On AGL now...

Well, i have to admit that i was having a pretty hard time reading A Gesture Life. I couldn't seem to sit down (and awake) long enough to read it. I actually started it like 2 weeks ago but this week i realized i wasn't as far into it as i should've been. then on class on wednesday we watched this interesting documentary on the korean comfort women. i have to admit that i never heard about them until wednesday. the video was really touching, i don't know how i would could continue to live on after that kind of extremely traumatizing experience! i was so insulted on behalf of the entire female race. they were tricked under false pretenses to 'volunteer', either by their families or to make money for their family, for the war and were turned into sex slaves. to think that this kind of thing could happen! besides the insult that the government couldn't find anything truely productive for women to do during the war, like help in the medical center of in the factories (as they initially thought), it was outrightly morally wrong. to degrade the humanity of any individual, much less a young girl, is soooo wrong. they had so much life to live still, they were only children. they were subjected to 20-30 visits per night in the comfort houses; it didn't matter if their vaginas were swollen or bleeding, the japanese soldiers just needed to put their dicks into something in order to relieve themselves. be like real men and fucking abstain then. for the japanese government to believe that the whims of there soldiers were that important as enough justification to forever damage a fellow human being is ridiculous! there is NEVER a reason to rape, not to mention do it repeatedly, anyone of their body, dignity, and life! i am entirely for the korean comfort women who are seeking a formal apology, they don't really care about the money. they just want the world to know the injustice that they went through and for the japanese government to admit to their mistakes because that is what they rightly deserve. as seen through the video, the women who survived the comfort houses and the war continued to live a hard life. they got sick, they couldn't have chidren because of the abuse, they couldn't get married to any man after such experience with men in war, they couldn't find anyone to truly relate to their experiences. they were alone and unhappy. however, they deserve to feel loved and protected after such trauma but the scarring is soo deep that it forever altered their life and their outlook on life. i feel so much empathy for them because no should've had to undergo that. so after that video, and christine telling us that that is basically what the novel is about, i suddenly grew excited to read it. that day i read 100 pages in one sitting. they way that lee talked about the issue from a different perspective in the seemingly mundane novel was genius. i hope you guys liked it too. but if christine didn't show us that video, i probably wouldn't have realized that feat of the novel.