented with the struggle of the importance of preserving one’s culture and identity.
I would use this book in class to discuss a variety of topics. The issue of names can lead to a serious discussion of identity and cultural hegemony. What are the most essential aspects of a culture? What is the value of preserving languages, rituals, customs, etc? Can students produce examples of other languages and cultures that have been lost to the wars and conflicts of world history? Why might new immigrants to America want to preserve their language and customs?
Another important topic in this book is the idea of agency and power in the context of Korean culture. Throughout the story the boy and his family lose their sense of agency and power. In the first chapter, the family is prevented from travelling to Manchuria for the father’s new teaching position. Next, the schoolchildren must perform Japanese ceremonial rituals in honor of the Emperor. Then, the narrator is forced to read the part of a Japanese lieutenant in a school play. He must deliver a long speech about loyalty to the Japanese Empire (instead he intentionally forgets his lines). This complete deficit of agency is reversed in the final chapter when the narrator and his father lead the effort to liberate their town from the Japanese Empire at the end of the war. This liberation effort is important because the narrator and his father underscore the importance of bringing about their own liberation. Furthermore, while the Japanese are powerful throughout the story, they appear foolish and uncertain in wielding power.
For these reasons, Lost Names would fit well among other coming-of-age texts in a literature class. Richard Kim describes the psychology of a boy growing into a young man in the Korean culture. With reverence for his family and his culture, he struggles to negotiate the clashing worlds around him. Lost Names would also contribute to a modern history class or social science class on the relationship between the various peoples of East Asia and the importance of language, customs, and culture.