µ˙The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston SUMMER/ MFAH Book Club FALL 2018

Pachinko A novel by Min Jin

Richly told and profoundly moving, is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan’s finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld. Lee’s complex and passionate charac- ters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history. —.com

How to Use This Discussion Guide How to Book an MFAH Book Club Tour All art, whether literary or visual, arises from the context For book clubs and other groups of six or more of its time. Creating bridges between the literary and confirmed participants, tours related to Lee’sPachinko visual arts is what makes the MFAH Book Club unique. are available on select days and times July 1–October 31, 2018. Tours are led by Museum docents and feature This discussion guide features questions about broad excerpts from the book to drive discussion about works themes—home, beauty, death, family, and foreignness— on view at the Museum. all addressed in ’s Pachinko, as well as questions about works of art in the Museum’s collec- If you are not a member of a formal book club, but are tions and exhibitions. interested in participating in engaging art and literature discussions inspired by this book, consider joining the Read the book, discuss some or all of the questions MFAH Digital Book Club on the Goodreads web platform: with your group, and then reserve an MFAH Book Club mfah.org/goodreads. tour online. For more information, visit mfah.org/bookclub. Please email [email protected] with any questions.

1 Evolution of the House and Home The physical houses and edifices that the Baek family occupies throughout the novel are symbolic on a number of levels. As we trace the evolution of the home—from the small wooden boarding house Yangjin and Sunja operated in Yeongdo, to the sweet-potato farmer’s barn, the “roomy shack” in Ikaino, to the Westernized three-bedroom in Yokohama—we see the physical space and walls of the home transform and evolve to accommodate the changing family dynamics. Reflect on the physical details and considerations made for each of Sunja’s residences throughout the novel. In what ways do they mirror the internal state of her character in the different stages of her life?

Consider the two passages below, both describing the Yokohama home in which Solomon grew up. How has the space evolved over time? Identify the aesthetic and cultural influences of both designs.

How do you think Sunja’s relationships to these spaces differ from Solomon’s?

“It was a brand-new three-bedroom in the Westerners’ section of Yokohama . . . The furnishings resembled sets from American films—upholstered sofas, high wooden dining tables, crystal chandeliers, and leather armchairs. Hansu guessed that the family slept on beds rather than on the floor or on futons. There were no old things in the house—no traces of anything from or Japan. The spacious, windowed kitchen looked out onto the neighbors’ rock garden.” [year, 1968; p. 350]

“The designer had removed most of the original interior walls and knocked out the small back windows, replacing them with thick sheets of glass. Now it was possible to see the rock garden from the front of the house. Pale-colored furniture, white oak floors, and sculptural paper lamps filled the vast quandrant near the woodburning stove, leaving the large, square-shaped living room light and uncluttered. In the opposite corner of the room, tall branches of forsythia bloomed in an enormous celadon-colored ceramic jar on the floor.” [year, 1989; p. 447]

2 Consider the two works of art shown below—Cagnes-sur-Mer by American artist William H. Johnson and the Italian work showing The Meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Compare and contrast the stylistic approaches to these two scenes.

Left: William H. Johnson, Cagnes-sur-Mer, 1928, oil on canvas, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase funded by Charles W. Tate in honor of Dr. Frank Hadlock at “One Great Night in November, 2000”, 2000.578.

Above: Italian (Ferrarese), The Meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, c. 1470–73, tempera and gold leaf on wood, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Edith A. and Percy S. Straus Collection, 44.574.

Johnson was interested in ascribing a sort of lyricism and expressive energy to the old streets and neighborhoods of the French town Cagnes-sur-Mer, where he lived and worked in the early years of his career. He exerts his artistic freedom in the spaces and forms he paints. In contrast, the depiction of the popular biblical scene of the Queen of Sheba visiting King Solomon is much more tightly rendered, showing deft mastery over the science of perspective. The artist has reconstructed the event to take place at a Renaissance court, much like the Ferrara courts of the 1400s. The piece itself was likely created as a gift in celebration of either a wedding or a birth.

How would you describe the attitude of each of these paintings? Do they align with any of the characters’ personalities from the novel? If you were assigning characters to each scene, which would you choose and why?

3 Bodies, Idealized and Compromised

Henri Matisse, Back I, II , III, IV, bronze, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, I: gift of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore N. Law in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Harry C. Wiess;II : gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gus Wortham; III: gift of the Cullen Foundation in memory of Hugh Roy and Lillie Cullen;IV : gift of The Brown Foundation, Inc. in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Herman Brown, 80.68; 80.69; 80.70; 80.71, © 2015 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2018

Consider the above series of sculptural reliefs by Henri Matisse. There is a distinct progression at play as the series begins with a more realistic vision of the female form, and steadily changes, becoming more abstract in its later iterations. In what ways do these works represent Sunja’s physical and mental evolution throughout the book?

The notion of idealized beauty as a fluid concept, subject to evolving tastes and cultural constructs, appears in many instances throughout the book. Identify moments in the book where these biases and physical preferences come to light.

Throughout the book, the human body also takes on other classifications associated with pain, suffering, and ill circumstance: the body as laborer, body as child-bearer, and the deformed or afflicted body.Consider the physical descriptions of Sunja, Yumi, and Hana below.

“The girl had a firm body like a pale block of wood—much in the shape of her mother—with great strength in her dexterous hands, well-muscled arms, and powerful legs. Her short, wide frame was thick, built for hard work, with little delicacy in her face or limbs, but she was quite appealing physically—more handsome than pretty.” [p. 21]

“After two weeks of bed rest, Yumi felt like she was going out of her mind. Mozasu had bought her a television, but she had no interest in watching it, and heartburn kept her from reading. Her wrists and ankles were so swollen that if she pushed her thumb lightly onto her wrist, she could make a deep impression in her flesh. Only the baby’s movements and occasional hiccups kept Yumi glued to her futon and from fleeing out of doors.” [p. 337]

“The doctors said there were only a few weeks or perhaps two months left at best. Dark lesions covered her neck and shoulders. Her left hand was unblemished, but her right was dry like her face. Her physical beauty had once been so extraordinary that it seemed to him that her current state was particularly cruel.” [p. 456]

In what ways do these classifications translate to the male characters? How do the “laborer,” “child-bearer,” and “invalid” relate to the cultural preferences and beauty ideals described in the book? How do they relate currently to our own Western cultural biases and proclivities? 4 Family and Honor

“Back home, having two healthy and good sons was tantamount to having vast riches. She had no home, no money, but she had Noa and Mozasu.” [p. 189]

What forms do notions of honor take for the different characters in the book? What social, economic, and cultural factors inform their conceptions? How do you define honor for yourself?

Consider the paintings below. How would you imagine each of these individuals defines honor?

Far left: Charles W. Hawthorne, American Motherhood, 1922, oil on canvas, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase funded by the Houston Friends of Art, 27.8.

Left: Vittore Belliniano, Portrait of Two Young Men, c. 1515, oil on canvas, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Edith A. and Percy S. Straus Collection, 44.553.

Min Jin Lee describes a number of different family units and constructs. Consider the passage below wherein Phoebe describes the differences between her family and Solomon’s. Do you agree with her perception of the Baek family? Reflect on your own family unit. How would you describe it? Is it organic and sinuous, or perhaps more patchwork in nature?

“Phoebe loved being with Solomon’s family. It was much smaller than her own, but everyone seemed closer, as if each member were organically attached to one seamless body, whereas her enormous extended family felt like cheerfully mismatched Lego bricks in a large bucket.” [p. 449]

Consider how families change and evolve over time, and the adverse conditions they weather. Visit the Museum to experience the video installation Mike Kelley, 14 by artist Jennifer Steinkamp and see the tree shown below pass through the four seasons. Reflect on how your family has grown over time, and the larger cycles of wind, storm, and change they’ve endured.

Jennifer Steinkamp, Mike Kelley, 14, 2007–8, video installation, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase funded by Isabel B. Wilson and The Brown Foundation, Inc., 2011.1020. © Jennifer Steinkamp, courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York 5 Foreignness and Identity Consider the three passages below that outline three different characters’ experiences of foreignness. How are these experiences similar and different from each other? “From appearances alone, [Yoseb] could approach any Japanese and receive a polite smile, but he’d lose the welcome as soon as he said anything. He was a Korean, after all, and no matter how appealing his personality, unfortunately he belonged to a cunning and wily tribe. There were many Japanese who were fair-minded and principled, but around foreigners they tended to be guarded.” [p. 95]

“Noa stared at her. She would always believe that he was someone else, that he wasn’t himself but some fanciful idea of a foreign person; she would always feel like she was someone special because she had condescended to be with someone everyone else hated.” [p. 307]

“As a Korean Japanese educated in the States, Solomon was both a local and a foreigner, with the use- ful knowledge of the native and the financial privileges of an expatriate.” [p. 434]

Notions of identity, often connected to feelings of belonging and foreignness, are also central to this narrative. Take a look at the artwork on the left by American artist Paul Mpagi Sepuya.

As a queer black man, the artist explores the way portraiture—and particularly self-portraiture—has the potential to both reveal and withhold personal identity from the viewer. In this visually complex image, Sepuya points his camera at a mirror that is partially covered by a torn self-portrait. The artist’s face—the very element that, by convention, discloses the inner character—is visible in neither the representation nor the reflection. Having solved the visual riddle of Sepuya’s picture, the viewer is left with the more profound and unresolved question of his identity.

In what ways does this self-portrait relate back to the experiences of the characters in the book? The idea of an image as a visual riddle is interesting and suggests that there is something to be solved or unearthed, beyond what can be garnered from surface-level interactions. There is an act of layering at play within this photograph that is confused by the mirror’s reflection—but neither piece of the puzzle affords us a clear vision of the person behind the camera. How do ideas of layering, reflection, and self-consciousness emerge and unfold throughout Pachinko? Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Mirror Study (Self Portrait), 2016, inkjet print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase funded by Photo Forum 2017, 2017.250.

6 Author Biography Min Jin Lee was born in , , and immigrated to , New York, with her family in 1976 when she was seven years old. At Yale College, she majored in history and was awarded the Henry Wright Prize for Nonfiction and the James Ashmun Veech Prize for Fiction. She attended law school at Georgetown University and worked as a lawyer for several years in New York prior to writing full time.

Min Jin Lee is a recipient of fiction fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard. Her second novel, Pachinko (2017), was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, and a New York Times 10 Best Books of 2017. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, NPR’s Selected Shorts, One Story, The New York Review of Books, Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Literary Supplement, , Conde Nast Traveler, The Times of London, and Wall Street Journal. In 2018, Lee was named as an Adweek Creative 100 for being one of the “10 Writers and Editors Who are Changing the National Conversation.”

Learning and Interpretation programs receive generous funding from Melvyn and Cyvia Wolff; MD Anderson Cancer Center; Mitra Mujica-Margolis and Michael Margolis; the Sterling-Turner Foundation; Institute of Museum and Library Services; Houston Junior Woman’s Club; Mercantil Bank; Mr. William J. Hill; The Windgate Charitable Foundation; The Brown Foundation, Inc.; Sharon G. Dies; The Powell Foundation; and the Susan Vaughan Foundation. 7