Additionally, we are shown repeatedly that it is this desire to protect her daughter from discrimination and injustices that leads her to reject Green’s ‘unorthodox’ lifestyle. Without excusing her homophobia, she identifies instead the harmful rhetorics promoted by her society. The author never condemns the mother for her lack of knowledge or her unwillingness to understand her daughter’s sexuality. Throughout the course of the narrative, the mother fails to understand her daughter, and to a certain extent vice-versa. In fact, Green is fighting for lgbtq+ rights, protesting the discrimination and unfair dismissal faced by members of her community at the university where she was employed at. Worst, she is ‘unapologetically’ and ‘unabashedly’ gay, and has no intention of hiding her relationship from the prying eyes of others. But here she is in her thirties and living with her. The narrator longs for Green to lead a ‘normal’, expected, life: husband, children, a house. The mother wants her daughter to be happy, but her vision of contentment does not align with Green’s.
When Green asks her to rent out a room to her, she reluctantly obliges and is horrified to discover that Green will be joined by her long-term girlfriend, Lane. The story is told from the perspective of a middle-aged woman, a widowed careworker and mother to Green, who is now in her thirties. In Concerning my Daughter Kim Hye-Jin examines generational differences, cultural conservatism, and the realities of being an lgbtq+ person living in a heteronormative and traditionalist society. It is a candid and stark study of a fraught mother-daughter relationship.
To be rid of them, how skeletal and empty do I have to be?ĭespite its short length Concerning my Daughter is by no means a breeze to read. “The expectations and ambitions, possibilities and hopes concerning my daughter – they still remain and torment me no matter how hard I work to get rid of them.
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