Translator: Jamie Chung
Number of Pages: 163
Genre: fiction
Meet Kim Jiyoung, an ordinary woman living in South Korea with a husband and young daughter. However Kim Jiyoung is exhibiting strange behaviour, adopting the personalities of women she has met in her life. We flash back to her earliest years and see her life marked with constant everyday sexism and institutional misogyny.
A short but powerful book exploring everyday sexism and misogyny in modern-day Korea, but there is enough in here to resonate with women throughout the world. Kim Jiyoung is born into a family that wanted a son instead of a daughter; she is tormented by a male classmate but is told that she should be flattered; she is threatened at a bus stop and made to feel that she is the problem; she is constantly overlooked for promotion at work; she gives up her life and career for motherhood and domesticity. All of this is presented in stark, pitiless prose, bolstered by statistics from a variety of sources.
This book was a sensation on it's first publication in Korea, and was gifted to South Korea's president, Moon Jae-in.
An important and powerful book, this will resonate with female readers, and should make male readers think about how we should be better.
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