Kim Hye Jin
My daughter
translation by Amalia Tsioti
ed., Ikaros, p. 184

This little one novel released in 2017 in South Korea, quickly became a bestseller, won the main prize the following year, and then began to be translated: at the moment it has been translated into fifteen languages. You can understand why. Starting with the main character’s attempt to accept her gay daughter, she speaks simply and directly about the problems that concern the whole world. And not just about homophobia. It speaks of fanaticism, the perishability of the body, the perishability, bitterness and loneliness of old age and, of course, death. And she does it with restrained prose, “kind” prose, like the kind heroine of the book, a typical middle-aged Korean woman, collected and with her head down, but with flashes when she seems to be suffocating or when something very unfairly raises her head above him next to her.

The heroine is horrified when she realizes that her child will end up unhappy due to prejudice and homophobia.

OUR Kim Hye Jin, born in 1983, herself an open lesbian, does not allow herself to be shaken by the injustice experienced by her heroine, the daughter of the protagonist. Instead, he writes as carefully as he can, placing one tile after another until he reaches a climax and an end. But until then, a lot has happened, and in fact, events of great intensity – even if it’s only “just” two neighbors who linger on the doorstep to gossip, or the consumable savings policy adopted by the nursing home where she works. story teller. Everything is in its place, and there is nothing superfluous in this perfectly structured text.

Left only with her thirty-year-old daughter, whom she rarely sees, the main character tries to make ends meet as best she can with her hard work and two rented rooms, feeling that one gaffe is enough to ruin her financially and starve. Things for people like her are very bad in Korea, and she must always take small, careful steps. Until her daughter asks her to rent one of the rooms, which she does. Only she will come not alone, but with her partner, with whom she has been living for seven years. Although she accepts this, the narrator cannot accept and digest it.

She is cruel to her daughter’s friend, won’t accept the milk or tea she offers her, avoids both of them, and hides from her neighbors because she doesn’t want to listen to their half-talk. And yet, she herself is constantly full of words: “What I want to say, what I should say, what I cannot say, what I should not say. Now I can’t be sure of a single word. To whom could I say such words? Who will listen to me? Words that cannot be spoken or heard. Words without a master.

Pogrom

The narrator’s daughter teaches at the university, but she is in danger of losing her job precisely because some people decided to organize a pogrom against homosexual employees of the institution. She herself is dynamic, goes to protests, and everyone knows it. Her mother is horrified. And now, not because her daughter is a lesbian, which is contrary to her own traditional family values, but because for the first time she realizes that society is so strongly homophobic and full of prejudice that her daughter will end up unhappy. She will become, like Jen, a great woman, activist and writer who worked for decades in Korea, the US and other countries for the rights of unaccompanied underage migrants, saving thousands of them and giving them a second chance, but now she is single and childless. , she is thrown into a nursing home, crazy, dirty and hurt, while the owners of this nursing home cut her diapers in half to cut costs…

A very strong, very touching novel, directly translated from Korean, about loneliness, empathy and love.