How We Disappeared

It was her scream which kept me up. The sound of it spoke of everything no one dared to talk about: what the soldiers were doing; young and afraid and separated from their families. It spoke of the things everyone was to keep silent about all through the three and a half years we belonged to the Japanese, and of the decades after.

A historical fiction set around the Japanese occupation, depicting the horrors women forced into sexual slavery had to go through. It's cruel enough what they endured during the war, but to suffer from scars and discrimination after is even more heartbreaking.

I could be a ghost, I thought. One of those lingering souls that people just live with and skirt around, as long as it doesn't do them any harm.

“Comfort women.” What an appalling, downright offensive way to describe what these women were put through during the Japanese occupation of Singapore in WWII. This book is brutal, endlessly sad, but Jing-Jing Lee handles both the horror and terror of the events, as well as the aftermath, very well indeed. Wang Di lives her life in silence, numbed by a culture of silence and shame. Her return home, to her family, is a continuation of her ordeal, rather than the end of it. Heartbreaking.

This is another novel, which a structure involving multiple perspectives and timelines. The war timeline is most definitely the heart of the novel, the most powerful, and also the most horrific, but honestly I appreciated the 2000 timeline, narrated by a young boy, even if just for the relief and time to breath. I also loved how these parts came together at the end. The silenced finally finding their words.