What Level of Educator are you?
“Every Falling Star” explores the harsh realities of the secretive and communistic life in North Korea through Sungju Lee's memoir, co-authored by Susan Elizabeth McClelland. With the tagline “the true story of how I survived and escaped North Korea,” the book draws in an audience seeking a story of triumphant and brave escape... The narrative falls short of its potential.
At the beginning of the book, Sungju is happily living in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, with family. He dreams of following in his leader’s footsteps and being a successful and confident military leader. However, one day Sungju’s father announces that the family will be going on vacation. Readers follow as Sungju slowly realizes that this isn’t a vacation at all – it’s an exile from successful society. Sungju’s parents, suffering from lack of food, money, and hope, eventually leave him in search of resources to help. The majority of the book takes place over these YEARS that Sungju spent in the streets: doing hard drugs, drinking copious amounts of alcohol, gang fighting, stealing food, and simply fighting to survive. While it is at first a harrowing tale of bravery and tenacity, it turns to the glorification of gang life as Sungju (later self-named Chang) seeks out fights and tries to dominate the markets across North Korea. While I thought this would ultimately build into the reasoning behind Sungju’s escape from North Korea, it simply did not.
The escape from North Korea seems almost incidental. Sungju does not consider ever leaving North Korea until the very end of the book – this wasn’t a planned and thought out escape (at least, of Sungju’s doing) – rather, a presented opportunity. The experience was overshadowed by a prolonged focus on his survival in the streets.
This is a real and seemingly uncensored version of events from Sungju’s childhood. Because of our limited resources to learn about the conditions of life in North Korea, I do believe this book is one worth reading to gain a more worldly perspective. It will open your eyes about the conditions of life for those North Koreans not fortunate enough to be in Pyongyang. If you needed to use this resource in a classroom, it could lend itself to meaningful conversations about mental health, drug addiction, corrupt governments, and empathy. However, that being said, I’m not confident that this book would be something that I would read with my students.
I had originally intended for this to be a supplemental novel study after my students read Malala Yousafzai’s book “We Are Displaced,” which tells the story of several young girls fleeing dangerous countries in search of better opportunity. Thematically, this story does not make much sense in comparison. Moreover, the inclusion of explicit and sensitive content in “Every Falling Star,” such as hard drug use, rape, and prostitution, raises concerns about the appropriateness of the book for a middle school audience.
