Elizabeth Kim (1)

“Ten Thousand Sorrows” is a powerful and heartbreaking story of a little orphaned girl from South Korea who gets a second chance in life and gets adopted by an American family. This however soon proves to be the start of a very hard, sad and lonely life for her, full of psychological and physical abuse, first at the hands of her adopted family of fundamentalist Christians and then at the hands of her schizophrenic husband.
The book wasn't what I expected - a grueling story of life in Korea. In fact it was the life in a small-town America of the 1960s and 1970s that brought her those horrors and will shock the readers the most. In fact those couple of years she had in Korea with her loving birth mother, regardless of the poverty, the ostracism they had to face and the trauma of seeing her mother being murdered, were the happiest years of her life, memories of which seemed to help her cope with the abuse later on. A truly awful and disgusting picture of the Western world on one hand and beautiful and inspiring story of mother’s love on the other.… (más)

There is no doubt that this is the story of a life that was unfair from the beginning. Born post-Korean War to an absent GI father, and subsequently shunned villager, Elizabeth was seen as a non-human for 2 reasons, being a girl, and being of mixed race.

The things she sees and experiences as a child are bad enough in her home country, but when she is adopted by a "nice religious American family".......the abuse continues behind closed doors. This time in the name of God. Terrible things happen to her, and yet we know from the fact that the book is written that she comes good. Thank goodness. It might have been hard to read otherwise.

This is a real facing of demons book, and the author has a lot to face. What an inspirational person. It has made me very grateful that my life is peaceful and violence-free. Amen.… (más)

Kim traces her evolution from a traumatized childhood in postwar Korea to her emotional awakening as a young abused wife in America. Currently a journalist based in California, she re-creates her uncle and grandfather's gruesome "honor killing" of her rebellious mother. Eventually, Kim was left at a Christian orphanage where she was adopted by a white, fundamentalist American couple. However, their pious tyranny was matched only by the harsh, racist abuse Kim endured at school from her classmates. Seeking to escape, she married the young deacon at her parents' church, who turned out to be an abusive schizophrenic.

It's hard to believe that human beings can suffer so many atrocities starting in childhood and still turn into successful adults!… (más)