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A review by tiepig
In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom by Maryanne Vollers, Yeonmi Park
5.0
Given the heavy subject matter, I expected this to be a very difficult read that would take me a while to get through. What I found instead was an incredibly free-flowing, sincere story of the authors life, which neither skipped over nor dwelled on any detail for longer than was necessary to paint the picture. I read the whole thing much faster, and with much more enthusiasm than I had expected.
Yeonmi Park's story is heartbreaking and inspiring. She's an incredible person, and the world is already much better off for having her - and this book - in it. I hope I get to hear a lot more about her and her work in the future.
I've read similar books to this, such as Wild Swans by Jung Chang, about living through the rise of communism in China. But this is the first I've read about North Korea, and it's so strange to think about how recent everything in it is - Yeonmi Park is a few years younger than me, so everything in this book was going on (and is still going on) while I've been alive. It's really emphasized how much work there is to do, and shown that Yeonmi is exactly the kind of person who can lead us in that work.
Yeonmi Park's story is heartbreaking and inspiring. She's an incredible person, and the world is already much better off for having her - and this book - in it. I hope I get to hear a lot more about her and her work in the future.
I've read similar books to this, such as Wild Swans by Jung Chang, about living through the rise of communism in China. But this is the first I've read about North Korea, and it's so strange to think about how recent everything in it is - Yeonmi Park is a few years younger than me, so everything in this book was going on (and is still going on) while I've been alive. It's really emphasized how much work there is to do, and shown that Yeonmi is exactly the kind of person who can lead us in that work.