In Choi's second novel, Echoes of the White Giraffe (1993), the protagonist, Sookan, is a teenager. The story covers her incredible escape to South Korea. Year of Impossible Goodbyes was Choi's first novel, published in 1991. Since all of Choi's novels are based on her personal experience, her books can be read as a journey through her life. After twenty years of teaching Choi retired and devoted her time to her writing. When her husband died, Choi became a teacher, working in New York's public schools. After college, she worked for a brief time for her husband, a Korean businessman. When Choi was twenty-one, she emigrated to the United States, where she then attended Manhattan College, in New York. Like the young character in her novel, Choi fled the hardships of the Communist takeover of North Korea by escaping to South Korea when she was a young girl. Sook Nyul Choi was born in 1937 in Pyongyang in what is now North Korea.
Year of Impossible Goodbyes, selected by the American Library Association as a notable book in 1992, provides an insider's glimpse of North Korea, a country that has since become one of the world's most secretive societies. Everyone's spirits rise when World War II ends, but more tragedy lies ahead. Her grandfather dies, which causes her mother to fall into a debilitating depression.
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In time, a series of dramatic events changes Sookan's life forever. If Sookan's mother does not meet it, her food rations, which are already skimpy, are cut back even further. The Japanese soldiers demand a certain production quota each day. In order to survive, Sookan's mother has been forced to run a sock factory in a building on her property. Sookan's father and older brothers have not had contact with Sookan her youngest brother, Inchun and her mother in several years. For as long as Sookan can remember, the Japanese invaders have occupied her country and have attempted to strip away all aspects of Korean culture. Winner of the 1992 Judy Lopez Memorial Award, Year of Impossible Goodbyes is narrated by the nine-year-old Sookan, who is of Korean heritage. Sook Nyul Choi's Year of Impossible Goodbyes is an autobiographical novel about the author's escape from North Korea.
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