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.

Concerning My Daughter - Kim Hye-jin - Google Books

Although their generational differences seem insurmountable, gradual change can be observed as they confront challenges at their workplaces.In translation; Concerning My Daughter, Hugs and Cuddles, and Freeway: La Movie Concerning My Daughter, Hugs and Cuddles and Freeway: La Movie do not pretend to be easy reads, yet they are all completely consuming. Freeway: La Movie has no real storyline, just a nameless, displaced narrator who's just trying to act as "the only witness to whatever is happening.

Concerning My Daughter, Hugs and - NPR In translation; Concerning My Daughter, Hugs and - NPR

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 she witnesses how uncaring and downright neglectful the staff is towards one of her elderly dementia patients. All these qualms are only amplified by the fact that the daughter and her girlfriend are protesting unfair dismissal and discrimination in the workplace. 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. The narrator wonders how long she'll be able to do this exhausting work and fears ending up like most residents, who have no one to visit them and are just waiting to die.

As the mother’s understanding of her daughter grows, she finds she is unable to resist Lane’s unwavering patience and caring attention. one that boldly takes on the daunting task of humanizing someone whose prejudice has made her cruel. 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.

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

At first, I thought this might be another of those rather stereotypical presentations of age versus youth which reinforces ageism, and takes a rather superficial, clichéd approach to representing the fight for LGBTQ rights. 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.Pitch-perfect short novel about what it means to have a 'good life,’ as well as about devoted smothering parenting and generational divide. Yet despite this, or perhaps because of it, she’s fixated on steering her daughter Green towards making the same choices, unable to let go of ingrained beliefs in the supremacy of conventional family life as a means to living well: a man, a woman, children. Having centered her life on her husband and child, her daughter’s definition of family is not one she can accept. 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. A heavy but tentatively hopeful look at the struggle for intergenerational understanding through one mother's eyes.

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

But gentle, subtle novels are far more common than ones that take the opposite tactic, announcing their difficulty or their defiance from the very first page — a brave strategy, and one that creates a uniquely exciting relationship between author and audience.The coming together of the three women to see Jen through her life’s final rites symbolizes their metamorphosis into family. Green speaks out against injustice while her mother prefers to keep quiet and not get involved in other people’s problems. Already a prestigious best-seller in Korea, Kim’s impassioned novel about the meaning of family—by blood, by choice—marks her English-language debut, seamlessly translated by National Book Award longlister Chang…. The narrative swings between the mother’s uneasy relationship with Green and her girlfriend, to her taxing workplace. Without excusing her homophobia, she identifies instead the harmful rhetorics promoted by her society.