First published 2015
A teenage girl leaves her impoverished rural family behind and travels to Seoul to work in a factory. Her family cannot afford to keep her in school, so she spends her days assembling stereos on a production line in sunless industrial buildings. The work is grueling and the conditions harsh, but she refuses to abandon her ambition to become a writer. Each evening after her factory shift ends, she attends night school classes, exhausted but determined. The girl occupies the lowest rung of Seoul's rapidly transforming social order during Korea's industrial boom of the 1970s. She witnesses the extreme labor practices and social upheaval that drove Korea's economic recovery after war devastated the country. Factory girls like her fuel this transformation but remain invisible and forgotten by society. Through her struggle to balance survival with artistic dreams, she confronts the personal cost of Korea's rapid modernization and her own place within the sweeping changes reshaping her nation.
Genres: fiction, family-life, historical-fiction, 20th-century, coming-of-age, social-issues
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, rags-to-riches
Setting: Korea, Seoul
Period: 1970s
480 pages · ebook · Pegasus Books