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Contemporary Fiction Views: On being shattered and rebuilding [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-06-27
As Korea becomes two nations, a young man is one of a truckload of people being sent south. They all promise to remember each other as they are dropped off. Tongsu makes the same promise as he gets off near his parents' farm. But he knows he won't.
In Paul Yoon's "Valley of the Moon", published in the July 3 issue of The New Yorker, Tongsu returns home but there is little left. Not even the ghosts of his parents and sister visit him. But he rebuilds the broken house. When an orphaned brother and sister come from a church charity to help him work, they stay. And the house nearly becomes a home.
Tongsu works hard to put the farm back together. But he also takes advantage of what comes his way. Another refugee died at camp. Tongsu knew where he hid his money and hides it in a sack of rice that he leaves camp with. An unplanned confrontation goes his way.
Later on, Eunhae, the girl, goes to a city. Just as on the farm, changes arrive and the characters adapt. There is no stasis, and little comfort. But there is endurance.
Enduring -- surviving -- is Tongsu's strongest wish. It goes back to his childhood. The mountain valley in which he was raised is called Valley of the Moon. There is an old folktale that this is where the moon comes down to earth and is shattered. The story always unnerved him as a child.
But he doesn't remember the end of the story, which the author includes. Because after the moon is shattered, it rebuilds itself.
As do the people of South Korea.
Yoon's grandfather was a refugee after Korea was split into two. Although this is not his story, "Valley of the Moon" is a microcosm of ways in which people survived when the fighting stopped and everyone looked for ways to rebuild their lives.
The story is one in Yoon's upcoming story collection, The Hive and the Honey, to be published in October. The stories are set in different times and places, but Yoon says they include searchers. Looking for ways to belong or ways to build a life are key ways to find meaning in what we do, and occasionally, why.
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