Minyoung Lee's Reviews > At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories

I have some extreme mixed feelings about this book, wanting to give it both a five star and a one star at the same time. Will compromise with a three, but that score really does not give it justice to the complicated emotions racing through my head right now.

Let's start with the five star review, I thought the writing was for the most part extremely well done, especially for short stories of such diverse range in subject matter. I almost wanted to write like the author! I was especially surprised with the level of writing regarding her "Japanese themed" stories, which were loosely based on what I presume Japanese legends and folklore. She wrote extremely Asian themed scenery and dialogue with a natural hand that didn't make the story sound like a martial arts film. I was entertained with her tone of talking about the most fantastical occurrences in the most natural way possible. As someone who has a tendency to write a lot about fantastical and non-realistic situations but still want it to sound like a normal, day-to-day story, I thought I finally found my "basis" writer that I could emulate and study.

Now for the one star review, I have to admit, in afterthought, her frequent use of Japan themes do offend me a lot. I am not Japanese, and Japanese culture seems as exotic to me as it would to any Caucasian Kansas lady who decides to write about it, so I would not personally know whether the stories are personally offensive in any way. However, as an Asian, I do know how personally offensive most, if not all, portrayals of "the orient" by writers and artists not part of the culture end up being. No matter how well written in a literally point of view, it is hard to escape the notion that someone from the outside is trying to fetishize a culture that is not their own. At first I almost thought that the author WAS Japanese, some way or another, but after researching her public biography, I am fairly certain she has no ties to the culture whatsoever. So really, what gives her the right to orientalize an entire people's point of view that lasted for several millennia before this lady even started researching about them?

For example, one of her short stories DID personally offend me, and this actually was a Japan themed very fictional short story about a Japanese shaman-empress who would later beget a son who would conquer the ancient Korean nation of Silla. The offensive part was that she chose to use the real ancient Korean nations of Silla and Paekjae in her story and claim a fictional history that the Japanese ruled these nations. To explain myself a bit, the factual history of these ancient nations are a bit of a hot topic amongst the three East Asian countries (China, Korea and Japan) since the boundaries of these nations later roughly become the boundaries of the modern day equivalent to these countries. To claim that the Japanese conquered the historically independent and then technical superior nation of Silla is kind of rubbing salt to the Koreans' still fresh wound of the Japanese invading Korea during the World Wars. Not only that, the the author's language implied that Silla and Paekjae were Chinese nations and not once did she explain that they were Korean.

I was actually so offended by this story located right in the middle of the book, that not only was I not able to enjoy and finish the rest of the book, but decided to write a letter explaining my thoughts to the author. (The author did reply right away trying to explain that she did not mean to offend and not once did she SAY that Silla and Paekjae were Chinese and that SHE was aware that the Japanese never historically conquered Korea during this era even though she chose not to write about it... Well, do most of the readers who read her stories know this? No. Will readers believe every single thing said in a fictional short story? Again, no, but if this is the only piece of writing the reader will read in his or her lifetime about the subject, I'm sure the notion will be pretty much settle. Not saying all fiction should be historical fact, but think about the implications if you chose to use real historical names.) I do not think any modern author would write things like this intentionally to offend and they probably actually really like the East Asian culture if they are willing to write about such things... But again, it proves my point that it is extremely difficult to NOT offend a person of that culture if you are someone from outside of that culture looking in, especially since you are not an actual part of that society and not immersed in the subtle nuances.

I mean, why write about another person's culture and history that you only superficially know about when you have a rich and fulfilling story of your own that cannot be told in the fullest by someone else?