P-09 “A Woman’s Lot is to Suffer”: Recognizing the Intersectionality of Oppression and Resistance in Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko

Buller Hall 108

Min Jin Lee’s novel Pachinko (2017) portrays the historically based lives of a displaced Korean family during Japan’s colonization of Korea from 1905-1945. The novel’s attention to the ways that colonial endeavors complicate Confucian family and national structures exemplifies the interrelation between gender and racial oppression facing Lee’s Korean women. However, by centering female voices all too often silenced, Lee also depicts modes to subvert such oppression. Using feminist and postcolonial theory, historical analysis, and close reading analysis, this project examines the construction of oppression and subversive resistance measures and, ultimately, argues the necessity of articulating local specificities instead of universifying and homogenizing the experience of women worldwide.