Kim Jiyoung, born 1982

 

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 / Cho Nam-Joo
trans. from the Korean by Jamie Chang
Toronto: Anansi, 2020, c2016.
163 p.

Another book that examines the constraints on a woman's life, and in this case the effects on one particular woman. This Korean novel looks at Kim Jiyoung's life, and reveals her breakdown in the face of extreme societal misogyny. 

She's a thirty something office worker who leaves her job to care for her first child, but begins to exhibit strange symptoms; she is taking on the identities of other women, alive and dead, as she struggles to find a way to live. Her husband, who thinks she should be happy to give up her career and identity in order to stay home and care for him and their child, becomes alarmed and sends her to a psychiatrist - male of course. 

The novel is told is a spare and minimalist voice, that of the psychiatrist giving a report. This distancing from Jiyoung's own voice and own perspective just reinforces the complete societal blindness to the issues Korean women are facing. When as a young woman she was harassed, her father blamed her for being out at night. When coworkers shared pictures online from a hidden camera in the women's washrooms, they were not held responsible, the women just had to accept it. There's a litany of misogyny, from childhood when boys always go first at everything, from school grades to eating, to work where women are not recruited for good positions even if they have earned the highest grades in university, and even if they do find a job they are paid much less than men.

It's the accumulation of these many systematic misogynistic injuries that means "Jiyoung was standing in the middle of a labyrinth. Conscientiously and calmly, she was searching for a way out that didn’t exist to begin with." This is what is fueling her so-called madness, which in a stroke of brilliance is mansplained away by the male psychiatrist in the end. 

The cold and clinical tone, alongside the factoids thrown in, make this novel a bit of a fiction/nonfiction composite. But it really works as a novel, as we follow Jiyoung and become invested in her life and her experiences. I don't think there will be many women readers who can't understand her distress and resonate with her desire to escape this life. I found it really powerful, especially alongside the previous book I just reviewed, Invisible Women. We can't just look away.