In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park

 A Life of Propaganda and Blind Loyalty

Wow! Wow! Wow! Each page of this book exposes one new shocking revelation after another of life in North Korea. And a whole new nightmare begins when mother and daughter escape to China.  

 

Yeonmi draws an alarming image of life in North Korea where people are told that the supreme leaders are immortal and can read minds. It’s a country where critical thinking is forbidden, electricity is rare, people are taught to inform on one another, (sounds like Texas) and food is scarce. Starvation is an excruciating daily struggle. I cannot even fathom the extreme hunger of Yeonmi and everyone else in North Korea during the famine that started during the1990s. 

 

It’s tough to imagine such relentless horrors. A truly captivating, astonishing read!

 

“I wasn’t dreaming of freedom when I escaped North Korea. I didn’t even know what it meant to be free.  All I knew was that if my family stayed behind, we would probably die—from starvation, from disease, from the inhuman conditions of prison labor camp.” Pg 2-3

 

“In North Korea, public executions were used to teach us lessons in loyalty to the regime and the consequences of disobedience.” Pg 51

 

“Skipping a meal could literally mean death, so that became my biggest fear and obsession. You don’t care how food tastes and you don’t eat with pleasure. You eat only with an animal instinct to survive, unconsciously calculating how much longer each bite of food will keep your body going.”  Pg 104

 

“I hid a razor blade in the belt of my tweed jacket so that I could slit my own throat before they sent me back to North Korea.” Pg 192

 

“My only goal was supposed to be making the regime happy.” Pg 216

 

“It took me a long time to start thinking for myself and to understand why my own opinions mattered.” (after she had been asked in a South Korean class what her favorite color is and she didn’t know the “correct” answer.) Pg 216

 

“Reading was teaching me what it meant to be alive, to be human.” Pg 230

  

Looking for similar books about human rights crises and injustices?  Check out these incredible stories: 

 

Non-Fiction:

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai – A 15-year-old Pakistani girl advocating for education for all is shot by the Taliban.

 

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann – The murders of the oil-rich Osage Indians in Oklahoma in the 1920s.

 

Beneath the Tamarind Tree by Isha Sesay – The mass abduction of 276 girls from a Nigerian school in 2014.

 

Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza – About the Rwanda Genocide in 1994.

 

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah – A boy is forced to be a soldier in the Sierra Leone Civil War in 1990.

 

Slave: My True Story by Mende Nazar and Damien Lewis  – A 12-year-old girl is kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1993.

 

Bill Bryson’s African Diary – Author Bill Bryson’s 2002 trip to Kenya.

 

Fiction:

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christi Lefteri -  A couple makes an arduous journey from war-torn Aleppo, Syria to refugee camps in Turkey and Greece. 

 

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Su Park – A mid-kids book based on a true story of a Dinka boy in South Sudan during the 1985 war and a water crisis.  

 

Annette