Book Reco # 19: Please Look After Mother by Kyung-sook Shin
A book that invites us to explore our relationships with our family
Hi there!
In celebration of Women in Translation Month, I picked up Please Look After Mother by Kyung-sook Shin and translated from Korean by Chi-young Kim. I bought Please Look After Mother without knowing much about it. I bought it because I just had to have one book to make the shipping fee worth it. Are you sometimes like that? Even though you know you’ll be spending more? lol.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐4/5 stars
Sixty-nine year old Park So-nyo gets separated from her husband among the crowds in a Seoul subway station. As her family searches for her, long-held secrets and suppressed guilt are unraveled. The story is told in 4 perspectives with the following below:
Perspective 1: Chi-hon, eldest daughter.
Chi-hon reflects on how well does she really know her mother. To her, Mother has always been Mother but soon realizes that Mother was her own person too. With her own dreams, childhood, beliefs, heartbreak, and so on. She only ever saw Mother as a person who was supposed to raise her as a child and somebody to guide her through adulthood. Chi-hon’s narrative mostly center around how she is grieving for the lost time she should have spent understanding her mother.
Up until recently, I too, only saw my Mother as Mother and not her own person. I was already 30 years old at that time. What a shame. I don’t know what triggered that realization but I think it stemmed from another realization that my siblings are more than just accessories to my life. When somebody asks me if I have siblings, I say yes, and just think of them as extensions of me. When my younger sister eventually entered the work force and she kept asking me about government benefits and types of savings accounts, I realized that she was also going through the same things I did when I first started working. That’s when I realized that they are their own persons too. They too are experiencing their own problems, discovering themselves, figuring things out as much as I do. They’re not just there to exist as my siblings. For those with siblings, did you also felt like that?
Perspective 2: Hyong-chol, eldest son.
Hyong-chol is the favorite child who have been put into a pedestal. Mother doesn’t give him much chores, afraid that he won’t be able to study. He’s the only child that Mother makes ramen for, a luxury for them at that time. The search for Mother triggers memories he has long forgotten. He feels guilty of not living up to his full potential and for not fulfilling his promises to Mother.
Perspective 3: Husband.
The unnamed husband laments how he have always taken Mother for granted. Before the incident, the husband treated Mother as just a mother of his children. Not his wife. Not his partner. Not somebody that needs taking care of too. He realizes his selfishness and inattentiveness and breaks down in regret.
Perspective 4: Park So-nyo.
Finally, we get Mother’s perspective. This chapter reveals Mother’s secrets, emotions, and her source of strength. I won’t get into too much detail since it might spoil you. And yes, it’s a tear-jerker up until the end.
Overall, Please Look After Mother invites us to explore our “default” relationships - our relationship with our family members. How well do you know them and how much of ourselves do we give to them.
What I’m Reading This Week
To continue Women in Translation Month, I’m reading Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura and translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel. I’ve always been interested in the premise of this book but I just haven’t gotten around to pick it up. This month seemed perfect for it though.
