Obey Tradition or Be Your Self?

The book Gathering of Pearls is about the life of a girl named Sookan whose from a Korean poor family. She came to study in Finch Collage, an all-girl Catholic college in New York alone by using her scholarship. The life in collage was hard for her because she has to do extra job and study hard so that she could have pocket money and scholarship. The life in America taught her a lot including how to make her own choice and the meaning of a family.

       Sookan is a very tough girl who lives in a hard life. But she still work hard and be positive. At first she was lonely and afraid of being in a totally new environment. Then, after she found out the culture difference and adapted the new life, she started to accept her difference and tried to change her personality. This situation is pretty similar with mine because this is also the first time for me to stay in a foreign country alone for such a long time. Even though Sookan’s life obviously so much harder then me, I still have a little bit same feeling as her. For instance her sister always wanted to control her but that was not the life she want. She was confused about obey the tradition or be her self. My parents used wanted me to be an artiest and trained me as an artiest for many years since I was still a baby. After I grow up I realized the life I really want is to be a biologist instead of an artiest. I struggled for a long time, choosing to be a biologist means all the efforts I did for art was wasted, but be an artiest can not make me feel happy. I chose to follow my dream as Sookan does, so I can really understand her feeling of struggling and worrying.

       I kind of like this book but not really. There are some parts I like. Like the writer described the inside feeling of Sookan by writing about the scenery. The writer described the river, the small rocks, the color of sky, the wind…. But there are also some other parts that I’m not really interested in. Almost every 3 chapters are the same. They are all about her study, her job, the letters, her struggling, and her talk with friends. Even the sequences are the same. When I was writing notes of this book, I found it was kind of boring. At first the book was interesting because I haven’t know about the characters’ personalities yet, I could find out their personalities from their behavior. Then after I finished reading 1/3 of the book I realized there were nothing new for me to find out.

       This is a nice book but not for me. I will not recommend it to my friends except they are also international students who study alone abroad otherwise they will not really understand the meaning of the book.