The Boat Not Taken: A North Korean Mother and Her Daughter

Desperate for her daughter' s safety during the Communist takeover of North Korea, Joanna Choi' s mother left her in a Seoul orphanage. She retrieved her months later to return to their once-tranquil hamlet, but the boatman on the returning ship refused to let the pair board. Joanna and her beloved Omai (mother) became immigrants in mid-twentieth century California, whose streets were supposedly paved with gold, but whose reality was one of hardship, poverty, and anti-Asian discrimination. ...