Early in the memoir, which reads more like poetic musings, Kang introduces the reader to the image that will repeat throughout the work, that her sister-born premature and dead within two hours in a remote village-had “a face as white as a crescent-moon rice cake.” The book’s focus on white originates from the little that Kang-the third child of her mother but the first to live beyond a few hours-knew of her onni, or older sister. Han Kang’s The White Book is a meditation on grief using a study of white objects in the author’s life to spark memories of events she did-and did not-experience, specifically the birth and deaths of her older sister (and a quickly mentioned older brother, who also succumbed to premature birth) and their mother.
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