Comfort Woman (1997) is the first novel of author Nora Okja Keller, who was born in Korea to a Korean mother and American father and raised in Hawaii. The title of this historical novel refers to the mostly Korean “comfort women” who were forced into prostitution at “recreation camps” for Japanese soldiers during World War II. The women who lived in such camps were raped, beaten, and sometimes tortured; the majority died in the camps and few survived to tell their stories.

Comfort Woman presents a fictionalized account of one comfort woman through the story of Akiko, one of the novel’s two narrators. Akiko’s story alternates with that of her American-born daughter, Beccah. The novel moves between the two narrators and between the past and the present, revealing the complex and shifting connections between mother and daughter, and exploring the ways in which the wounds of one generation are passed to the next. Together, the distinct voices and the inextricably linked stories of Akiko and Beccah form a fierce and powerful story that has both historical and emotional authenticity.

As a girl in Korea, Akiko was sold into slavery to raise a dowry for her sister. She was forced into a recreation camp run by the Japanese army where, by the time she was 12, Japanese soldiers raped her every night. Akiko recounts in painful detail the condition of the camps and the treatment she and her fellow comfort women suffered at the hands of the soldiers. After several years, Akiko is able to escape. After the war she marries an American missionary, returning with him to the United States.

Beccah, whose father dies when she is five years old, has difficulty understanding Akiko’s strange behavior, speaking to the spirits of the dead, falling into trances, and earning money as a spiritual guide and fortune-teller. Beccah loves her mother deeply, but she is embarrassed by her spiritual rituals and superstitions. Beccah grows up knowing nothing of her mother’s past and so does not realize that much of her mother’s behavior is tied the grief, anger, guilt, and terror she suffers as a result of her experiences as a comfort woman.

The chapters narrated by Beccah intimately recount her difficult adolescence, including her feelings of isolation and her conflicted and ambivalent feelings about her mother. Keller masterfully conveys Beccah’s alienation from both her peers and Akiko and the confusion of love and shame she feels for her mother. Often, the ordinariness of Beccah’s experiences at school and with friends stand in stark contrast to Akiko’s experiences as a comfort woman (when she was about Beccah’s age) and to her understanding of the ghost-filled world in which she lives. In this context, Akiko’s life in the recreation camps and their psychological aftermath is made all the more horrifying and powerful for the reader.

In both voices, Keller’s prose is lyrical and deeply imagistic. The beauty of Keller’s prose provides a kind of balance to the difficult and painful nature of the story. In addition, in Comfort Woman, Keller’s characters, and her readers, experience a full range of emotional experience: not only grief and pain, but also humor and consolation. Comfort Woman has been widely praised by critics and was a recipient of the American Book Award.

SOURCES
Hill, Logan. “Novel History Lessons: A Profile of Nora Okja Keller,” Poets & Writers 30, no. 2 (2002): 31–37.
Keller, Nora Okja. Comfort Woman. New York: Viking, 1997.