The slim novel covers a breadth of contemporary concerns: family relationships, elder care, and LGBTQ issues. The author was awarded the Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature in 2018, and translator Jamie Chang is known for her translation of Cho Nam-joo’s Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982. It has been a particularly exciting time for translations from South Korea, with releases such as The Picture Bride and The Old Woman with the Knife, and Cursed Bunny and Love in the Big City being shortlisted for this year’s International Booker Prize. The narrator is a woman in her seventies, her daughter in her mid-30s. The narrator rents out the top floor of her modest home and her daughter, in needs of cash, suggests that the mother converts the tenants from paying monthly rent (월세) to the traditional Korean jeonse (전세) system where the tenant pays a large upfront deposit in lieu of rent, something the narrator is reluctant to do as the house is the only thing she has to show for all her many years of work, and she needs the rent to supplement her meagre income. Labor without end. The thought that no one can save me from this exhausting work. Concern over what will happen when the moment comes when I cannot work anymore. In other words, what worries me isn’t death, but life. I must do whatever needs to be done to withstand this suffocating uncertainty that will be with me for as long as I am living. I learned this too late. Perhaps this is not about aging. Maybe it’s the malady of the times, as people say. Our times. This generation. Naturally, I am reminded of my daughter again. We have arrived at this point, her in her mid-thirties, me past seventy. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. Ya da belki. Korkağın tekiyim. Hiçbir şey duymak istemeyen, risk almaktan kaçan, başkasının meselesine burnunu sokmayan biriyim. Etliye sütlüye karışmayan, kıyafetleri kirlenmesin diye hep kenarda duran biriyim. Duyulmak istenenleri söyleyen, görülmek istenen ifadeyi takınan, çaktırmadan geri adım atan kişiyim. Yine de iyi biri olmak mı istiyorum? Peki ya konu kızım olduğunda?’

Concerning My Daughter - Kim Hye-jin - Google Books

Pese a que tiene muchos temas principales, que ahora tocaré, creo que el más importante es el que hace relación a la homofobia de la madre hacia la hija, y creo que es el tema que más destaca, no porque sea el único central, porque lo son varios, sino porque es el único que se toca de manera diferente. Mientras que temas como el desprecio a las personas de cierta edad o el esclavitud laboral reciben una crítica directa a través de su protagonista, de sus reflexiones y sus quejas, la homofobia es criticada a través de la intolerancia e ignorancia de ella misma, fruto de su educación y de una cultura que enseña a vivir dando más importancia a la opinión social, que a la felicidad propia o de los seres queridos. Por eso choca la cantidad de comentarios horribles que la madre suelta sobre su hija, sobre su nuera o sobre la homosexualidad en general, pero la autora sabe crear bien ese personaje, para que el lector, aún horrorizándose de lo que piensa, pueda entender su circunstancia e ir asistiendo poco a poco al avance y a la apertura de su mente. No de forma tan rápida como nos gustaría y llena de contradicciones, eso sí, pero demostrando perfectamente la confusión mental por la que está pasando la madre.There are a lot of themes in here that made me sit and contemplate several times. It goes a lot over ageing and motherhood, sexuality, shame as well as cultural and societal expectations. These are also coupled with generational differences and exploring familial and working relationships and caring for vulnerable people. This book itself felt quite vulnerable and honest. It made me think about things I’ve never considered before, as well as offering different perspectives on issues. While the narrator was at times frustrating and disagreeable, being in her head and seeing her reasoning for her beliefs and feelings and actions was very interesting. When the daughter and her girlfriend move in with her due to monetary issues, conflicts arise, but while the mother first despises her daughter's activism for colleagues who got fired because of their homosexuality, she slowly sees that the humanist concerns that torture her in her job are not that different from what plagues her daughter: They both long for dignity.

The Bookseller - Rights - Picador bags Hye-jin’s Korean

Hayatım boyunca bunun için çabaladım. İyi evlat. İyi kardeş. İyi eş. İyi anne. İyi komşu. Ve bir dönem de iyi öğretmen. And then, her only daughter, now in her thirties, has to move in with her, as she's broke and can't find a permanent job. She shares her room with her long-term partner, another woman. My daughter’s voice is hot and Lane’s voice is just cool enough. Cool air sinks, warm air rises. The two arcs make a circle. Mixing the two would make the perfect temperature. Concerning My Daughter provides desperate narratives of its female characters. It’s the story of a mother and a daughter, but it goes beyond the relationship and is also ahead of our time. By accompanying the women’s journey overcoming pain and suffering in their lives, we will see our stereotypes broken in the end. The great power smashing our fixed old ideas! This book is filled with such energy.” Además de estos dos pilares tan importantes, también nos encontramos ante una crítica brutal a la precariedad laboral, a como personas muy mayores, incluso enfermas, deben trabajar por un sueldo indigno para subsistir, a sabiendas de que tendrán que hacerlo hasta que mueran, destrozando su salud por el camino, otra cosa fácilmente reconocible en cualquier lugar. También se habla mucho, de la que para mí puede ser la razón principal de la mayoría de los conflictos de la protagonista, la incapacidad para expresarse delante de los demás, abrirse a otros y tratar de llegar a un entendimiento común. Esto último, sí que es algo cultural y que se encuentra mucho en la literatura asiática.The narrative swings between the mother’s uneasy relationship with Green and her girlfriend, to her taxing workplace. There she witnesses how uncaring and downright neglectful the staff is towards one of her elderly dementia patients. The patient has no family to speak of and therefore no one but our narrator looks out for her. The mother fights against the idea that this patient should be treated this way because she did not conform to society (the patient was a diplomat of some renown who travelled the world). I found the parallelism between this patient and Green banal … In this novella, Kim Hye-Jin gives us the perspective of a homophobic Korean mother who discriminates against her thirtysomething lesbian daughter, accusing her kid's girlfriend, portrayed as a loyal and loving partner, of ruining her life. But the narrative viewpoint gives room to complications: The mother is also a hard-working widow who is terrified by what she witnesses in her job as a caretaker for the elderly, she fears that without a traditional life, a husband and children, her own beloved daughter will end up alone and unhappy - and that's what makes the text special: While it's easy to hate the bigoted views of our narrator, it's hard to hate her, because she is driven by fear and, ultimately, love for her only child. But when Green turns up with her girlfriend, Lane, in tow, her mother is unprepared and unwilling to welcome Lane into her home. In fact, she can barely bring herself to be civil. Having centred her life on her husband and child, her daughter’s definition of family is not one she can accept. Her daughter’s involvement in a case of unfair dismissal involving gay colleagues from the university where she works is similarly strange to her. Ongoing Covid restrictions, reduced air and freight capacity, high volumes and winter weather conditions are all impacting transportation and local delivery across the globe. The mother-daughter relationship is at the heart of this novel. Green’s partner Lane represents an ever-present antidote to the mother’s fears—if only the mother could see beyond her prejudices. Lane embodies nurturing: She has been with Green long enough to have supported Green throughout her father’s final illness. When Green was unable to be in the hospital with him, Lane was there and with Green at her father’s funeral. After Green and Lane move in with the mother, Lane cooks healthy foods and tends to the mother even as the mother openly reviles her. She is the committed family that the mother wishes for her daughter. The mother is blind to this in her obsession with what she sees as the abnormality of the relationship. But Lane and Green resist the mother’s animosity and, in their own distinct ways, persist.

Concerning My Daughter | Kim Hye-jin | 9781529057676 | NetGalley Concerning My Daughter | Kim Hye-jin | 9781529057676 | NetGalley

La narradora y protagonista de “Sobre mi hija” es una mujer viuda que ya ha pasado la barrera de los sesenta y que se gana la vida trabajando en una residencia de ancianos. Allí cuida de Jen, una mujer famosa por luchar por los derechos de los demás en el pasado, y que ahora que la enfermedad la ha atrapado y sufre demencia, se halla sola, únicamente cuidada por esta otra mujer. Por otro lado, la narradora nos habla de su hija, de la falta de entendimiento entre ambas y de la “amiga especial” que desearía que nunca hubiera conocido, cuya existencia trata de ignorar lo máximo posible. Sin embargo, por cosas de la vida, acabarán viviendo las tres bajo el mismo techo, y el conflicto no tardará en aparecer. Her experiences with this patient lead to some depressingly bleak questions about mortality and ageing that at times came across as a wee bit too predictable. A Korean elder-care worker navigates a troubled relationship with her gay daughter and the expectations of her workplace in this challenging novella. She's not a static character though; the movement here is her relationship with Jen, a woman she cares for who has dementia and no family, having spent her younger days traveling, being a diplomat, doing charity, and accomplishing a lot career wise. When Jen's well being is jeopardized, the narrator is forced to consider the parallels between Jen and her daughter. I was born and raised in this culture where the polite thing to do is to turn a blind eye and keep your mouth shut, and now I’ve grown old in it,” explains the unnamed protagonist of Kim’s English-language debut. A widow in her early 70s, the narrator earns a modest income by caring for a dementia patient named Jen, a journalist and activist who never married or had children and has no relatives to care for her in her old age. Despite the pressure from her boss to cut corners and the suspicion that her co-workers are able to successfully “leave all sentiment and anything like it at home,” she is deeply troubled by the societal belief that the elderly—especially those who are alone—are disposable. She is less successful at challenging the societal beliefs that affect her own child. Green, a college lecturer in her 30s, has become involved in a labor dispute at the local university and is struggling to pay her bills. When Green and her longtime girlfriend, Lane, accept the narrator’s invitation to come live with her for a while, the narrator is forced to confront her self-imposed ignorance about her daughter’s sexuality. Kim is unsparing in her depictions of the indignities of old age, the corrosiveness of homophobia, and the piercing loneliness that comes from living in a culture of silence.But her silence can only be maintained for so long, and she contemplates it during a quiet moment at church. The synopsis says: “Told in a brutally honest voice that at times simmers with impotent rage, Kim Hye-jin's novel taps into the complexities of mother-daughter dynamics, but also the systemic issues and obstacles that LGBTQ communities face in heteronormative societies. Kim Hye-jin lays bare our most universal fears on ageing, death, and isolation, to offer finally a paean to love in all its forms.” Her daughter’s involvement in a case of unfair dismissal involving gay colleagues from the university where she works is similarly strange to her. I liked the growth that this book and the characters in it had. As its so character focused, the plot is quite minimal but it remains engaging. The mundane day-to-day life of these characters was made to feel interesting and I actually cared about what was happening to them. It’s written in quite a raw way, and the long stretches of internal monologue are great for really getting inside someone's head and seeing how they’re perceiving events and how it’s having an impact on them. Jen’s care and the mother’s conflict with her daughter interweave as the mother discovers that Green is involved in an ongoing protest over the unprovoked firing of adjunct professors likely because they were gay, and allegedly because they incorporated the topic of homosexuality into their lectures. The mother asks Green whether this should be her business and accuses her of choosing to stand out. Green assures her mother that this is her business, “it could happen to me, too, at any time. And I’m not alone.” Green’s choice to take a stand begins to influence the mother’s thinking that translates into her need to continue caring for Jen regardless of what is decided at the nursing home and regardless of whether she loses her position. Here, the mother jettisons the role of bystander.

Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin, Jamie Chang - Waterstones

The narrator is unhappy with this arrangement, she doesn't get it, she doesn't see the point, how can they have kids, and how about what people say. All these qualms are only amplified by the fact that the daughter and her girlfriend are protesting unfair dismissal and discrimination in the workplace. Bu monolog uzun zamandır düşündüklerimin bir özeti gibi. İçimdekiler ile dışa yansıttıklarımın birbirinden ne kadar farklı olduğuna dair.. A heavy but tentatively hopeful look at the struggle for intergenerational understanding through one mother’s eyes.I had no idea what to expect from this book, but it was so beautifully done and really made me contemplate several things. The writing (or translation should I say) was beautiful and in a style that I personally really connect and engage with. This little novel was hyper-realistic, the simple, matter-of-fact writing contributed in a way to that realism. La parte más emotiva de la historia la vivimos con la relación entre la protagonista y Jen, la anciana de la residencia. Son constantes las reflexiones sobre como la sociedad aparta a las personas mayores, considerándolos inservibles, sobre como los hijos olvidan en ocasiones a sus padres, siendo estos, muchas veces, dejados en malas condiciones y sin nadie que los defienda. Esto no es algo que pase solo en Corea del Sur, creo que en mayor o en menor medida en todas partes se dan circunstancias similares, por lo cual es muy fácil empatizar con la unión de estas dos mujeres. Hay muchísimos momentos tristes que te llenan de impotencia y que han hecho que derrame algunas lagrimillas en más de una ocasión.