Concerning My Daughter

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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?’ 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 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.”

Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin - Ebook | Scribd Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin - Ebook | Scribd

The compisition of the story is simple, but stringent and effective, and while knowing a thing or two about Korean society will certainly help, it would probably be to easy to dismiss what is portrayed here as a Korean problem (this is one of the connections to Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982): The marginalization of LGBTQ+ people and the elderly is real in many societies all over the world. In Concerning My Daughter, translated from Korean by Jamie Chang, 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. 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?This safety net has holes much too large for the elderly. At the nursing home, the mother witnesses firsthand that decisions are driven by a corporate focus on profits rather than quality of care. The mother is filled with fear about her approaching old age. She has only her daughter as a potential source of care and support. But Green continues to depend on her mother for financial support because of her low-paid position. 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.

Concerning My Daughter: A Novel by Kim Hye-jin, Paperback Concerning My Daughter: A Novel by Kim Hye-jin, Paperback

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. 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. Kim excavates the complexities of a mother and daughter's relationship in her excellent debut...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." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) The story is told from the perspective of a middle-aged woman, a widowed careworker and mother to Green, who is now in her thirties. When Green asks her to rent out a room to her, she reluctantly obliges and is horrified to discover that Green will be joined by her long-term girlfriend, Lane. The mother wants her daughter to be happy, but her vision of contentment does not align with Green’s. The narrator longs for Green to lead a ‘normal’, expected, life: husband, children, a house. But here she is in her thirties and living with her. Worst, she is 'unapologetically' and 'unabashedly' gay, and has no intention of hiding her relationship from the prying eyes of others. In fact, Green is fighting for lgbtq+ rights, protesting the discrimination and unfair dismissal faced by members of her community at the university where she was employed at. 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.Catherine Taylor, Irish Times An admirably nuanced portrait of prejudice . . . one that boldly takes on the daunting task of humanizing someone whose prejudice has made her cruel. 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.

Concerning My Daughter – Kim Hye-jin | Full Stop Concerning My Daughter – Kim Hye-jin | Full Stop

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.

A Korean elder-care worker navigates a troubled relationship with her gay daughter and the expectations of her workplace in this challenging novella. 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.

Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin - Pan Macmillan

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. 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. As the mother struggles with her daughter, she develops a growing sense of responsibility to the aging patient, Jen, who led a life of good works, notably in the United States away from South Korea. She never married and never had children. As the mother thinks of it, Jen inexplicably devoted her entire life to strangers and now pays the price by being alone and without family. Kim leaves the why of Jen’s self-imposed exile unexplained, but the reader can imagine that Jen may have been gay and it was easier for her to live away from her family and society’s prejudices. Moving to another continent may have provided an easier path from the one that Green and Lane have chosen. In one passage, the mother contemplates that when some parents discover that their children are gay, they “threaten their children. They put a bottle of pesticide in front of them and suggest they drink it and die together. Some actually kill their children and die with them.” While the mother doesn’t condone this, she later imagines that if her husband were alive, he would not have “had the strength to cope and might have killed our daughter instead . . . he would have chosen to pretend she never existed in the first place.” The mother does not wish to see her own daughter die, but she does imagine killing Lane, even as her daughter tells her that “Lane is not a friend. To me she’s husband and wife and child. She is my family.” 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.”

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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.” Scott Shane's outstanding work Flee North tells the little-known tale of an unlikely partnership ...