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- General fiction - |
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Song of the Exile |
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 Song of the Exile byKiana Davenport Ballantine Publishing Group 360 pages, 2000 ISBN 0345434943 Reviewed by Marion E. Cason Song of the Exile is a story of physical and mental survival. It is the story of Kao, a Hawaiian, and Sunny, a Korean-Hawaiian, who struggle with inner demons trying to make sense of their worlds. When World War II catches up with them in Paris, Sunny goes to Singapore to find her half-sister Lili, abandoned by their father when Lili was a little girl. Kao stays in Paris helping the underground people get Americans and others out of Europe. When Pearl Harbor is bombed, Kao realizes he has to find Sunny and bring her back home. Kao finds Sunny as the Japanese who have taken over Singapore march her off. With great sensitivity, and through Sunny, Davenport tells the amazing story of the hundreds of thousands of women and girls as young as ten, mainly Korean, who were taken by the Japanese to be their "comfort women." The atrocities these women endured are heart wrenching: Up early to bow to the Japanese; the work detail; the squalid living conditions in the Quonset huts; the lack of food, clothing and sanitary conditions; and the physical violations suffered at the hands of the Japanese soldiers. When the war ends, Kao is in Hawaii. His family tries to help Kao get over Sunny and get on with his life. Hawaii has its own struggles trying to hang on to its culture and customs, while corporate America wants to rebuild and build hotels along the beaches, beaches that are sacred to the natives. Kao's friend Oogh says it all, "Hula Man. When you want to scream, be still. Be still. Deep within you is a place where everything's all right. As for your music . . . it articulates life. Makes it bearable." Song of the Exile, the fifth book by the talented Hawaiian and Anglo-American Davenport, is based on true stories told by survivors at a conference held at Harvard University in 1993. Davenport's critically acclaimed previous novel Shark Dialogues is also set in Hawaii. Song of the Exile is a must read, if not for the beauty of Hawaii, Paris and Singapore, then for the atrocity of World War II and for what has been left unsaid. As Oogh sums it up at the end, "There are so many voices we must hear. So many meanings we never get. Perhaps we are all lost, and found, and lost again. Perhaps only amazement keeps us alive." |
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