We read the book Forgotten Country, a pretty emotional book. About a family who has had a lot of difficult times, the book, being told from Janies perspective, talks about her grandparents and what they experienced in Korea, with the Japanese occupation, how her grandmas mother had a baby during the occupation, she got caught, they took her away, killed her, gave the baby back, the baby died shortly after, talking about the curse of the family, how the family always loses a sister. How Janies mother had a sister, she went off to college, then was kidnapped by North Koreans and taken north, not knowing if she was alive or not, no way to look for her so they had to “kill her” to protect themselves. Then Janies sister disappears, they all feared the worst, that she was dead, turns out she wasn’t and she was actually just fine. Overall the book explored the lives of this family, going back a few generations, exploring all the way back to Janies great grandparents. Seeing how the experiences of Janies family were so traumatic that they directl
y impacted Janie, generations later. It was a really good book to read.
We also watched a video about a Korean American girl named Sam who was adopted. She posted some videos and was in a movie and basically someone discovered that she looked exactly like Sam, they got in touch and found out they were identical twins. They ended up meeting up getting a test and proving they were actually identical twins. They discovered how different their lives were growing up but they were really similar. It was a really intense story, the entire time they were waiting for the results of the DNA test, I could feel the anxiety, how positive they were that they were twins, but at the same time the tiny possibility that they weren’t, just waiting for however long it took to finally get the results. It was really exciting when they got the results saying they were in fact twins. There was a cliffhanger in the video though, they never get in touch during the video, it ends with them writing a letter to her, hopefully they do get in touch and maybe that will be another video.