‘The Girl With Seven Names’ by Hyeonseo Lee

After a welcome and very digestible diet of P. G. Wodehouse and James Herriot, I felt that it was time for me to expand my literary cuisine to include more substantive choices. My mum had quite enthusiastically mentioned a book she had borrowed from her local library called ‘Schwarze Magnolie’ and when I visited her during my February school holiday I was suitably intrigued. So I picked it up and I have to confess, I found it hard to put down.

‘The Girl With Seven Names’, as it is called in English is written by Hyeonseo Lee, a North Korean woman in her early 30ties who escaped the dictatorship in North Korea and spends over 11 years trying to find safety and her place in the world. I have to admit that prior to reading the book I was slightly ignorant of the full extent of the supression in North Korea. The scope of my knowledge was limited to what I had heard on the news, which was predominately related to the military power feud between North Korea and the US.

The book was a real eye opener and left me feeling rather humble, somewhat ignorant and with a sense of having always taken things for granted in my own life. I am by no means an uninformed person but I guess my worldview has, like that of many others, been largely guided by the content of my education and indeed the coverage the Western media has chosen to show of the North Korean situation.

‘The Girl With Seven Names’ spoke to me on a number of levels. Firstly, I have an avid appetite for learning and expanding my own knowledge, and almost everything in this book was new for me. Secondly, I am a strong human rights advocate with a keen sense of justice and the full extent of the dictatorship, propaganda and human rights abuse in North Korea astounded me. And finally, Hyeonseo Lee is just a few years older than I am, which made her story all the more real and close to home for me. While reading the book I often found myself wondering what I would have done in her situation. Her tenacity, spirit, determination and unbelievable perseverance in the face of so many  obstacles and setbacks is astounding.

While the majority of her book is worlds away from my largely privileged and cushy life growing up in Northern Europe – I am in no way making any parallels to my own experiences – there were some parts of Hyeonseo Lee’s struggle that I could identify with. She spends a significant portion of her twenties and early thirties trying to deal with an identity crisis. Since leaving North Korea at the age of 17, she not only changed her name seven times in order to ensure her safety, but she also struggled to integrate, to find her place in the world and to find out where she belonged: is she North Korean, Chinese or South Korean? Where is home? I think this issue of identity crisis – although not usually to this extent – is one that many people of my generation, myself included, have to deal with. In the fluid modern world that we live in, people are constantly moving from one country or continent to another for numerous reasons including to be with family, in search of work, in order to migrate or simply to explore the world.

I think the key to survive if one does move around a lot and when dealing with an identity crisis is to really give oneself the time to settle and integrate. No matter where you go, some or all aspects of the change will be difficult and at times unbearable, but you have to give things time. I myself am guilty of cutting and running as soon as things start getting hard, rather than weathering it out and giving things a chance. We humans are strong, adaptable creatures, our problem I believe, is that we simply think too much. If against all odds Hyeonseo Lee could do it, we all can. She’s my new hero, a truly remarkable woman and a truly inspirational story. ‘The Girl With Seven Names’ is most certainly a worthy read.

Teaching Human Rights

“One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world.

Education is the only solution. Education First.”

These are the last two lines of the inspiring and powerful speech made by 16 year old Malala Yousafza at the United Nations Youth Assembly in 2013.

We’ve all had someone who inspired us in some way as a child or in our youth. For me there were two women whose influence has had a lasting impact on me. One was a family friend who fostered in me from an early age, a love for reading and literature, the other I have written about before, Janet Coggin who lived in the community I grew up in in Ireland. Janet inspired me in many ways, one of which being her passion for human rights and her work with Amnesty International. I remember at 13 or 14 after I received one of my first pay checks from my work in a local cafe, I was out in the Big Smoke (that’s what the Irish fondly refer to Dublin as) with my sister for a day of retail therapy. As was often the case there were charity street fundraisers at various points along Grafton Street. I usually sped up and feigned haste when I saw them, but not this time. That day I went up to the Amnesty International representative and asked if I could sign up and donate on a monthly basis to the organisation.

Over the years I have continued to support Amnesty and maintained a keen interest in their work. When I started teaching I tried where possible to incorporate human rights into my English and History lessons and I often did this successfully and with some inspiring results from my students. However, it is a daunting and challenging issue to teach young, and indeed older people about as it is such a vital and complex area to teach about in an engaging and relatable manner. When I lived in Australia, I saw that Amnesty ran Teacher Programmes but they were delivered in London and as you can imagine the distance posed a slight hurdle. So when I recently found myself back in Europe and teaching here, I decided to finally sign up and do the training.

I returned this afternoon from the first inspiring and motivational session in London. Myself and the other teachers on the training spent all day Saturday at the Amnesty offices in London soaking in all the information. I got so much energy and enthusiasm from the training, so much new knowledge, resources and ideas from the session but also from the other teacher who were there. We shared best practice and what we are doing, or have done in our schools and in our classrooms. I now feel that I can stand in front of both adults and children and teach them about and through human rights a lot more comfortably and engagingly than I did before.

It may sound odd but it felt so right being there. I feel that I have a renewed focus, energy and enthusiasm and I’m going to do my utmost to transfer that enthusiasm to my students and fellow teachers at my current school. Human rights is such an important issue and rights are violated and denied a lot closer to home than we realise and on a daily basis. It’s so easy to forget that, we get caught up in our own little bubbles, and often think that human rights violation (if we thing about it at all) is something that is removed from us and happening far away.

As Malala so aptly said in her speech, ‘education is the only solution’. It just takes one person to be passionate enough and to have the courage to start to make a change. Teaching others about human rights is to empower them with the knowledge and skills and for them in turn to pass this on to others. So me, my newfound knowledge, my bag of resource teaching goodies and my empowerment are going to set out to start making a change, even the smallest change, at my current school. I know it won’t be an easy task, but what worthwhile things in life are every easy!