Concerning My Daughter

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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.

Concerning My Daughter - Kim Hye-jin - Google Books

Concerning My Daughter is one of the best character studies I've read in years—thoughtful, complicated and surprisingly kind, it raises important questions about aging, family, and both the cost and the value of change.” But when Green turns up with her long-term girlfriend in tow, her mother is enraged and unwilling to welcome their relationship into her home. Having centered her life on her husband and child, her daughter's definition of family is not one she can accept. Green's involvement in a campus protest against unfair dismissals of gay colleagues throws her into deeper shambles. Bu monolog uzun zamandır düşündüklerimin bir özeti gibi. İçimdekiler ile dışa yansıttıklarımın birbirinden ne kadar farklı olduğuna dair.. The narrator of Concerning My Daughter is a woman of around 70 whose circumstances force her to live with her adult (mid-30s) daughter, Green, as well as Green’s girlfriend Lane. The narrator is horrified and terrified by Green’s sexuality, barely able to confront it; she’s determined to believe her daughter still ‘has time’ to find a husband and have children. Alongside this, we’re also shown a more compassionate side to the narrator, typified by her tenderness towards Jen, the elderly childless woman for whom she is a part-time carer.Prize-winning Korean author Kim Hye-Jin’s debut confronts familial love, duty, mortality, and generational schism through the incendiary gaze of a tradition-bound mother faced with her daughter’s queer relationship. This little novel was hyper-realistic, the simple, matter-of-fact writing contributed in a way to that realism. How do I explain that I see myself in that woman whose wrists and ankles are bound? How do I articulate such a vivid premonition? Is it her fault that she has nothing and no one? Am I seeing myself in her because I’ve given up hope of depending on my daughter in old age? Will I – and even my daughter – likewise find ourselves punished by a rude, wretched wait for death at the end of our interminable lives? How far will I go to avoid that? Kim skillfully depicts the vulnerability and fear underlying her protagonist’s anxiety and anger, laying bare the ways in which family dynamics are fluid and full of paradoxes …. Kim’s compassionate portrayal of the narrator’s contradictions and ever-changing feelings makes her project captivating and moving. Readers will be grateful to discover this new author.”

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

Temelde çok düz şeyleri anlatsa da üzerine düşünülmesi gereken çok soru bırakıyor yazar Kim Hye Jin. 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. Kızım Hakkında Her Şey’e başladığımda bir ebeveyn hikayesi okuyacağımı düşünmüştüm ama okudukça şunu gördüm: hepimiz her gün bir savaşın ortasına çekiliyoruz. Çalışıyoruz, koşturuyoruz üstelik sürekli izleniyoruz, eleştiriliyor ve yargılanıyoruz. Kızım Hakkında Her Şey’de de bu savaşlar var. Kızından beklentilerini topluma ve yargılarına göre şekillendiren bir anne ama bunun yanında şefkatini hiç bağı olmayan birine daha çok gösteren bir kadın..

But meanwhile the mother gets involved in a dispute of her own. She is an agency worker as a carer as a facility for elderly patients, becoming particularly close to one, a woman in her 90s with a distinguished past, but now suffering from dementia and with no family. She ends up losing her job when she protests over the woman’s treatment, which triggers anxiety about her own fate, given her advancing years: Concerning My Daughter is a work that is unafraid of the human body in all its contradictions, at once philosophical and practical in its treatment of the aging body, the gendered body, the body’s capacity for acts of caretaking, protest, and love. Urgent, timely, tender.” We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin. 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.

Concerning My Daughter” by Kim Hye-jin “Concerning My Daughter” by Kim Hye-jin

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. When an ageing mother allows her thirty-something daughter to move into her apartment, she wants for her what many mothers might say they want for their child: a steady income, and, even better, a good husband with a good job with whom to start a family. Despite its short length Concerning my Daughter is by no means a breeze to read. It is a candid and stark study of a fraught mother-daughter relationship. In Concerning my Daughter Kim Hye-Jin examines generational differences, cultural conservatism, and the realities of being an lgbtq+ person living in a heteronormative and traditionalist society. Why can’t you just accept me for who I am? I’m not asking you to agree with me on every little thing. Weren’t you the one who told me that there were all kinds of people in the world? Who live different lives? You said different wasn’t bad! You’re the one who taught me all that. How come these things never apply to me?

Commissioning editorAnsa Khan Khattak acquired world English language rights from agent Marina Penalva Hapin at Casanovas & Lynch Literary Agency. It will be published in April 2022. 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. I also disliked the gratuitous descriptions of the patients’ bodily functions and wounds. The author could have made us understand her neglectful living conditions without lingering on scenes detailing these things. And yet when the care home where she works insists that she lower her standard of care for an elderly dementia patient who has no family, who travelled the world as a successful diplomat, who chose not to have children, Green’s mother cannot accept it. Why should not having chosen a traditional life mean that your life is worth nothing at all?