Summary of the FIRST IMS International Community Book Club

Such great Conversations, thank you all for joining in our FIRST IMS International Community BOOK CLUB on the book- “In Order to Live” by Yeonmi Park. Very inspiringly, this book talks about Yeonmi’s real life experiences where her childhood was lost in escaping from the brutal conditions of North Korea to her painful and unimaginable memories of sexual slavery in China. In spite of her inconceivable experiences, Yeonmi does not fail to make us believe in the value of “HOPE”. It was such a reassuring and memorable experience when the majority of our book club members although coming from different countries and cultures reverberated the unanimity of the emotions when they first read these lines from Yeonmi Park’s book, “I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea”; “In North Korea, we don’t have words for “depression” or “post-traumatic stress”, so I had no idea of what those things were, or whether I might be suffering because of them”. Similar to Yeonmi’s thoughts, it was awe-inspiring and also so relatable to hear the conversations of our book club when they talked about their own journeys from their homelands to Canada and their struggles along with their hopes to fulfil the tiniest of their dreams. In particular, the conversations on human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and black-market movies took us out of the scientific bubble and made us realize that the stress that we often face during our scientific failures is insignificant compared to the daily challenges of these survivors. Overall, we had a great experience with those who could join us and we are very much looking forward to those who will be joining us for our next book club.