White Pearl and I: A Memoir of a Political Refugee

Svetlana Kim
BookSurge, LLC  (2008)
ISBN 1419655744 
Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (6/08) 

 

There is no shortage of stories and memoirs written by immigrants to the promised land, the United States of America. Most of them start with the descriptions of the horrible conditions in the immigrant’s native country, the flight to the USA, fraught with countless perils, the arrival of the usually clueless immigrant in the land of opportunity and their struggle to achieve the American dream. Svetlana Kim’s “White Pearl and I: A Memoir of a Political Refugee” is no exception to that rule, yet there are at least two things that set her book apart in a very positive way.

The first one, which also happens to be my favorite part of her book, are the charming stories and vignettes from the life of her Soviet Korean grandmother, Bya-Ok, the White Pearl from the book’s title. Although I’ve visited the USSR and later many of the former Soviet Republics, many times during the 80s and the 90s, I have to admit that I have never heard of the plight of the Soviet Koreans during the Stalinist era. Quite frankly, I was totally unaware of the existence of such a minority in the USSR and greatly shocked to read how some two-hundred-thousand of them were deported to Siberia in 1937. The stories told by Bya-Ok, as well as Svetlana’s memories of the days spent with her grandmother, are incredibly touching, charming and heart-warming.

The second thing that sets Ms. Kim’s book apart from so many others that I have read on this subject is her unwavering optimism as well as her belief in the good of humankind. Her story of achieving the American dream shows a slightly naïve, but extremely smart, hard-working and resourceful young woman, who was able and willing to seize the opportunities presented to her as well as create them if none were present. For an immigrant who arrived in the USA penniless in 1991, her stellar success and rise through the ranks of cosmetics executive for several world-renowned companies to the position of a successful stockbroker, entrepreneur and community leader, is nothing short of miraculous and awe-inspiring. When we add to these facts the observation that this success was achieved without being pushy, ruthless or greedy, this truly is a tale to inspire and motivate.

With that said, there are several issues that bothered me at least moderately. First among them is the overall “level” of writing, which in many of the segments sounds stilted and slightly slow, particularly some of the dialogue. The great number of people introduced in the book along with their stories (think Lusya, Yuri and a few others) quite often confuses the storyline. I believe many of those stories would fare better if they would have been written as separate short stories and not part of Svetlana’s autobiography.

The second issue is the fact that, unfortunately, I find some of the stories rather unbelievable. Having traveled to and from the USSR quite often myself, I am reasonably familiar with both the Moscow and Leningrad (later St. Petersburg) airports and the procedures there, as well as with the American embassy in Moscow, not to mention the immigration process to the USA, since I am a relatively recent immigrant myself. I cannot envision anybody managing to get through the security without a boarding pass, not being escorted off the plane for the lack of one, getting a visa to the USA in two days or entering the USA without any proof of being able to support oneself and with only one dollar in one’s pocket. Granted, time tends to dull some of the memories, but if this is supposed to be non-fiction, then some of those facts sound just a little too far-fetched.

 

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