Forgotten Country, by Catherine Chung, was a rollercoaster of emotion, if nothing else. Filled with everything from filial betrayal to traumatic childhood memories and a less than satisfying conclusion, it still stands as a fascinating and more than anything, realistic account of an APIA family in post-war America.

• Our narrator Janie (Jeehyun) , the older sister of other main character Hannah (Heihyun), is at first depicted as a rational, fairly sympathetic hard-worker who only wants to be there for her family. As our story progresses, we begin to see how she ticks – her motives lie largely in the obligations hoisted onto her from a very young age and are only reinforced by her sister’s disappearance and father’s eventual illness/death. Part of you feels sorry for her – far too much was expected of her, and sister or not, to be shackled with the task of finding her sister in the middle of PhD work seems more than a little unfair. Yet Janie begins to show some cracks as the story goes on and we see just how dysfunctional every member of this family is.
• At our storys conclusion, Janie and Hannah are planning to go their separate ways, perhaps never to meet again.  After all, Hannah initially left her family behind in an attempt to gain independence. Their father dead and their mother broken, the story doesn’t exactly fill you with hope about the future. But at the same time, it makes an important point : family stuff is messy, and even when things don’t go horribly, it doesn’t mean things end up great.
• Komo was initially my most despised character; the heavily Christian aunt of Hannah and Janie, she foisted shame and disapproval on not just their Father, but on the family as a whole. It’s interesting how Komo is one of the characters most directly responsible for upholding the misogyny and shame placed on women in Korean society. She claims that by not having a boy, their family has failed.
• At the same time, Hannah’s refusal to accept the consequences of her selfishness are just as much to blame for rending the family apart. After all, while she eventually rejoins them after the advent of her father’s illness, she never gives a substantial explanation for why. Why had she assumed her family knew about the molestation if it happened outside of their view? It could be a simple case of leveraging her experience into the rest of her resentment towards her family.
• The constant use of stories within stories helped give the impression of Janie speaking to an invisible confidant; it reads quite a bit like a personal journal, which helps draw the reader in and become invested in the fate of Hannah as well as Janie.