Jing-Jing Lee

A beautiful, stunningly ambitious tale of endurance, identity, and memory, for fans of Min Jin Lee's Pachinko and Georgia Hunter's We Were the Lucky Ones.

How We Disappeared

When her husband dies in the year 2000, Wang Di is forced into the solitary life of a widow in modern Singapore. But this new silence brings with it a surge of memories, taking her back to the brutal events of the Japanese invasion which altered the course of her life forever.Twelve-year-old Kevin is preoccupied with his own family worries; his father is suffering from depression, Kevin is being bullied at school, and his beloved grandmother's health is declining fast. And then, on her deathbed, she makes a surprising confession - one she never meant for Kevin to hear.Back in 1942, Wang Di is sixteen years old and forced into sexual slavery as a Comfort Woman. What she sees and experiences will haunt her present nearly sixty years later. Meanwhile, after his grandmother's death, Kevin sets about finding out the truth - a truth that will lead him to Wang Di; to the events of that brutal war and to a reckoning no one is prepared for and which can no longer be suppressed.They say the truth will set you free - but what if its horrors have been the very chains you have longed to escape from your whole life?

Sade A

"But i am here now. It's been many years but i remember everything. That's something i hadn't counted on. I remember everything"
- Chia Soon Wei


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I read Pachinko earlier this year and now How We Disappeared. Both underlying the horrors of war but on a very personal level with How We Disappeared.
When i was reading this book, i read that Japan did not acknowledge the atrocity done to these women until 1993 and my god!!! i was in shock. Like how???

I cannot imagine history, erasing your pain and saying instead that you asked for this.
An important book to read!!!

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"When i'm gone, you can't just keep it all inside of you like you've been doing all these years. I know it's difficult...You shouldn't take it with you. In the end"
- Chia Soon Wei 

I hope your stories are remembered and that they are told, whatever they they may be and i hope they are told with love and soul as this book was.

Lauren B

This book was breathtaking. Because the writing was beautiful. Because the story was brutal. How We Disappeared is about Wang Di, a young teenage girl who gets taken away from her family in Singapore to become a comfort woman in a Japanese military camp during WWII. Although the story is tragic and upsetting, it is told with so much finesse that it becomes precious, especially when young Kevin gets involved, determined to solve the mystery behind the letters left by her grandmother after her passing. This book is a real gem.

Vivian

The Asia-Pacific front of World War II was often conveniently forgotten with disputes and denials of historical facts persist to the present day. History failed those who suffered, perished, and never received justice even decades later. Books such as The Rape of Nanking and Pachinko give a voice to the muted victims. And we will listen. 

How We Disappeared is a historical fiction that tells the story of one woman in Singapore who was ripped away from her family during the Japanese occupation, and was forced to become a "comfort woman" at the age of 17. I knew about Japanese taking Chinese girls as comfort women during the war. I did not know they did that in Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, etc. I did not know that on average the girls had to receive 30 soldiers per day (sometimes up to 50), 365 days a year, and the protagonist Wang Di was captured for 3 years, so that's 30,000 rapes, at least, on top of beatings, starvation, and poor hygiene conditions. This is so horrific and gruesome that I cannot imagine. How they endured, how they survived, and how they finally returned to their villages, and were shamed and ostracized by their families. I cannot imagine. 

They were told by their mothers to never breath a word about what happened. "Nobody can ever know". Shame. So the memory was suppressed, silence was preferred, but the wound kept festering inside. "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." 

How We Disappeared attempts to tell the story for these women, many long dead. I'd like to think it still matters. As long as one human being alive knows, then they are not forgotten.

Shortlisted for the 2020 Singapore Literature Prize Longlisted for the HWA Debut Crown Singapore, 1942. As Japanese troops sweep down Malaysia and into Singapore, a village is ransacked. Only three survivors remain, one of them a tiny child. In a neighbouring village, seventeen-year-old Wang Di is bundled into the back of a troop carrier and shipped off to a Japanese military rape camp. In the year 2000, her mind is still haunted by her experiences there, but she has long been silent about her memories of that time. It takes twelve-year-old Kevin, and the mumbled confession he overhears from his ailing grandmother, to set in motion a journey into the unknown to discover the truth. Weaving together two timelines and two life-changing secrets, How We Disappeared is an evocative, profoundly moving and utterly dazzling novel heralding the arrival of a new literary star.

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020

Jemima Scott

A really difficult read as this book does cover the Comfort Women but I think it’s a very necessary one. Please check the trigger warnings before reading this one ☝️ There are explicit mentions of rape and sexual violence. 

Anyaconda

This book is with rights compared to Min Jin Lee's "Pachinko".
It's beautiful and heart-breaking at the same time. Our main characters go through so incredibly much abuse and sorrow and never really open up to each other what happened during the war and Japanese occupation.
I can recommend this to lovers of Min Jin Lee's novels or if you enjoyed the Night Tiger or the Geisha.

*A Library Journal "Emerging Stars" Pick* A beautiful, stunningly ambitious novel set in World War II Singapore about a woman who survived the Japanese occupation and a man who thought he had lost everything--for fans of Pachinko and We Were the Lucky Ones Singapore, 1942. As Japanese troops sweep down Malaysia and into Singapore, a village is ransacked, leaving only two survivors and one tiny child. In a neighboring village, seventeen-year-old Wang Di is strapped into the back of a troop carrier and shipped off to a Japanese military brothel where she is forced into sexual slavery as a "comfort woman." After sixty years of silence, what she saw and experienced still haunts her. In the year 2000, twelve-year-old Kevin is sitting beside his ailing grandmother when he overhears a mumbled confession. He sets out to discover the truth, wherever it might lead, setting in motion a chain of events he never could have foreseen. Weaving together two time lines and two very big secrets, this stunning debut opens a window on a little-known period of history, revealing the strength and bravery shown by numerous women in the face of terrible cruelty. Drawing in part on her family's experiences, Jing-Jing Lee has crafted a profoundly moving, unforgettable novel about human resilience, the bonds of family and the courage it takes to confront the past.

How We Disappeared

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