Use these links to supplement and complement students’ reading of the work and to increase their overall enjoyment of literature. Challenge them to discern parallel themes, engage through visual and aural stimuli, and delve deeper into the thematic possibilities presented by the title.

Recommended Texts for Pairing

“A Lifetime of Reading Taught Min Jin Lee to Write About Her Immigrant World” by Min Jin Lee

• a personal essay published in The New York Times
• shows the intersection between Pachinko and Min Jin Lee’s own life

Forgiveness by Mark Sakamoto

• a family memoir
• touches on the theme of resiliency

“Mama’s Promise” by Marilyn Nelson

• a poem about losing a child and knowing that children one day die
• connects to the theme of a mother’s sacrifice

Other Student Resources

“Are Koreans Human?” – Min Jin Lee at the Radcliffe Institute

• talk given by Min Jin Lee at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University
• discusses what it means to be Korean and to write about Koreans while also noting that when she writes about Koreans, she is also writing about humans
• touches on the theme of being multiethnic in a monoethnic society

“Culture Clash, Survival, and Hope in ‘Pachinko’”