Media Reviews and Readers' Comments about
The Seed of Joy

This excellent fiction-as-truth novel, written by an American married to a Korean, is a period piece ....

William Amos' novel deftly combines fact, a little well-informed conjecture about the degree of American complicity and a tragic love story. It is so startlingly well-written, compared with the drivel on offer in any airport bookshop, that one is startled to realise that this a book written by a total unknown. Disgracefuly, no mainstream publisher was interested; Amos was told that fiction set in China and Japan sells, fiction set in Korea does not.

The heroic, but obviously doomed, Kwangju uprising is the background to the final episodes of the novel. Paratroops from other provinces were the dependable praetorian guard of the regime and killed to order enthusiastically; one has to appreciate that in no other developed country are regional antagonisms as enduringly deep and bitter as in Korea.

Paul Harkin, the hero of the tale, is a Peace Corps volunteer who assists in treating tubercular patients in the Southwestern port city of Mokpo. Paul finds that he loves Korea without having any illusions about the squalor, poverty and grim oppression he perceives around him. Mi Jin is a schoolteacher who initially resists her growing attraction to the foreigner but eventually yields to her emotions.

As is appropriate for a novel with a romantic-historical theme, there are many twists and turns before the tragic final pages. While the characterisation is fine throughout, for this is an excellently-wrought novel, Mi Jin is a rather irritating persona, for she is at one and the same time a determined woman warrior and an improvident silly who lacks an adequate running-away fund to call her own.

Online publishing is apparantly flourishing in the academic world but it seems still a fragile seedling so far as fiction is concerned. Online Originals is to be commended for publishing this splendid work.

William Corr, Kyoto Journal

I don’t think Peace Corps administrators would recommend this book to newly sworn-in Volunteers ....

WILLIAM AMOS GIVES US insight into the coming of age of a young Peace Corps Volunteer in South Korea. Set in the late 1970s, The Seeds of Joy tracks Paul, a recent college graduate from Indiana attempting to become a public health worker in a small village while teaching his boss English and learning a new language.

Soon Paul’s life becomes more complex and conflicted. He takes language lessons from Mi Jin, challenges the political views of his boss and develops an awareness of the combustibility of his host country’s authoritarian rule.

William Amos presents a full picture of life in a small village paying close attention to the rituals of food preparation, holidays, and the unspoken tension between and among families. However the main attraction of this book is the romance that develops between Paul and his language instructor, Mi Jin. We see Mi Jin’s conflict with her family, her work, and with her friends at the university resulting from this romance.

Unfortunately, Mr. Amos is too slow in bringing his readers to the point of becoming invested in this story. Not until page 135 of this 523 page book does the issue of romantic feelings get addressed. Until then, we are spectators as Paul makes the rounds of his village, gets lonely, eats new food, burns under the authority of his boss and Peace Corps administrators.

When Paul does speak his truth, stands up for himself and Mi Jin, and challenges the Peace Corps administrators, the book becames fascinating.

There is plenty of turmoil and intrigue from then on. Some of it is a bit far fetched, as when he goes A.W.O.L. from Peace Corps. But why not? I once risked my life for love. Paul does just this and shows us the cost. But I’m rooting for him by then.

I appreciate Mr. Amos’s comprehensive view of the political chasms between North and South Korea and the internal conflicts within the political processes of South Korea. Less interesting were the bumbling efforts of Peace Corps and State Department officials.

The ending is painful and, unlike the beginning of the book, the resolution of conflict occurs too quickly. As a returned Volunteer, I would have liked Mr. Amos to follow Paul’s life when he returned to the United States and give us some insight on how Paul’s alienation as a United States citizen propelled him into a new vocation, setting him apart, once again, from his returned Peace Corps colleagues.

Each of us, upon our return to the United States, had to renegotiate our life, for we had been changed. Mr. Amos could offer us some assistance by answering the question, “How is it we begin to improvise a life?”

I don’t think Peace Corps administrators would recommend this book to newly sworn-in Volunteers. This is perhaps a book of what not to do in-country to be successful. For that reason I can think of no better reason for new recruits to read it.

Mr. Amos shows us how natural it is to become invested romantically and politically. How he gives closure to to this creative tension stretches my imagination but then again, Peace Corps Volunteers are committing themselves to live on this edge. Sometimes we fall.

Bill Coolidge in Peace Corps Writers

Great E-Book!

Summary

In a fictional account of the Kwangju Uprising in South Korea in 1980, William Amos brings to life an event in history believed to have damaged citizens' views of the U.S. to this day. The book is more about the people involved than the events, however, but as in any good historical novel, its readability and plausibility helps one to learn more about the featured events.

The main character, Paul Harkin, is a Peace Corps volunteer in Mokpo, a poor community southeast of Kwangju. He is a young man, in his early twenties, looking for new experiences as far away from his home of Indiana as he can get. While struggling to learn the Korean language, he enjoys forays into the community to check on medication compliance by outpatients with tuberculosis.
As chance would have it, he begins a relationship with a young Korean woman, Mi Jin, who volunteers to give him language lessons. Her friends are active in the student demonstrations for democratic elections and an end to martial law in the wake of the assassination of their president by the head of the Korean CIA. Paul encounters difficulties with his Peace Corps superiors because of his involvement in local affairs.

The way the story unfolds shows how events in a young person's life can either end up just being a brief and interesting experience, or change the lives of those involved.

Commentary

The book actually inspired me to some further reading. Apparently, the Mokpo/Kwangju region of South Korea has a history of student demonstrations going back as far as 1910 during the Japanese occupation. I was struck by a feeling of familiarity regarding the events in the book even though I was not familiar with the history of the Kwangju Uprising. I grew up in Kent, Ohio, and lived there during the riots in 1970. The book reminded me of how those events polarized the community, and of some of the people involved.

Despite all this, and the historical setting, the book does not harp on any political concerns. Instead, it is the story of a young man's experiences, including living in a foreign culture and falling in love. It is the story of the people surrounding him, both American and Korean: their hopes and fears, and day to day concerns.

Amos was himself a Peace Corps volunteer which no doubt has enhanced the story by providing important details.

This novel is readable and entertaining. The author shows a sense of humor to counter the serious side of the story. Here is a passage which demonstrates some cultural differences between Koreans and Americans in a conversaton about Paul between his landlady and a neighbor:

The neighbor moved next to her and picked through Paul's clothes. "Tell me something, Big Sister. I'm dying with curiousity. The American--is he clean?"
"What do you mean?"
"Is he dirty?"
"Well, yes and no. He washes all the time and goes to the bathhouse every other day."
"That often?"
"Yeh. And he never fails to wash his hands every time he visits the outshouse." She shook her head, bewildered. "But in some ways he's so dirty. Do you know when he sat down to his first meal here, he turned his head and blew his nose!"
"You're joking!"
"No. I almost puked up my supper."
"Did he clean up the floor?"
"He didn't do it on the floor." The ajumoni gingerly pulled one of Paul's dirty handkerchiefs from his trouser pocket and brandished it. "He blew it into this. Americans carry their snot around with them!"

Aside from humorous anecdotes of this sort, Amos does well in developing his characters. The troubles Mi Jin experiences in dating a man favored by her parents outlines some of what it was like at the time for young women in Korea. Generational differences in attitudes towards the political state of affairs are brought to life in scenes about demonstrations. Some of the difficulties between North and South Koreans are illustrated by Paul's discovery of a box into which S. Korean citizens may report people they suspect of being N. Korean sympathizers or infiltrators.

Conclusion

This is a very fine book. Unfortunately, it is published only in e-book format. It's available in RocketBook (.rb), Adobe Acrobat (.pdf, ), and Palm (.prc) formats from the publisher's site as listed below.

I've got to apologize to the author for taking so long to review this. Part of my reason for this is financial--I only make money for the site (i.e., for Project Read) when I review books in hard-copy available from Amazon.com. The publisher's site states that they are "The Internet's first e-book publisher, founded in 1996, dedicated to producing quality new literature regardless of its commercial potential", and this intrigued me. This book definitely holds up the quality portion of this statement, and I think someone ought to offer to publish it in hard copy. I hope those of you who are regular e-book readers will support this author by purchase of the book, or try this for your first one. It is definitely a stick-to-your-ribs kind of book!

You can find more information about the book and the author at the Online Originals site.

Erica Lockhart in fiatgirl.com

"*****!" (Highest rating)

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I began reading this book with a sense of hesitancy...Korea is not a country I've cared to know much about and I am a romance author in search of the ultimate happy ending...but then I started to read The Seed of Joy and I was suddenly transported to a time when Jimmy Carter was president and the world was a much different place than it is today.

I saw South Korea through the eyes of Paul, an idealistic young Peace Corps volunteer caught up in the turmoil of revolution during the early 80s in Korea. I knew nothing of the history of Korea, but the author, William Amos, skillfully weaves the facts and history of the country into his story until the plight of the students and Paul become terribly personal.

I cannot make enough positive comments about this book. The people and times and places of Korea become so real, so personal, that the ultimate conclusion is heartrending and cleansing at the same time. After reading The Seed of Joy, I feel as if I have been a part of the student uprisings against the totaltarian government, as if I have seen the wounded and dying in the hospitals, as if I have known the joy of each small victory, have experienced the bittersweet love of Paul and Mi Jin.

I recommend this book very highly...it is a story that will stay with you, will haunt you, will be so unbelievably real to you, that the question of whether it is fiction or truth will leave you with the feeling you have read a diary of someone who lived the terrible times of revolution and discord in 1980s Korea.

Kate Douglas, author of Cowboy In My Pocket

EXCELLENT!!! Please let me preface my comments. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in south Korea from 1978 until May 1980, at which time I was forced to resign from the Peace Corps because of my activities in Kwangju during the week that the citizens took possession of their lives and their city. Mr. Amos's (we were volunteers together) book has made me relive those turbulent yet exhilarating times again. He has been able to catch the emotion of the Kwangju Fight for Democracy (the Kwangju Uprising).

The story made me think a lot about my time Korea, Kwangju and my time as a volunteer. I can only recommend this book with all my heart and pray that the reader can understand what was happening in Korea during those times. I can only hope that the reader will be able to feel some of the emotions that those of us who chose to stay in Kwangju felt. We had been ordered to leave by the Embassy and the Peace Corps Country Director, but we could not leave our friends, those people who were willing to lose their lives if it meant that other people's children could grow up in a democracy. With the widespread dissemination of this historic novel perhaps the world will recognize the Kwangju Uprising, and that the 2000-plus citizens of Chollanam Do and Kwangju will not have died in vain.

David Dolinger, former Korea Peace Corps Volunteer

A wonderfully woven tale of passion and patriotism brings the reader in and defies being put down. Not only do you get an insight into Korean culture and history, but you get it from the point of view of an American experiencing it first-hand. A first-rate novel that I thoroughly enjoyed.