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Words of Farewell: Stories by Korean Women Writers
we are the translators of this volume and wish to correct the title appearing to the right of the cover it should read "Words of Stories by Korean Women Writers" followed by "translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton"Thank you for your assistance with this.Sincerely,Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton
- GenresShort StoriesFictionAsia
294 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1989
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255 people want to read
About the author
Kang Sok-Kyong
3 books3 followersKang Sŏk-kyŏng , who was born on 10 January 1951, is an award-winning South Korean author with two works translated into English.
Kang was born in Daegu, and attended Ewha Womans University in Seoul. Originally a student of fine arts, she stumbled into a literary career quite accidentally when she entered a creative writing contest to raise tuition for graduate studies in sculpture and art criticism. Her debut works were "Roots" (Geun) and "Open Game" (Opeun Gaeim) for which she received the Literary Ideology Award in 1974. Her talent was unmistakable from the beginning, and for more than thirty years since her debut, she has remained a prolific and respected writer.
(from Wikipedia)
Kang was born in Daegu, and attended Ewha Womans University in Seoul. Originally a student of fine arts, she stumbled into a literary career quite accidentally when she entered a creative writing contest to raise tuition for graduate studies in sculpture and art criticism. Her debut works were "Roots" (Geun) and "Open Game" (Opeun Gaeim) for which she received the Literary Ideology Award in 1974. Her talent was unmistakable from the beginning, and for more than thirty years since her debut, she has remained a prolific and respected writer.
(from Wikipedia)
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February 6, 2017
Women writers. Women penning the trials and tribulations of being a woman. The pen and ink bidding farewell to the prevailing apprehensions. The spoken language of an individual narrowed by gender hierarchy labouring in relative anonymity, women write, knocking down the heavily guarded patriarchal gates of a traditional society , the defining emergence diminishing the glaring divide of public from domestic life, where men reigned the former and women the latter. How does one designate the essence of being a woman? How does one quote a chapter and verse from the consequential book of womanhood? Women who have conventionally been beheld as someone’s daughter, someone’s wife and someone’s mother; their own individual identity lapsing into being a mere legal signature on few sheets of paper. How does one then define the constitution of Korean women? Or can you? Women who are as diverse as the land itself spanning through generations, cultural edifications and numerous personal and societal evolutions seeking an autonomy to their existence in an overwhelming patriarchal world. How does one ever answer the unwelcomed question of signifying the autonomy of womanhood? The patriarchal advocacy of literature, the very notion of belles- lettres being the prime avocation of cultural gentlemen, the adversities of gender discrepancies shadowing the laboured efforts of women writers derides the valid declaration of talent having no gender whatsoever. The contemporary Korean women writers (three of whom being mentioned in this book) bring forth an notable insight to the strenuous effort of their emergence from a society profoundly influenced by the Confucian precepts, finally breaking out from their obscurities. The undying spirit of their penned narrative, the meticulous characterization, accomplish a sophisticated sensory faculty of symbolism sketching the evolution of Korean women in a rapidly modernized world
“……to accept our own lives, and without such thoughts to make us feel good, how could we live? We women were facing up to life with our bodies as our only asset. We may now have smelled like roses, but we got to learn all about life and freedom in our way…..”
The picturesque forsythias blooming on a palace walls, the beauty of scenic spring stretching on a wall calendar in a clinic testing venereal diseases befits the stark revelation of a social world where days and dreams brim with the futility of a traumatic past and the aspirations of striving for a dignified existence. Kang Sŏk-kyŏng allegorizes the social status of prostitutes surviving on the U.S. military base in Korea, to a drifting isolated island, a temporary home destined to subsist in loneliness of abandonment. The slight flicker of hope within melancholia is the hallmark of their lives which struggle to find a haven of freedom and integrity. In the endless fight for human dignity, their bodies become the sole measure of self-defence, a path to their freedom however despicable. The marginal women thriving on the societal periphery seek comfort among their ilk, the labelling of “leftovers” a crude irony, in a world where men carry the burden and the badge of brutal enforcers. The rebellion and restraints to freedom, personal choices of women shackled by archaic ethos stretches afar from the Korean peninsula into the male-dominance of the Western world, applying universality factor to the predicament of women sexuality condemned to abhorrence. “But if two women see eye to eye, there’s no law that says they can’t live together,” said Toma.” So what if they’re lesbians? People live the way they want to. And so what if we’re whore? Except for worrying about money, it’s great living around the base. No husband to treat us rough, no kids to worry us, no one interfering with us.”
The controversial subject of a woman’s body becoming the weapon for her emancipation edges on the possibility of emotional vulnerabilities and inconspicuous rebellion. Kim Chi-wŏn dwells in to unchartered territories where the society as a whole becomes the source of shame for a woman. The collective chauvinism that safeguards the sanctimonious matrimonial institution rests upon the humiliation of women. The marital sacrosanctity ruthlessly abused under the assumed patriarchate prerogative. Kim Chi-wŏn is scrupulous in rendering the dual state of relationship between a man and a woman , raising a similar yet different issue concerning the life of a Korean woman immigrant in U.S. The quest for a resourceful independence gives Yun-ja a possibility of a certain beginning, a marriage based purely on monetary and legal convenience. The probability and improbability of a ‘real marriage’ immerses in reflections of a financial arrangement, age and divorce. The disconnect of a woman and the society is evident in the final libertine declaration.
“Longing for something to sustain and steady her, the woman nevertheless tended to to doubt the permanence of everything. Do flowers last more than ten day? And floods that look like they’ll sweep the world away are gone in a couple days, aren’t they? But her relief that the world was transitory was tempered by the painful realization that society expected marriage to be the most harmonious of human relationships.”
Transience becomes the most fitting lifeline to despondency. Kim Chi-wŏn is scrupulous in rendering the dual state of relationship between a man and a woman. The nightly mellow lullaby sung a mother is marred by domestic brutality, estrangement and resentment. A clandestine corner in the house tries the patience of a battered wife, the harmony of matrimony crumbling into ashes floating on the cold ghostly waters of a pond nearby. The central themes of hopelessness and self-restraint fade away, yet the predictability of self-reliance is still muddled in impermeable monocracy.
“Like a foolish girl you’re trying to find beyond the world. If you’d only given in a little, you wouldn’t have had to go around butting up against the world; you wouldn’t have had to spill your blood. You would have found that the springtime of life isn’t a chain; it’s a pair of wings.”
The self-restraint of rebellion originating from the conventional mores once again twirls the idea of freedom although being the sweet nectar in a claustrophobic milieu; it is the dawn of justice that brings the sweetest aroma in an acrid life. The fortunate franchise of youth caught amid Marxist ideas and democratic upheaval plunges into an abyss of alienation and confusion. The structural sanctity of filial piety bruised by blatant hypocrisy and customary subordination questions the cogency of an inherited male-dominated hierarchy. The pursuit for individuality resulting in either enforced submission or absolute abandonment; agony being the sole companion of nothingness. As a daughter, is trapped between familial obligations and self-exploration, the youthfulness of a sibling risking the madness of a powerless chaotic soul, the maze of confusion unable to find a sheltered room in the woods. Kang Sŏk-kyŏng once again underlines the crucial adherence factor of meritocracy that stamps its social legitimacy of becoming a societal shrine with its ignorance, narcissistic enforcements and submissive gender protocols.
Alienation is seen as one of the strongest denominator in lives of these female characters perpetually trapped in the polarities of modern and conformist worlds. O Chŏng-hŭi in her literary explorations reveals the torments of estrangement when engulfed with the bleakness of death and impermanence. The stories spun a convoluted web of conflict and acquiescence where choices are imaginary. An evening game is vacated for a pleasurable night with a young lover. The women preoccupied by the melodies of a young mother reminiscence her harried past detached from her present apathy. The daily father-daughter card game echoes the whispers of a mother losing her sanity over the loss of her child, a father waiting for his son and a possible infanticide. O Chŏng-hŭi adroitly frames a sequential persecution in an episodic narrative. The vagueness of death seeps into the comprehensibility of life. The grave stones symbolise the quandary of two women, the former seeking a grave plots for her and her husband and the latter contemplating the rationality of her husband’s dubious absence. The words of farewell scatter the memories of physical departure and vacuousness of physical existence.
Talent has no gender. Creativity does not go picking and choosing its master appropriated on the grammatical gender system dais. Literature has no single definition. The vexing question then arises as to why women are the only ones to be bestowed by such an endearing privilege of their entirety being abbreviated through the myopic primal gender regulations? Sarcasm or anxiety of the patriarchy? These stories of Korean women penned by three remarkable women writers encompassing multifaceted thematic nitty gritty of prostitution, youth, death, generational gap, bigotry, sexuality, love and much more, travel beyond the said geographical panorama depicting the notion of universality, broadening the thematic accessibilities of the female characters chronicling their own future detached from their status as someone’s mother, wife or daughter. In the current ongoing global scenario where women’s rights are easily bargained, a coming of an age story not cracking down on the deliberations of a quintessential teen male, but, a disquieting collage of a young girl matured beyond her naïve years, life impressions swirling around the nauseating chaos of sex, death and poverty in the war ravaged Seoul district bylanes of Chinatown ,call for a response of literary stimuli to view beyond the charcoal coated faces in the classic Bildungsroman ,an empathetic astute listener to the stories of women acutely ingrained in Korean culture ; the innocence of childhood stepping on the onset of womanhood culminating in the pragmatic… “My menstrual flow had begun.”
“……to accept our own lives, and without such thoughts to make us feel good, how could we live? We women were facing up to life with our bodies as our only asset. We may now have smelled like roses, but we got to learn all about life and freedom in our way…..”
The picturesque forsythias blooming on a palace walls, the beauty of scenic spring stretching on a wall calendar in a clinic testing venereal diseases befits the stark revelation of a social world where days and dreams brim with the futility of a traumatic past and the aspirations of striving for a dignified existence. Kang Sŏk-kyŏng allegorizes the social status of prostitutes surviving on the U.S. military base in Korea, to a drifting isolated island, a temporary home destined to subsist in loneliness of abandonment. The slight flicker of hope within melancholia is the hallmark of their lives which struggle to find a haven of freedom and integrity. In the endless fight for human dignity, their bodies become the sole measure of self-defence, a path to their freedom however despicable. The marginal women thriving on the societal periphery seek comfort among their ilk, the labelling of “leftovers” a crude irony, in a world where men carry the burden and the badge of brutal enforcers. The rebellion and restraints to freedom, personal choices of women shackled by archaic ethos stretches afar from the Korean peninsula into the male-dominance of the Western world, applying universality factor to the predicament of women sexuality condemned to abhorrence. “But if two women see eye to eye, there’s no law that says they can’t live together,” said Toma.” So what if they’re lesbians? People live the way they want to. And so what if we’re whore? Except for worrying about money, it’s great living around the base. No husband to treat us rough, no kids to worry us, no one interfering with us.”
The controversial subject of a woman’s body becoming the weapon for her emancipation edges on the possibility of emotional vulnerabilities and inconspicuous rebellion. Kim Chi-wŏn dwells in to unchartered territories where the society as a whole becomes the source of shame for a woman. The collective chauvinism that safeguards the sanctimonious matrimonial institution rests upon the humiliation of women. The marital sacrosanctity ruthlessly abused under the assumed patriarchate prerogative. Kim Chi-wŏn is scrupulous in rendering the dual state of relationship between a man and a woman , raising a similar yet different issue concerning the life of a Korean woman immigrant in U.S. The quest for a resourceful independence gives Yun-ja a possibility of a certain beginning, a marriage based purely on monetary and legal convenience. The probability and improbability of a ‘real marriage’ immerses in reflections of a financial arrangement, age and divorce. The disconnect of a woman and the society is evident in the final libertine declaration.
“Longing for something to sustain and steady her, the woman nevertheless tended to to doubt the permanence of everything. Do flowers last more than ten day? And floods that look like they’ll sweep the world away are gone in a couple days, aren’t they? But her relief that the world was transitory was tempered by the painful realization that society expected marriage to be the most harmonious of human relationships.”
Transience becomes the most fitting lifeline to despondency. Kim Chi-wŏn is scrupulous in rendering the dual state of relationship between a man and a woman. The nightly mellow lullaby sung a mother is marred by domestic brutality, estrangement and resentment. A clandestine corner in the house tries the patience of a battered wife, the harmony of matrimony crumbling into ashes floating on the cold ghostly waters of a pond nearby. The central themes of hopelessness and self-restraint fade away, yet the predictability of self-reliance is still muddled in impermeable monocracy.
“Like a foolish girl you’re trying to find beyond the world. If you’d only given in a little, you wouldn’t have had to go around butting up against the world; you wouldn’t have had to spill your blood. You would have found that the springtime of life isn’t a chain; it’s a pair of wings.”
The self-restraint of rebellion originating from the conventional mores once again twirls the idea of freedom although being the sweet nectar in a claustrophobic milieu; it is the dawn of justice that brings the sweetest aroma in an acrid life. The fortunate franchise of youth caught amid Marxist ideas and democratic upheaval plunges into an abyss of alienation and confusion. The structural sanctity of filial piety bruised by blatant hypocrisy and customary subordination questions the cogency of an inherited male-dominated hierarchy. The pursuit for individuality resulting in either enforced submission or absolute abandonment; agony being the sole companion of nothingness. As a daughter, is trapped between familial obligations and self-exploration, the youthfulness of a sibling risking the madness of a powerless chaotic soul, the maze of confusion unable to find a sheltered room in the woods. Kang Sŏk-kyŏng once again underlines the crucial adherence factor of meritocracy that stamps its social legitimacy of becoming a societal shrine with its ignorance, narcissistic enforcements and submissive gender protocols.
Alienation is seen as one of the strongest denominator in lives of these female characters perpetually trapped in the polarities of modern and conformist worlds. O Chŏng-hŭi in her literary explorations reveals the torments of estrangement when engulfed with the bleakness of death and impermanence. The stories spun a convoluted web of conflict and acquiescence where choices are imaginary. An evening game is vacated for a pleasurable night with a young lover. The women preoccupied by the melodies of a young mother reminiscence her harried past detached from her present apathy. The daily father-daughter card game echoes the whispers of a mother losing her sanity over the loss of her child, a father waiting for his son and a possible infanticide. O Chŏng-hŭi adroitly frames a sequential persecution in an episodic narrative. The vagueness of death seeps into the comprehensibility of life. The grave stones symbolise the quandary of two women, the former seeking a grave plots for her and her husband and the latter contemplating the rationality of her husband’s dubious absence. The words of farewell scatter the memories of physical departure and vacuousness of physical existence.
Talent has no gender. Creativity does not go picking and choosing its master appropriated on the grammatical gender system dais. Literature has no single definition. The vexing question then arises as to why women are the only ones to be bestowed by such an endearing privilege of their entirety being abbreviated through the myopic primal gender regulations? Sarcasm or anxiety of the patriarchy? These stories of Korean women penned by three remarkable women writers encompassing multifaceted thematic nitty gritty of prostitution, youth, death, generational gap, bigotry, sexuality, love and much more, travel beyond the said geographical panorama depicting the notion of universality, broadening the thematic accessibilities of the female characters chronicling their own future detached from their status as someone’s mother, wife or daughter. In the current ongoing global scenario where women’s rights are easily bargained, a coming of an age story not cracking down on the deliberations of a quintessential teen male, but, a disquieting collage of a young girl matured beyond her naïve years, life impressions swirling around the nauseating chaos of sex, death and poverty in the war ravaged Seoul district bylanes of Chinatown ,call for a response of literary stimuli to view beyond the charcoal coated faces in the classic Bildungsroman ,an empathetic astute listener to the stories of women acutely ingrained in Korean culture ; the innocence of childhood stepping on the onset of womanhood culminating in the pragmatic… “My menstrual flow had begun.”
September 11, 2015
This was a truly impressive collection of 1980's Korean fiction and it has the extra bonus of being a collection of all female writers. The three authors presented are Kang Sok-kyong, Kim Chi-won, and O Chong-hui. While you can tie them together as being Korean female authors publishing works in the same time period, their themes and images are very different when looked at closely. The overall feel of the book is a fairly smooth transition between the short stories of the three authors and you get an overall understanding of the latent tensions and emotions present in the 80s.
Of the two stories by Kang, I was most excited by "Days and Dreams" which is about a prostitute who deals with American service men. It was so raw and unexpected, this being my first encounter with the author, and full of a range of sexuality and identity that really caused me to stop and think about the surrounding historical context and the effect of the US military presence in Korea. The second story, "A Room in the Woods", won an award when it was first published in Korea and after reading it I can confirm that it was deservedly so. Dealing with the tensions between the generations, social classes, and genders, this story is a snapshot of the mid-80s in Korea. Through the main character's attempts to understand her estranged sister, the modern problem of too many options is explored. The mere presence of those options doesn't mean that they are a right fit for any one person and this story shows the depression one can fall into if you still can't find your way with so many less-than-perfect options readily available.
Kim's "A Certain Beginning" takes us all the way to the US where a woman who has her green card feels attachment to neither the US nor Korea. Her uncertainty and ambivalence are highlighted by her association with a young student that she marries for money to help him get his own green card. As an exploration of Koreans in an American context, this text is fairly interesting, albeit brief. "Lullaby" is a drastically different tone and makes the reader frustrated, yet left with an eerie feeling. It tracks the relationship of a husband and wife who cannot seem to communicate and these miscommunications highlight extant gender issues in Korea even to this day.
O's works are renown for their stream of consciousness style and their elaborate, bodily descriptions of the scenery/backgrounds used. "Evening Game" shows a father and daughter unable to communicate, yet incapable of separating. "Chinatown" is another look into the underbelly of the US military presence in Korea, but shown through the eyes of a young girl who at such a young age, knows too well the burdens of womanhood from observing those around her. "Words of Farewell" is the most difficult to read of the three, with its flashing forwards and backwards and mixing perspectives between a woman and her husband. This story feels very modern, yet it deals with issues and themes that are not uncommon. Its exploration of life and death leaves you wondering if the conclusions you came to were really right or not.
Another sort of bonus for those who love to read Korean translated literature is seeing how far Korean literature translation has come since this collection's publication in 1989. Bruce and Ju-chan Fulton are a pair of the top Korean literature translators, and yet constrictions of the target reader base in 1989 made for some interesting translation choices that would probably be handled differently today due to more Korea-conscious English readers. In particular, the term 'flower cards' came up in a few of the stories and this would probably now be done as 'Go Stop' or a transliteration of the Korean name. Other instances are different clothing or foods that now could just be transliterated instead of a round-about descriptive phrase. As someone who has read more recent translations by this pair and by others, it is kind of exciting and interesting to see just how much the job of translating has changed over the years.
Of the two stories by Kang, I was most excited by "Days and Dreams" which is about a prostitute who deals with American service men. It was so raw and unexpected, this being my first encounter with the author, and full of a range of sexuality and identity that really caused me to stop and think about the surrounding historical context and the effect of the US military presence in Korea. The second story, "A Room in the Woods", won an award when it was first published in Korea and after reading it I can confirm that it was deservedly so. Dealing with the tensions between the generations, social classes, and genders, this story is a snapshot of the mid-80s in Korea. Through the main character's attempts to understand her estranged sister, the modern problem of too many options is explored. The mere presence of those options doesn't mean that they are a right fit for any one person and this story shows the depression one can fall into if you still can't find your way with so many less-than-perfect options readily available.
Kim's "A Certain Beginning" takes us all the way to the US where a woman who has her green card feels attachment to neither the US nor Korea. Her uncertainty and ambivalence are highlighted by her association with a young student that she marries for money to help him get his own green card. As an exploration of Koreans in an American context, this text is fairly interesting, albeit brief. "Lullaby" is a drastically different tone and makes the reader frustrated, yet left with an eerie feeling. It tracks the relationship of a husband and wife who cannot seem to communicate and these miscommunications highlight extant gender issues in Korea even to this day.
O's works are renown for their stream of consciousness style and their elaborate, bodily descriptions of the scenery/backgrounds used. "Evening Game" shows a father and daughter unable to communicate, yet incapable of separating. "Chinatown" is another look into the underbelly of the US military presence in Korea, but shown through the eyes of a young girl who at such a young age, knows too well the burdens of womanhood from observing those around her. "Words of Farewell" is the most difficult to read of the three, with its flashing forwards and backwards and mixing perspectives between a woman and her husband. This story feels very modern, yet it deals with issues and themes that are not uncommon. Its exploration of life and death leaves you wondering if the conclusions you came to were really right or not.
Another sort of bonus for those who love to read Korean translated literature is seeing how far Korean literature translation has come since this collection's publication in 1989. Bruce and Ju-chan Fulton are a pair of the top Korean literature translators, and yet constrictions of the target reader base in 1989 made for some interesting translation choices that would probably be handled differently today due to more Korea-conscious English readers. In particular, the term 'flower cards' came up in a few of the stories and this would probably now be done as 'Go Stop' or a transliteration of the Korean name. Other instances are different clothing or foods that now could just be transliterated instead of a round-about descriptive phrase. As someone who has read more recent translations by this pair and by others, it is kind of exciting and interesting to see just how much the job of translating has changed over the years.
July 29, 2016
Short stories written in the late 1970s/early 1980s by women writers, I found this collection to be a revelation.
Kang Seok-kyeong's works (Days and Dreams and A Room in the Woods) rapidly became some of my favorite Korean short stories - ever. Days and Dreams in particular was fascinating, with a prostitute as a protagonist, American soldiers, and homosexual themes, giving the story an almost timeless feel. A Room in the Woods, on the other hand, was extremely dated, but not in a bad way; it was truly a reflection of the tumultuous early 80s and holds up 30-35 years later.
Kim Chi-won's stories were short and... well, I wasn't crazy about them. A Certain Beginning was pretty good, but Lullaby was roughly 20 to 30 pages too short.
I'm a big fan of Oh Jung-hee, and in fact wrote a term paper about Chinatown and Evening Game. The thing with Oh's writing is that there is distance between the narrator and the situation at hand, and more distance still between the reader and the story. There is a dark, bittersweet, and sometimes nostalgic tone to many of her stories (including the three that appear in this collection) which makes for an interesting reading experience. Oh is considered one of the most significant writers of modern Korean literature for a reason.
I want to give this work five stars, based entirely on the strength of Kang Seok-kyeong and Oh Jung-hee's works, but Kim Chi-won's works let down the collection as a whole.
Kang Seok-kyeong's works (Days and Dreams and A Room in the Woods) rapidly became some of my favorite Korean short stories - ever. Days and Dreams in particular was fascinating, with a prostitute as a protagonist, American soldiers, and homosexual themes, giving the story an almost timeless feel. A Room in the Woods, on the other hand, was extremely dated, but not in a bad way; it was truly a reflection of the tumultuous early 80s and holds up 30-35 years later.
Kim Chi-won's stories were short and... well, I wasn't crazy about them. A Certain Beginning was pretty good, but Lullaby was roughly 20 to 30 pages too short.
I'm a big fan of Oh Jung-hee, and in fact wrote a term paper about Chinatown and Evening Game. The thing with Oh's writing is that there is distance between the narrator and the situation at hand, and more distance still between the reader and the story. There is a dark, bittersweet, and sometimes nostalgic tone to many of her stories (including the three that appear in this collection) which makes for an interesting reading experience. Oh is considered one of the most significant writers of modern Korean literature for a reason.
I want to give this work five stars, based entirely on the strength of Kang Seok-kyeong and Oh Jung-hee's works, but Kim Chi-won's works let down the collection as a whole.
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April 18, 2022
Words of farewell -Stories by Korean Women Writerd
4.5/5
"Prostitution, student protests, the generation gap, racism, the lost of innocence, love and death—these are themes Explorer by three of Korea's foremost contemporary women writers in this landmark collection of fiction"
"All the once the smell dispelled my confusion and the neigbourhood seemed familiar and friendly. I finally understood the true nature of that smell: it eas a languid happiness, an image colored by our refugee life in the village we had lefr the previous night, the memory of my childhood" (Chinatown, p.211)
"Here at the highest point of the city we had a commanding view of Chinatown and the colored blankets and lace underwear on the balconies of the sooty houses seized from the Japanese. These were the scenes, the underside, the mysterious smile of this city" (Chinatown, p.223)
Personally, my favourite author turned out to be Oh Jung-Hee whos three short stories were the last in this collection. Her language was beautiful and mysterious and description of places was beatifully vivid. Favourite out of her stories was Chinatown.
"When I was twenty I was like virgin soil. Mother enjoyed dressing me in embroidered blouses and in Chinese styles braiding my glossy hair, and decorating me like a holy maiden, but in reality I was a maverick-sneaking cigarettes, eating a sweetened cherry to hide the smale and whistling innocently" (The room in the woods, p. 73)
My second favourite author was Kang Sok-Kyong and her short story (though definitely a lot longer then others in this collectiob) "Room in the woods". Her stories dealt with the life of young women in the changing city, battling with university, love, depression and traditional values of family and marks of colonialism. I liked her characters the most, since they were quite unusually radical and strong female charactets.
I wouldnt say the third author's, Kim Chi-Won's stories would be my least favourite because I did enjoy both of them aswell. I just felt that the writing and characters werent as beautiful or memorable as were the other two author's. Nevertheless, she touched upon some very interesting themes like immigrant womens life, loneliness, life of a divorced korean women and the respect (or lack of) that women get in marriage (for example rarely called by their own name: always "the wife of x", "the Mother of x)
I was pleasently suprised by these beatiful novels and it was really interestings to see differences between three strong female authorts from the 20th century Korean literary world. Recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about Korean society especially from womens perspective.
4.5/5
"Prostitution, student protests, the generation gap, racism, the lost of innocence, love and death—these are themes Explorer by three of Korea's foremost contemporary women writers in this landmark collection of fiction"
"All the once the smell dispelled my confusion and the neigbourhood seemed familiar and friendly. I finally understood the true nature of that smell: it eas a languid happiness, an image colored by our refugee life in the village we had lefr the previous night, the memory of my childhood" (Chinatown, p.211)
"Here at the highest point of the city we had a commanding view of Chinatown and the colored blankets and lace underwear on the balconies of the sooty houses seized from the Japanese. These were the scenes, the underside, the mysterious smile of this city" (Chinatown, p.223)
Personally, my favourite author turned out to be Oh Jung-Hee whos three short stories were the last in this collection. Her language was beautiful and mysterious and description of places was beatifully vivid. Favourite out of her stories was Chinatown.
"When I was twenty I was like virgin soil. Mother enjoyed dressing me in embroidered blouses and in Chinese styles braiding my glossy hair, and decorating me like a holy maiden, but in reality I was a maverick-sneaking cigarettes, eating a sweetened cherry to hide the smale and whistling innocently" (The room in the woods, p. 73)
My second favourite author was Kang Sok-Kyong and her short story (though definitely a lot longer then others in this collectiob) "Room in the woods". Her stories dealt with the life of young women in the changing city, battling with university, love, depression and traditional values of family and marks of colonialism. I liked her characters the most, since they were quite unusually radical and strong female charactets.
I wouldnt say the third author's, Kim Chi-Won's stories would be my least favourite because I did enjoy both of them aswell. I just felt that the writing and characters werent as beautiful or memorable as were the other two author's. Nevertheless, she touched upon some very interesting themes like immigrant womens life, loneliness, life of a divorced korean women and the respect (or lack of) that women get in marriage (for example rarely called by their own name: always "the wife of x", "the Mother of x)
I was pleasently suprised by these beatiful novels and it was really interestings to see differences between three strong female authorts from the 20th century Korean literary world. Recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about Korean society especially from womens perspective.
May 27, 2017
full review can be found on my blog.
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for reading!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews