September Monkey

Centuries-old traditions and customs crumbled during the lifetime of this extraordinary woman who tells here the vivid story of her life in the old and the new Korea.

“To an illiterate Buddhist mother and a scholarly Christian father one day came a great disappointment—the birth of a daughter. ‘If only this baby were a boy what a great career he would have,’ mourned the father, noting the auspicious date on which ‘September Monkey’ arrived. But the mother—shortly to become a widow and a despised Christian as well—went about preparing her ‘girl-boy’ baby for the unheard-of experience of education, somehow realizing that if a new day for women in Korea were to come she would have to make it.”