In the opening scene, Kim depicts a fraught conversation between mother and daughter at a local noodle restaurant. 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.Ĭonsidering My Daughter centers the voices of women from different generations as they attempt to understand each other. 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.

The slim novel covers a breadth of contemporary concerns: family relationships, elder care, and LGBTQ issues. Whom could I possibly go to with these words? Who’s there to listen, anyway?Ĭoncerning My Daughter, Kim Hye-jin, Jamie Chang (trans) (Restless Books, September 2022) Things I want to say, must say, cannot say, must not say – I have no confidence in any of these words. She keeps quiet, ignoring the messiness of reality and guarding these thoughts in her head.īut her silence can only be maintained for so long, and she contemplates it during a quiet moment at church.Īll I did was sit here in this spot where I could look up at the altar, run my hands over these words that I feared others might hear, and let the silence grow.

And as a mother, she doesn’t want to talk about her adult daughter, who doesn’t have stable employment and is involved in a long-term relationship with a woman. The narrator of Kim Hye-jin’s Concerning My Daughter believes that “some things aren’t spoken out loud.” As she ages, she doesn’t want to discuss the lack of facilities willing to care for the elderly.

Concerning my daughter by kim hye jin