I was intrigued by the title of this sensitive tale of a mother and a daughter and the cultural obstacles that define their lack of common language. Mother and daughter relations provide a universal theme, this relationship made even more poignant by the Korean background of the mother, transported as a war bride to the shores of Southern California. Her daughter is born in America, yet never knows a sense of belonging.
Hye-yang is a dutiful daughter in a Korean village where the women are ocean divers. But Hye-yang is clumsy, unable to contribute to the family's meager coffers, so she goes to the city, where she is tricked into a life of prostitution. As a prostitute, she is demeaned and abused, unable to speak up, even when her best friend, another prostitute, is killed. When a young soldier brings her to America as his wife, Hye-yang, now Helen, hasn't the courage to tell him the shameful truth: her life of prostitution as a vessel for colored soldiers and that she is already pregnant. When the child is born with dark skin, the soldier beats and sexually abuses Helen, leaving her to make a living as a single mother in a strange land.
With her dark skin, Ava Sing Lo looks black, is half-Korean, yet never feels comfortable with either identity. Studious and reliable, her life is spent at school and helping her mother. She secretly reads a journal kept by her mother over the years, where Helen has documented all the birds Ava accidentally killed, meaning only kindness. Ava takes this as another criticism of her abject failure as a daughter. After graduating college, Ava has no sense of direction, no plan for her life. In an effort to do something positive, Ava volunteers to help in an effort to save endangered pelicans at the Salton Sea, determined to prove that she can do something positive.
Leaving San Diego temporarily to live at the Salton Sea, Ava finds herself amid a group of eccentrics that are a balm to her discomfort. Enjoying the open-hearted acceptance of these new friends, Ava begins a process of self-discovery. Then Helen appears at the Salton Sea and, after a while, the mother and daughter experience an unexpected healing, reaching across the years of Helen's silent suffering and Ava's anguished need, bridging the years and opening a door to the future.
The metaphor of the birds is central to Helen's life, and by extension, to her daughter. The birds are ubiquitous in Korea, carping and squawking in the background, distinct in their ability to scavenge for scraps, to exist on the meager amount the stingy land provides. In such a way, Helen has survived, on scraps, physically and emotionally. But she has no words, no legacy for Ava. Helen's spirit has been confined by her silence, in Korea and the strange new land where her daughter is born. Ava's generous and forgiving heart is the balm that heals their wounds, as Ava offers the words to Helen she's longed to speak, "I know the language of birds." Luan Gaines/2003.
