Review of The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

*The Island of Sea Women* by Lisa See (2019). Published by Scribner.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m watching.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

So I quit and decided to focus on this blog. I also randomly fell into a period of unemployment because of unexpected circumstances, and I took a long and hard look at my finances and realized I had enough to take time off. I did end up doing that, traveled for a bit, applied to jobs, and found myself working on the blog now more than ever.

In the summer of 2024, which is going to be about a year from when this blog post comes out, I won a prestigious government scholarship to study abroad in Busan, South Korea. Because my costs were fully covered and I didn’t have to worry about everyday expenses beyond food and getting myself to and from class, I used one of our two travel weekends to go to Jeju Island.

I flew an hour from Busan and spent two days on the island, and it was there I really began to become more interested in its recent history, especially when it came to the violent crackdowns in the period after colonial rule and before the war. Jeju’s history is suppressed, and there are very few resources in English academically about the massacres that happened there.

So when I returned to the United States, I specifically sought out literature about this. We Do Not Part is one big novel about the history of what happened, and the silence that came after it—I was sent an advance copy from Penguin and absolutely adored that novel, so when I saw The Island of Sea Women at my local library, I immediately checked the book out and read it.

Let’s get into the review! I know that introductions can get quite long, and they’re often what you’re not here for, so I don’t want to ramble too much.

On Jeju Island, the lives of two women are radically changed by colonialism and the violence that impacted island residents after the war.

This is a novel that takes place across many different periods. It begins in the present day, when one of the main characters, now an elderly haenyeo in Jeju, meets an American who speaks poor Korean in a Jeju accent. Turns out she’s the descendant of someone she knows very well, and this is the chance to know what happened and fractured their relationship beyond repair.

Let’s pivot to the past: Young-sook and Mi-ja are sevens year old on Jeju Island, in the middle of Japanese colonialism. In their village it seems they are going to be the next haenyeo, which comes with an incredible amount of risk. We see a firsthand account of how women could go into the water and never come back, or come back with severe brain damage and never will be the same again.

The Japanese colonial period during their upbringing is a difficult one, but as the two grow older and more into their responsibilities, it becomes time to find a husband. Eventually they start going to Russia to dive for work, especially when resources become scarce, forcing the duo to leave behind their families in order to provide for them. When they’re at the port one day, they spot a man that Young-sook has a crush on immediately.

He’s from an influential family on Jeju Island, one that collaborated with the Japanese in order to expand their riches. While Young-sook has eyes for him, he only casts his romantic gaze on Mi-ja, and their marriage is swift. She moves in with her husband, and when Young-sook herself gets married,

As all of this is going on, we learn extensively about haenyeo culture and the island’s general attitude. For example, a haenyeo in the family meant that she was actually going to be a breadwinner, and when a woman gets married, it means that she has to move into her husband’s village.

Eventually the Japanese are expelled and the Americans arrive, but that brings a new onslaught of violence leads to entire villages being wiped out. I won’t go into detail for the sake of spoilers, but no one can be spared from what’s going on, and even the haenyeo are banned from going too deep into the water and providing for their families and villages.

I was seriously impressed with the world that See built in this novel. The methodologies of writing this were explained at the back of my copy, and I could see that she did so much research and interviewing in order to write this novel and make it as authentic as she could. I’ve never read See’s work before now, but I flew through this novel because of how invested I was in its world and characters.

Overall Thoughts

I’ve briefly touched on my thoughts already in the previous section, but I did genuinely enjoy this novel. As I said before, I flew through its pages and read the entire novel in one sitting. Some books remind me of why I read and love the written word, and this is one of those novels.

I also flew through We Do Not Part and tried to read it in one sitting, which says a lot. I want to see more nonfiction books about the Jeju Massacres in English, as well as more general awareness. The content and story in this book can be so disturbing, and I knew what to expect going into this. But I learned a lot about the haenyeo through reading this as well.

The writing in this is also just fantastic. It’s a masterclass in how to tell a good story at the end of the day, which is high praise.

I think if you haven’t read this novel and are interested in it, or its subject, you should seriously consider picking up this book. I know I will be buying a copy for my personal library, which I try not to do unless I actually loved a book enough to want it by me.

Follow me below on Instagram and Goodreads for more.