Can’t I Go Instead
In the near-feudal Korea of the 1920s, Chaeryeong, a nobleman’s daughter, is to be given a peasant girl as a “birthday present.” Sunam begs to go in her sister’s place, becoming Chaeryeong’s maid and ultimately her replacement, inspiration, and savior.
When Chaeryeong’s lover is arrested in Japan for involvement in the Korean independence movement, she’s forced into marriage and sent off to California. In her place, Sunam will be a “comfort woman,” one of the untold thousands of women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army. Meanwhile, caught up in the anti-Asian fever of World War II America, Chearyeong endures a Japanese internment camp. Reunited in postwar Korea, both women are swept into the cataclysmic upheavals of the Korean War, taking a crushing toll on the already traumatized Sunam.
The novel is plot-driven and sometimes reliant on coincidence. Some plot turns feel unlikely, like Sunam’s relatively easy escape from a slave camp in northern China. Spanning four decades, with multiple characters and considerable—although useful—historical context, the novel is heavy in summary narration, leaving little time for in-depth character development or a richer sense of place. However, readers will experience the courage of two women facing a toxic onslaught of race, class, and sexism in another time and culture.
