(“I rush out of the house and keep walking for a while before thinking back to what just happened there. There was one scene in which she left the house in a huff, it having been taken over by her daughter and her daughter’s questionable friends, but she even admits that the kind of atmosphere the daughter’s friends brought to the house was something that she wished for. I was very frustrated with the narrator throughout the whole book, obviously. She sees herself in the older woman and struggles to come to terms with the way her own life has shaken itself out. She can’t possibly see a life for her daughter that doesn’t revolve around finding a man, a stable career, and settling down.Īt the same time, the narrator takes care of an older woman in a nursing home who has no children and is being neglected by the rest of the staff, forced to reuse diapers among other things. The narrator allows her thirty-something daughter and her daughter’s lesbian partner move back in with her, even though she doesn’t accept their relationship. Someone with so much to learn, even at such a late age in life, as the narrator does. It’s rare that we get to see inside the mind of someone who expresses distaste with her daughter’s sexual orientation, someone who might be labeled “homophobic” when the issue is far more complex than that. She learned and learned, and ended up learning things she shouldn’t have: how to resist the ways of the world, how to be at odds with it.” Maybe I’ve allowed her too much unnecessary education.

Maybe she’s spent too much time studying. Rather, knowing my daughter is one of them shocks and alarms me daily and brings down upon me the full force of my disappointment and guilt. “Knowing that this is the reality for the majority is no comfort to me.

Kim hye jin concerning my daughter