Book Review: "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982" by Cho Nam-Joo
4.5/5 stars
*Spoiler alert!*
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Korean author Cho Nam-Joo
is a gem that I hope gets its due. It’s a primal scream not only of South Korean
women, but women around the world, against persistent misogyny.
This slim novel reads as a dispassionate clinical study, which makes it hit all the harder. Kim Jiyoung is in her early thirties when her husband notices that she has started acting erratically in front of family and friends, often doing eerie imitations of women she knows and doesn’t know. So, she is sent to see a male therapist, who interviews her about her life, from her childhood to the present (2016).
“Jiyoung grew up being told to be cautious, to dress conservatively, to be ‘ladylike.’ That it’s your job to avoid dangerous places, times of day and people. It’s your fault for not noticing and not avoiding.”
From the beginning, it is clear
that there is an undercurrent of misogyny in everything, modeled early on in
her childhood. Culturally, sons are favored over daughters. Her parents
prioritize the youngest of the siblings, Jiyoung’s brother. He doesn’t have to
help with the copious amounts of household chores that seem to fall on the
women, even if they work outside the home. Men and boys get food first and then
the girls and women. Boys’ education is often prioritized over that of the
female members of the family. Jiyoung’s mother gave up a career to raise a
family and Kim faces the same dilemma in her own life.
Jiyoung’s psychosis comes to a head
when she makes the decision to leave her job to care for her young daughter and
finds herself viewed by some in society as a leech, having an easy life at the
expense of the toil of men like her husband. (The context being that South
Korea, like the United States, has a broken daycare system and an almost
non-existent parental leave system, leaving many families with difficult
choices to make, often at the expense of a woman’s career. Did I mention the
pay gap?)
I can’t blame her for breaking. Privilege notwithstanding, I think all women experience this kind of last-straw situation at some point in their lives. It isn’t difficult to see how coming up against a stubborn wall repeatedly, year after year, and not seeing many cracks in it would drive someone mad. Gender equality seems like common sense, yet women find themselves having to fight the same battles as their mothers and grandmothers to merely protect those precious rights gained the by blood, sweat, and tears of their predecessors, to be seen as equal in humanity to their male counterparts.
I can’t help but wonder what Jiyoung’s daughter’s life experience will be like. There are hopeful notes throughout the novel, particularly when girls and women organize and use their numbers to push back against unfair policies like dress codes or demanding justice when it is found a coworker placed a camera in the woman’s bathroom and circulated the images around the office. (The pushback to the latter situation being, think of the men. Don’t ruin their lives over this, they have families!)
However, the bright spots in the novel are dimmed a bit in comparison to the fact that the psychiatrist treating Kim Jiyoung claims to get “it”— “it” being women’s experiences—while then bemoaning the resignation of a co-worker, a woman who brought in significant business for the practice, and saying that next time, he should hire someone who is unmarried. (I can’t describe the level of tone-deafness in this closing chapter; you must read it yourself to really understand.)
I think Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 should
become required reading in high school and college courses, as it reminds us
all that we have much work still to do to secure gender equality and parity.
Happy reading!
--BookOwl
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