How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee
This is a story about family. It’s a story about war. It’s a story about surviving. A story about living after loss. It’s a story of healing and a story about the passing of time. It’s a story of teenage girl taken from her family during World War II and forced to live for years in a brothel as a comfort woman. It’s the story of a women married to a man for decades, who both suffering from the pains of war, never really knew each other or shared their past. It’s the story of a boy whose grandmother left him with a truth that he doesn’t know how to share.

This novel takes place in Singapore during both World War II and the early 21st century. It focuses heavily on the atrocities committed by the Japanese during the war and the affect that had on the Chinese communities during and after the war for generations to come. Lee did a beautiful job weaving these stories together and creating these characters. She created such interesting family dynamics that really defined the way generations reacted with each other. The way she described the cultural aspect shaped not only the characters but the world building as well. Times of war felt desolate and scarce. The tone of her writing would reflect the world building in a way that you could feel the emotional weight of each moment and each action.

I thought I had certain elements and plot points figured out, only for more parts of the truth to be unveiled and for things to shift. The blending of the past and the present lent itself beautifully to this novel. It leaves you exploring so many questions about how we cope with love and loss and traumatic experiences. Lee did such a great job exploring all of those themes. Definitely a novel I could recommend for not only her writing but her ability flesh out characters and moments to have the most emotional impact.

Title: How We Disappeared
Author: Jing-Jing Lee
Genre: Fiction/historical fiction
Rating: 4.2 out of 5

In 1942 Singapore, the world is at war, but it becomes personal when soldiers ransack a village and murder everyone, leaving only two survivors. In a nearby village, girls are taken captive and forced to become “comfort women”—prostitutes—earning them the shame and disdain of their families—if they are fortunate enough to survive and escape. Wang Di was one of these women, and after sixty years of silence, she is finally ready to talk about the horrors she experienced.

In the year 2000, twelve-year-old Kevin is going blind, so he records everything he hears. Including the dying confession of his beloved grandmother…who isn’t really his grandmother at all. Kevin knows this secret is bigger than he is, but he’s determined to find out the truth—and share it.

How We Disappeared isn’t an easy book to read. It’s full of the sometimes-horrific experiences of these characters, but there are glimpses of hope as well. The settings are realistic—good and bad—and, though the book gets off to a slow start, it is well-worth reading.

Jing-Jing Lee is an author and a poet. How We Disappeared is her debut novel.

(Galley courtesy of Harlequin/Hanover Square Press via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.)

This book follows three points of view. In the present day, after the death of his grandmother, Kevin uncovers a series of letters that she wrote. The letters indicate that she stole her son, Kevin's father, during WWII. The second pov is a young Wang Di, who was stolen by the Japanese during WWII and turned into a comfort woman. The third pov is the elder Wang Di in the present day.

I found this book completely unsatisfying. I did not enjoy Kevin's pov or the older Wang Di's pov. Kevin did not feel like a realistic character. The older Wang Di's pov was rambling and all over the place. The young Wang Di's pov was the most interesting part of the book, however, it moved slowly and then skipped large periods of time. I think this book would have been much better if instead of Kevin's pov and the older Wang Di's pov, we heard the story of Kevin's grandmother during the war. Overall, a bust.

How We Disappeared bounces back and forth between Wang Di and Kevin in two different timelines. For the most parts it was successful in this, however there were points in Kevin's story line where I got bored and wanted to continue reading about what was happening with Wang Di in WWII. Some scenes in both of their timelines could have been tightened up, they were either unneeded or longer than they needed to be. I found myself engaged with Wang Di's story, but not so much with Kevin's.

The things that happened to Wang Di at the house of black and white were horrible. The author didn't sugar coat it, but it also wasn't fully developed in gory and horrible detail. However, if rape and violence bother you while reading these two things are present in the novel. It's heartbreaking and the world keeps forgetting that these atrocities happened. Also, I absolutely despise the term "comfort women." It lessens the impact of what really happened to these women to the rest of the world.

This novel is currently being compared to Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, however, that novel is far more expansive and detailed. Not to mention a much tighter novel overall. I get where they draw parallels as they both discuss some of the horrible things that the Japanese did during WWII and they are "sweeping" family epics, but honestly that is about where the comparisons can end. I also have trouble saying that if you liked one then you will like the other because they are both very different.

Overall, it is a solid book and a great choice for this month's Asian Readathon. It's heartbreaking in topic, but that makes me want to encourage even more people to read it. I will be putting up a longer review on my blog sometime next week.

As World War II rages on, the people of Singapore believe that they are relatively safe on their tiny island with few resources, especially with British Troops around. However, the Japanese invade with force. Deadly air raids leave few survivors. Other villages are raided and young women are taken for the pleasure of Japanese Soldiers. At seventeen, Wang Di is on of the many young woman taken from her family to serve as a comfort woman. Wang Di was forcibly raped for years and then shamed when she returned home, never talking about what happened to her or the friends she made. Wang Di's parents quickly find her a husband. Soon Wei is much older than Wang Di, a widower whose wife and child perished in the air raids. In 2000, Kevin is dealing with the death of his grandma who admitted a secret to Kevin right before she died. Kevin tries to put the pieces of the past together in order to help his father heal.

How We Disappeared is an absolutely beautiful story about the horrific truth about what happened to the people of Singapore. I had heard of the comfort women before, but had not been exposed to the reality of their situation. Wang Di, like many of the real comfort women, were taken as children to houses where they were beaten, starved, and forcibly raped by dozens of Japanese soldiers a day. Wang Di's hope was what pulled her through the brutality . The writing of Wang Di's time in the brothel was direct and honest, but through Wang Di's voice, there was always a glimmer of what could be. I was surprised at the amount of shame the survivors among the comfort women faced even among their family. Kevin search for the truth weaves together the narrative of Wang Di, Soon Wei and his grandmother in a surprising way. Though the time hops and change in voice happens quickly, Kevin's search is what allows for healing and truth. Touching and raw, How We Disappeared is a story of survival, love and healing after tragedy.
This book was received for free in return for an honest review.

In How We Disappeared Jing-Jing Lee skillfully brings us from Singapore in 1942 to 2000. What could have been a novel of just devastation and. despair becomes an all embracing novel with hope from such heart wrenching disasters. The reader cannot help but be drawn into the way the Chinese were treated by the Japanese during the occupation of Singapore. This is a must read and will be a popular book club selection.

In the early 1940s, Wang Di, a teenager from the village of Hougang in Singapore, worries about her family’s poverty and their inability to send her, a girl, to school, though her two younger brothers receive the benefit of an education. She is busy with helping her mother and selling vegetables and eggs in the local market. Neither she nor anyone else is concerned about the war; they are certain that the British will repel the Japanese forces.

When the British surrender and the Japanese begin their occupation of Singapore, renamed Syonan-to, the people of the island learn deference to the soldiers, hoping to remain invisible through their deep bows, though this doesn’t keep them from looting their homes and kidnapping their people. One day, a group of soldiers arrives in Hougang and takes Wang Di and other women from the village, including the mother of a newborn baby and a girl a year younger than Wang Di, to serve as comfort women for the Japanese troops. Kept captive for over two years, the women are subjected to unspeakable horrors. Once the war is over, Wang Di vows never to speak of her time there.

Nearly sixty years later, twelve-year-old Kevin Lim, bullied and isolated by his classmates, is pulled out of school when his grandmother, already in the hospital, has a third stroke. Sitting by her bedside, she mistakes him for his father and gives a garbled confession, asking for forgiveness. Kevin is compelled to untangle the mystery behind his grandmother’s secret.

Kevin and Wang Di’s stories entwine in unexpected and poignant ways, showing how the past ripples into the present and demonstrating that silence is not a shield but a self-inflicted wound.

Although the book got off to a slow start for me, I ended up very appreciative for having read it. I did not know about the Japanese occupation of Singapore, and this story offers a window into the tragedy, especially as experienced by the Chinese population. Also, I was not aware of the daily lives of the comfort women, and as horrible as it was to read about what they endured, I was glad to know what happened to them during the war.

As is obvious from the title, the book deals with the theme of disappearance, and seeing the myriad ways not just how characters make themselves disappear but how others can also make one invisible was engrossing and almost overwhelming. Each character must come to terms with how they have disappeared and have varying degrees of success reanimating themselves.

Emotionally, the section that resonated with me most was when Wang Di returned to her family after the war and had to reintegrate with regular life after being a captive comfort woman. The twin faces of shame and shunning spiral around Wang Di.

While I found very little at fault with How to Disappear, I wondered if Kevin was represented as too mature for his age. When he was first introduced, in fact, I read him as rather naive, so I was surprised to find him so enterprising and sensitive as he pursued his investigation. Kevin’s father was a key figure in his life and had bouts of depression, or going to the “Dark Place.” These were tantalizing hints of his character, but I wish they had been more developed.

In terms of style, for the most part, I found the writing lovely, and clear, though I noticed two patterns that I thought detracted from the narrative. First, Lee frequently introduced things in what to me was a strange order. For example, she often gave a summary statement of an event, went back to describe how the event came about, and then repeated the summary. It had the effect of jumbling the timeline a bit in my mind. Secondly, she would include a sentence and then instead of including modifying phrases, those phrases would follow in incomplete sentences. This is a common technique among fiction writers; in this case, I just thought it was a bit overused, in such a way that it drew attention to itself.

Overall, though, How to Disappear is an excellent and worthy novel that should be on the reading list of those who enjoy literary fiction, historical fiction, and reading about women’s perseverance. I definitely recommend it.

3.5

The story switched between two characters and time line - Wang Di (mostly told during WW2) and Kevin (year 2000). Wang Di had been taken away from her family to serve as a comfort woman ie sex slave to the Japanese soldiers. Kevin, whose grandmother had just passed away, had left him with a rather mysterious message that spurred him to seek for his family roots. What was his grandmother trying to tell him?

This book shed light to the harrowing lives of comfort women who were taken away from their families with the promise that their families will be paid for their services. Then they were brutally assaulted and raped. If they were impregnated or contracted any diseases, they were 'discarded' and treated like their lives didn't matter. And those who survived the war and returned home were shunned by their families.

This book has gotten many positive reviews, and I wanted desperately to like it, especially one that gives voice to the lost and forgotten, but I just couldn't. Although I was drawn to Wang Di's story and the harsh reality and plight that the women had to endure every day while serving those despicable men, I found it hard connecting to the characters. I'm not sure why. I felt the way it was written created a distance.

The connection of Wang Di and Kevin can be confusing and seemed complicated at times when trying to figure it out, with their stories crisscrossing each other. I thought I had it all figured out except for a question that kept reoccurring - whatever happened to Wang Di's baby? Does the baby have anything to do at all to this entire story? And when the story finally reached the end, the author decided to give her baby 3 plausible endings. Why? I honestly didn't get it.

I neither loved it nor disliked it. But please don't let my unpopular opinion stop you from reading this book. You might enjoy it as much as the others.

Thank you Netgalley and Harlequin for providing me a free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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Review This is a family saga set in Singapore 1942 and 2000. In a neighboring village, Wang Di is abducted by the Japanese during WW II to be a "comfort woman", in other words a sex slave. The story moves back and forth in time to tell her story, a story she can't tell herslf. It also winds in the efforts of her grandson to unwind family secrets. The book started out slow, for me, but soon I was staying up too late reading. The characters are well cobstructed. I especially love the grandson, Kevin, irritating, curious, and inquisitive. Wang Di's story is brutal but but an important part of history.
#Howwedissapeared #Netgalley

In the hands of a lesser writer, How We Disappeared would be a sad and interesting story. But Lee elevates it to a level that wrenches your gut and tears at your heart and soul. Told by the elderly Wand Di, who was stolen from her village home in Singapore during WWII to become enslaved as a comfort woman to the invading Japanese soldiers; by Kevin, a 12-year old Singaporean boy with failing eyesight, who is hounded by bullies and dealing with a depressed father; and by a third person narrator, How We Disappeared is in the end a story of secrets, of incredible hardships, and of the extraordinary strength of ordinary people. This book drew me in from the start and kept me reading into the wee hours. Lee’s ability to make her characters so real and this important story so vividly compelling, has a rare. staying power. My next reading of this marvelous book, which will be soon, will be at a slower pace, for I’m sure there’s even more to be gleaned.

The two protagonists are Wang Di, a teenager when the book opens, who lives in one of the surrounding villages of Singapore as the Japanese raid the areas during WWII, and twelve- year-old student Kevin who lives in Singapore in the year 2000. These seemingly unconnected characters become acquainted 60 years after the war as the novel slowly connects their bonds and reveals family secrets kept hidden for decades. Wang Di eventually marries, moves to Singapore, and is widowed there. Kevin, a child bullied in school lives in Singapore amid family pathos. His dying grandmother reveals a secret to him; thus, we are drawn into intrigue as Kevin begins reading old letters she wrote, kept, but never mailed for decades. Jing-Jing Lee beautifully unfolds the protagonists’ backgrounds with suspense, painful flashbacks, and gut disturbing episodes they experienced. Primary and secondary characters are rounded and dynamically well developed. For readers who enjoy historical fiction, strong women characters, intrigue, family sagas, and learning about world cultures, this book is calling your name. Love, shame, forgiveness, agony and tortuous decisions are enveloped in the intricately woven plots of Wang Di and Kevin. The blooming friendship of the elderly woman and the young child is touching and life altering for both. You may question the ending but it is, indeed, satisfying. Kudos to Jing-Jing Lee!

In "How We Disappeared," Lee brings to life the history, atrocities and unimaginable hardships of thousands of women during the Japanese colonization of Singapore in the 1940s through Wang Di, a young girl violently ripped from her family and village and forced to become a sex slave ("comfort woman") to the Japanese soldiers for three long, dark years. In addition to "servicing" upwards of 7+ men per day, Di and others in the "black and white house" are starved, beaten, mentally and physically abused and imprisoned by a madam in the name of service to the Japanese Army. Her survival and escape with an infant boy in tow is a testament to sheer determination and an indominable will to survive, though for what she does not yet know. Later, the intersection of Wang Di's life with that of her husband, who suffers his own terrible losses during the war years, and the ties to her husband's previous family (Wang Di is her husband's second wife; his first wife and child are murdered in the 4-3 massacre) is well-done and provides a robust and fulsome rendering of what life must have been like for both the "comfort women" and common citizens of Singapore during the Japanese occupation of this strategically-situated island nation. I knew embarrassingly little about this subject, which, given how much historical fiction is written about WWII is surprising. (But as a result of this book, I have added more on this topic to my TBR pile.)

Like other readers, I feel this book is an important read for several reasons, beginning with the necessary homage to and recognition of the plight that these women were forced to endure. Lee’s telling of the soldiers’ acts against these comfort women is shameful, shocking, heartbreaking and important to understand. If these women survived the comfort houses at all and were able (or willing) to return to their home villages, the shame, treatment, and social ousting they faced at home would drive most reasonable beings to the edge.

I'm torn on whether I felt that weaving Kevin's storyline in added or detracted from the novel. As Lee takes us to the “present,” in the 2000s when Wang Di is widowed and in her 70s, we learn that Kevin is the grandson of Wang Di’s now-deceased husband. And Kevin’s recently-deceased grandmother reveals her own wartime secrets on her deathbed, which Kevin records with a tape recorder. Her revelations drive him to seek out his biological grandfather, which leads him to Wang Di. At times, I found Kevin's story a bit disconcerting and drawing the connections between Wang Di and Kevin's father made for an arduous task in several places in the book. Even at the end, I found myself wondering what ever happened to the baby Wang Di (we think) gave up upon her escape from the comfort house. Perhaps I’m a less sophisticated reader, but the final pages wherein Lee provides three possible “stories” of what happened to Wang Di’s infant boy were far less illuminating than I was hoping for. Despite searching online for other reviewers who, like me, were unclear what the outcome and import of Wang Di’s baby was, I found nothing that led me to a definitive answer. Was Wang Di’s baby Kevin’s father? (Perhaps, but Wang Di herself shuts down that option several times in the book). Did Di’s baby die after their escape? What’s the tie between Wang Di’s baby to the rest of the story?

Despite this one flaw, I found Lee’s novel a searing, heartbreaking, yet important rendering of the lives of comfort women and the citizens of Singapore before, during and after WWII, as well as an enlightening account of Singapore’s geo-political and strategic importance to several world powers throughout history (including the United States). I gave this book 5 stars and will certainly recommend it to fellow readers interested in historical fiction, Asian history and stories that demonstrate the depth and strength of the human spirit.

Many thanks to Harlequin and NetGalley for an ARC of this book for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This book will tug at your heart, it will be difficult to read, your heart will actually break, but you will continue until the end because it is so important to read about how people have been treated throughout history. How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee will be released May 7th, make sure to put it on your to be read list. How We Disappeared takes place during 1942-1945 when the Japanese invade Singapore. It is about how the Japanese took in comfort women and the torture and abuse one particular woman Wang Di endured day after day, month after month, year after year. It is the story of the shame she felt forcing her to keep her story to herself for sixty years. There are two storylines going on that come together in the end. This is one you don’t want to miss. Thank you NetGalley and Harlequin for an ARC of this book.

The book cover is gorgeous.....
Yet the history was brutal.
The Japanese occupation in Singapore in WWII took place from 1942 to 1945.
The history often is forgotten - and some prefer it that way. Especially the Japanese government.
The Japanese Military was horrendous and shameless.
Most Americans are educated about Pearl Harbor - yet are less familiar with the horrors of what the Japanese military did - and to the extent that women suffered.

What really got to me was the ‘shame’ the women and ‘girls’ felt about themselves....for being forced into sexual slavery.
It kills me - as in so sad - when victims internalize their trauma by blaming themselves with inner critical abusive thoughts.... and other self inflicting punishment.
I never fully understand why humans do that.... but if I’m honest - I’ve been guilty as well.
The years of torture begins to weigh too heavily....often leading to feelings of unworthiness. That’s were the shame comes in: HEARTBREAKING!!!

The term ‘comfort women’ has always bothered me.
This is not my first time hearing this label.
I find it degrading to continue using the term ‘comfort women’, at all!!!!
Let the label *disappear*.

Wang Di was 16 years old when she was abducted from her home by the Japanese military.
The devastation of things she endured- were unspeakable.

The storytelling includes not only the teenage years for Wang Di.... but as an elderly woman - after years of marriage grieving her dying husband.

The other part of the story focuses on a young boy name Kevin. He learns secrets that his grandmother had been keeping that were also ‘unspeakable’.

I’ve read other books about this history - and any book that opens awareness to the importance of these atrocities- is a worthy read.

The crafting of the writing is not without flaws - but the heart of this story itself flawless.

Thank you Harlequin Trade Publishing, Netgalley, and Jing-Jing.

A remarkable book, with a story that will touch your soul. A novel that covers atrocities that will shock you. Truly compelling.

What a beautifully written, heartbreaking story. The best historical novel tells you things you didn’t know. While I knew about comfort women, I had no idea about Singapore and WW 2. The Japanese occupation in Singapore is not something that is regularly talked about when referencing the war.
How We Disappeared tells the story of Wang Di, during the war, and Kevin, in the year 2000. How their lives are intertwined is a spoiler I don’t want to give away, but the two timelines are woven together brilliantly.
I read this book slowly on purpose, because it was so moving and haunting, it deserved to be taken in slowly.
Jing-Jing Lee is an amazing storyteller, and I came away with a new appreciation for the historical references in the book. An excellent book club pick as well.