VOL.69/2024.04

Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin

2023.12.04

Kim Hye-Jin’s award-winning book Concerning My Daughter (Minumsa). The book’s main characters are a mother in her sixties who works as a nurse and leads a quiet life, her daughter ‘Green,’ and her daughter’s girlfriend ‘Rain.’ The author describes the mother’s collision with her daughter Green’s different lifestyle and relationship in a fluent, gripping language.

The term gender refers to physical, morphological, and anatomical differences (biological differences). However, gender/being a woman is culturally constructed. Simone de Beauvoir, one of the gender theorists, expressed this situation by saying, “one is not born a woman, one becomes a woman.” Everyone is born as a baby into a certain social structure. This social formation into which the baby is born also contains social and cultural codes. And throughout its entire development, the baby is educated with the value judgements of the society into which it is born. This education also determines what kind of a man or woman the baby will be in the future by adopting the value judgements and role models prevailing in the society.
As a result of this, girls are generally emphasised for their gentleness and beauty. At the same time, they are expected not to immediately express their thoughts out loud in public, not to be assertive, to take care of the house they live in, to learn household chores, to be a good wife and mother, to develop an implicit skill in human relations, and to establish relationship networks that can be sustained for their close environment. That’s what Green’s mum expects from her daughter. Green is her only daughter, and as a mother, she wants her only daughter to lead a “normal” life, striving for her to have a good education. However, Green is outside the “normal,” and the mother cannot accept this, nor does she deny it. However, Green is a woman who raises her voice against injustice, regardless of language, religion, colour, or gender, who does not remain insensitive to wrongs, who adds strength to the voice of the minority, and who is interested in women. Green does not play the role that society assigns to her.
The book is read in one breath, but in a slightly long breath. While reading the book, you think about your own family relationships, your friends, what is happening first in your own country and then in the world on gender issues similar to those in the book, the future, death...

Written by Günsenin Miray Dirlik (Reader of K-Book Trends)