Book review: "Concerning My Daughter"
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fffridayToday I finished book #11 on the "Women in Translation" rec list: Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-Jin, translated from Korean by Jamie Chang. This book is about an a widow in her mid-70s who ends up sharing a home with her adult daughter and her daughter's partner. Her contentious relationship with her daughter pits her long-held beliefs and societal viewpoints against her love for her child; simultaneously, she struggles in her job caring for an elderly dementia patient in a nursing home.
The protagonist is a person who values, above all, keeping your head down and doing what's expected of you. She does not believe in standing out; she does not believe in involving yourself in other people's problems; perhaps for these reasons, she believes the only people you can ever count on are family. This is how she's lived her whole life, and she believes it was for the best. However, this mindset puts her directly in conflict with her daughter, a lesbian activist who is fighting for equal employment treatment for queer professors and teachers in the South Korean educational system.
When her daughter, Green, runs out of money to pay rent after a quarrel with the university where she was lecturing, the protagonist allows Green and her partner Lane to move in, despite their fractious relationship.
It is difficult to be in the point of view of someone like the protagonist, but the picture that Hye-Jin paints of her feels very realistic. The protagonist obviously loves her daughter as much as she is frustrated with her; she wants Green to give up her activism not because the protagonist is opposed to the idea of societal change, but because she sees the hardship Green's fights put on her, and she wants her daughter to have an easier, less dangerous life. Similarly, she opposes Green's queerness not because she has a fiery moral crusade against The Homosexuals, but because she sees how the rest of society treats gay women and she doesn't want a life of such struggles for her daughter (which is not to say she's not homophobic—she is, sometimes aggressively, but it's the sort of amorphous discomfort and "but which of you is the man in bed?" and "but what will the neighbors think?" kind of homophobia rather than the "you're going to burn in hell forever" kind).
Running parallel to that is the protagonist's relationship with her work. She cares for a woman, Jen, in a nursing home who is in the latening stages of dementia. Jen in her younger years was a remarkable woman with multiple degrees who worked in diplomacy and traveled the world. However, she never married or had children, and as such, the nursing home is increasingly encouraging the protagonist to deprioritize Jen's care, because there will be no one to complain on her behalf. Jen keeps a stack of her awards and diplomas in her bedside table, but the protagonist's coworkers frequently lament that Jen wasted her life because she never had kids.
The book is quite short, but the first half manages still to be somewhat repetitive—the protagonist is locked into repeating thought patterns and an active refusal to grow, but as the urgency of both plotlines rises at the midpoint of the novel, it leaves behind any repetitiveness. I was teary-eyed for much of the final third of the book. Both situations push the protagonist to realize that she is choosing not to do anything, not to change, not to grow, not to understand these situations as fully as she could. Even this woman reaches a point where she must put her foot down, to say no, this isn't right, I can't just watch this happen.
"It's not my fault, it's not your fault, it's no one's fault. If we keep telling ourselves that, then who should all the victims of the world go to for their apology?"
In this way, the book pushes back firmly against the idea of simply being old and unable to learn. The protagonist voices a feeling that she is fighting between two halves of herself—the half that wants to stick with what she knows, to do what's comfortable even though it's making her unhappy and destroying her relationship with her daughter; and the half that wants to change, to engage, at the risk of letting the unfamiliar into her life. But the struggle exists, change is possible, she just has to make it happen.
The ending is not going to make the Hallmark channel anytime soon; but again, it feels real. It is not a tearful falling into each other's arms between mother and daughter as they finally grasp a full understanding of each other; it is not even a total repudiation of the protagonist's earlier thoughts. But it is a promise to try to do better. I imagine it will be disappointing for readers who want radical change from (or else condemnation of) the protagonist, but it felt appropriate for a stubborn 70+ year old woman who loves her daughter but is fighting so many of her own instincts not to bother changing her perspective, to insist that she's been right all along.
The book is also critical commentary on South Korean society, both in how it treats queer people and how it treats old people. As one of the most rapidly aging societies in the world, the questions about the treatment of the elderly feel particularly pertinent in South Korea, but are applicable globally. At its heart, Concerning My Daughter is asking questions about what "counts" as a family. Do Green and Lane count, even though they can't, at the time this novel was published, get married? Does the protagonist count as a part of Jen's family, since she has no one else? Does the man whose education Jen financed when she was younger count?
The book shows how rigid concepts of family and acceptability can harm everyone involved, as well as how a broader view of these things can create joy, even where there may also be hardship.
The translation by Jamie Chang was serviceable. It brought through the blunt, hard-hitting language of the more difficult scenes, but it did come off somewhat stilted at other times. On the whole, it worked. However, for reasons I do not know, the book doesn't use quotation marks, which can make it very difficult to tell when someone is talking and when we're reading narration. If this was a stylistic choice, it wasn't worth the confusion it creates.
This book was a tough read despite its brevity, because of its subject-matter, but it also deals with extremely relevant and important issues, and presents them in a realistic and visceral way. This book won the Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature in 2018 and I think it was earned.
Crossposted tobooknook and books
It is difficult to be in the point of view of someone like the protagonist, but the picture that Hye-Jin paints of her feels very realistic. The protagonist obviously loves her daughter as much as she is frustrated with her; she wants Green to give up her activism not because the protagonist is opposed to the idea of societal change, but because she sees the hardship Green's fights put on her, and she wants her daughter to have an easier, less dangerous life. Similarly, she opposes Green's queerness not because she has a fiery moral crusade against The Homosexuals, but because she sees how the rest of society treats gay women and she doesn't want a life of such struggles for her daughter (which is not to say she's not homophobic—she is, sometimes aggressively, but it's the sort of amorphous discomfort and "but which of you is the man in bed?" and "but what will the neighbors think?" kind of homophobia rather than the "you're going to burn in hell forever" kind).
Running parallel to that is the protagonist's relationship with her work. She cares for a woman, Jen, in a nursing home who is in the latening stages of dementia. Jen in her younger years was a remarkable woman with multiple degrees who worked in diplomacy and traveled the world. However, she never married or had children, and as such, the nursing home is increasingly encouraging the protagonist to deprioritize Jen's care, because there will be no one to complain on her behalf. Jen keeps a stack of her awards and diplomas in her bedside table, but the protagonist's coworkers frequently lament that Jen wasted her life because she never had kids.
The book is quite short, but the first half manages still to be somewhat repetitive—the protagonist is locked into repeating thought patterns and an active refusal to grow, but as the urgency of both plotlines rises at the midpoint of the novel, it leaves behind any repetitiveness. I was teary-eyed for much of the final third of the book. Both situations push the protagonist to realize that she is choosing not to do anything, not to change, not to grow, not to understand these situations as fully as she could. Even this woman reaches a point where she must put her foot down, to say no, this isn't right, I can't just watch this happen.
"It's not my fault, it's not your fault, it's no one's fault. If we keep telling ourselves that, then who should all the victims of the world go to for their apology?"
In this way, the book pushes back firmly against the idea of simply being old and unable to learn. The protagonist voices a feeling that she is fighting between two halves of herself—the half that wants to stick with what she knows, to do what's comfortable even though it's making her unhappy and destroying her relationship with her daughter; and the half that wants to change, to engage, at the risk of letting the unfamiliar into her life. But the struggle exists, change is possible, she just has to make it happen.
The ending is not going to make the Hallmark channel anytime soon; but again, it feels real. It is not a tearful falling into each other's arms between mother and daughter as they finally grasp a full understanding of each other; it is not even a total repudiation of the protagonist's earlier thoughts. But it is a promise to try to do better. I imagine it will be disappointing for readers who want radical change from (or else condemnation of) the protagonist, but it felt appropriate for a stubborn 70+ year old woman who loves her daughter but is fighting so many of her own instincts not to bother changing her perspective, to insist that she's been right all along.
The book is also critical commentary on South Korean society, both in how it treats queer people and how it treats old people. As one of the most rapidly aging societies in the world, the questions about the treatment of the elderly feel particularly pertinent in South Korea, but are applicable globally. At its heart, Concerning My Daughter is asking questions about what "counts" as a family. Do Green and Lane count, even though they can't, at the time this novel was published, get married? Does the protagonist count as a part of Jen's family, since she has no one else? Does the man whose education Jen financed when she was younger count?
The book shows how rigid concepts of family and acceptability can harm everyone involved, as well as how a broader view of these things can create joy, even where there may also be hardship.
The translation by Jamie Chang was serviceable. It brought through the blunt, hard-hitting language of the more difficult scenes, but it did come off somewhat stilted at other times. On the whole, it worked. However, for reasons I do not know, the book doesn't use quotation marks, which can make it very difficult to tell when someone is talking and when we're reading narration. If this was a stylistic choice, it wasn't worth the confusion it creates.
This book was a tough read despite its brevity, because of its subject-matter, but it also deals with extremely relevant and important issues, and presents them in a realistic and visceral way. This book won the Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature in 2018 and I think it was earned.
Crossposted to
booknook and books 
