Concerning My Daughter

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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 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.

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

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. 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. 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?’

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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.” 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.

Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin - Pan Macmillan

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. As the mother’s understanding of her daughter grows, she finds she is unable to resist Lane’s unwavering patience and caring attention. The mother’s aches and pains are debilitating and her appetite is gone. Lane, who has also been wounded amidst the chaos of the protests, brings herbal tea and muscle relaxant patches for the mother and herself. They tend to each other’s wounds, creating a moment of communion that recalls the Last Supper. This is a transcendent moment of mutual care. Lane becomes the mother’s business, marking a clear turning point in the novel.The contrast between speaking up and remaining silent is evident throughout the novel. Green speaks out against injustice while her mother prefers to keep quiet and not get involved in other people’s problems. Although their generational differences seem insurmountable, gradual change can be observed as they confront challenges at their workplaces. At the nursing home, cost-cutting measures loom, and the mother struggles to provide the level of care her elderly dementia patient deserves. At the university, with LGBTQ colleagues unfairly dismissed, Green joins the fight against their discriminatory practices. Although mother disagrees, as she takes in the scene at the protest, she reflects on her life and the passage of time.

Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin - Daunt Books Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin - Daunt Books

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.

With bracing honesty, Kim Hye-jin taps into the complexities of mother-daughter dynamics while unearthing the mechanisms of violence that target LGBTQ communities in traditional societies. Elegantly translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang, Concerning My Daughter shines a light on all facets of familial love and conflict.

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

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. 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. 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. Sobre mi hija” es un libro breve en tamaño pero enorme en profundidad, uno de esos en los que se puede subrayar cada frase, cada palabra, que logra hablar sobre muchísimos temas, todos ellos entrelazados, y lo hace con tanto acierto que consigue agitar irremediablemente al lector. Entre los temas que toca, podemos destacar la homofobia, la precariedad laboral, el edadismo, la falta de empatía o las relaciones familiares y la dificultad para comunicarse y entenderse entre los miembros de una familia.

By Kim Hye-jin

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.”