4 minute read
Literary Hill by Karen Lyon
Small Gestures
In “The Hundred Choices Department Store,” a novel for young readers (grades 4-7), Ginger Park paints a bleak but inspiring picture of privation and oppression in war-torn Korea. Based on her own mother’s life, Park tells the story through the eyes of Mikooki, now an old woman, who was a girl when Japan occupied Korea in WWII.
School, she tells us, was little more than child labor—darning socks, polishing boots, and sewing buttons onto military uniforms “for the war effort.” Worst of all was a nightmarish stint in a dye factory, where the image of “ghost-like children hunched over the iron vats” haunted her sleep for years to come.
Miyooki’s load is lightened by the love of her older brother, who looks out for her and supplements her meager school rations with bowls of noodles, and by the wealth of her parents, who co-own a luxury department store that caters to a haughty Japanese clientele. “Japan occupied my country,” she writes defiantly, “but not my heart.”
Struggling to make a life for herself, and inspired by the face of the hollow-eyed boy she met in the factory, Miyooki helps her mother in her work with orphans. “Small gestures are never forgotten,” her mother assures her—and dreams of a day when she can escape the misery around her.
Miyooki’s mother also advises her to “tell a story, something meaningful.” And that is just what Ginger Park has done in this achingly beautiful tale of a brave girl who must find the courage to leave her home behind and rise above the sorrows of her times.
Ginger Park is the award-winning author of five children’s books, including “My Freedom Trip: A Child’s Escape from North Korea,” and “Goodbye, 382 Shin Dang Dong,” which Newsweek magazine called “the perfect all-American story.” A lifelong resident of the Washington area, she is co-owner of CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE in downtown DC. www.parksisters.com The virtual book launch for “The Hundred Choices Department Store” will be on March 23 at 6 pm at www.politicsandprose.com.
“Never shall I forget my tortured feelings when I beheld that noble edifice wrapt in flames,” wrote a horrified Dr. James Ewell in 1814. The local doctor was a witness to the torching of the US Capitol by departing British troops, who left a smoldering path of destruction in their wake. Lest recent events tempt us to believe that our times are unique in DC history,
the LITERARY HILL Edward P. Moser is here to set the record straight. “Since the start of its construction 230 years ago,” he reminds us, “the Capitol A Compendium of Readers, Writers, Books, & Events has witnessed an astonishing amount of turmoil, bloodshed, and controversy.” by Karen Lyon In “The Lost History of the Capitol: The Hidden and Tumultuous Saga of Congress and the Capitol Building,” Moser tells more than thirty stories of duels, canings, riots, bombings, assassination attempts, and bootlegging—all of which took place in or near the Capitol. Among the highly dramatic accounts are the 1835 beating of a congressman by ex-senator Sam Houston; the 1890 shooting death of a former representative by the beleaguered reporter whom he had “bullied, browbeaten, and outright beaten”; and the 1954 assault on Congress by Puerto Rican separatists, which left five representatives wounded. While Moser acknowledges that the insurrection on January 6 “ranks among the wildest events in the building’s more than two centuries of existence,” he describes another deadly riot that took place on election day in 1857, when two gangs supported by the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party—the Plug Uglies from Baltimore and the local Rip Raps—tried to disrupt the vote. The president called out the Marines, who eventually prevailed, but not before “eight to ten people lay dead or fatally wounded, and twenty to thirty others were wounded.” All were spectators. “A locus of so much power and wealth inevitably leads to considerable bad along with the good,” writes Moser. As the defining symbol of our neighborhood, the Capitol embodies all the beauty, richness, idiosyncrasy—and occasional ugliness—of our nation itself. “The Lost History of the Capitol” is an entertaining introduction to the many stories it has to tell. Edward Moser is a historian, tour guide, and author who served as a speechwriter for George H.W. Bush and editor of Time-Life Books. His previous books include “The White House’s Unruly Neighborhood” and “A Patriot’s A to Z of America.”
In Ginger Park’s novel for The Women’s Tour
young readers, “The Hun- From the Alpha Kappa Alpha mural at Howard Unidred Choices Department Store,” an old woman tells versity to a painted tribute to Native American adthe story of her girlhood in vocate Zitkala-Ša, Washington boasts a host of sites Japanese-occupied Korea during WWII. dedicated to women’s stories. Tour guides and co-
Local historian and tour guide Edward P. Moser describes more than 30 dramatic incidents involving the Capitol and Congress in “The Lost History of the Capitol.”
