Comfort Women Narrated: A Literary Study of Sexual Slavery in Korean American Literature

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2020-07-10

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en

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During World War II, many young women were made into sexual slaves by the Japanese military. These so-called “comfort women” stayed silent for close to five decades, finally breaking their silence in the 1990s. This has led to many people taking up the subject and discussing it. The topic has made its way into Korean American literature. This paper will discuss three novels on the topic of “comfort women”: Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller, White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn Bracht, and Sunday Girl by Kalliope Lee. These novels reveal how the “comfort system” stripped the girls of their identities and voices, how the girls found space to create their own narratives, and how the “comfort women” issue has been passed on to subsequent generations.

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