Shin Kyung-sook
Knopf Doubleday Publishing
FictionLiterary
purchased
Visit Goodreads
Buy the Book from IndieBound
Several years ago I attended a specialized leadership course with a concentration on cultural diversity. Of all the courses and conferences and workshops I’ve ever attended, that one was probably the most overall beneficial to my work and my life. We all have prejudices; that’s a fact. How we choose to act or even react to those prejudices is what makes us or breaks us.
Diversity takes on new meaning when looking inside the publishing world. Accusations/discussions of book covers being whitewashed, disproportionate numbers of male authors winning literary awards as compared to their female counterparts, and the hoopla around BookExpo America that the Associated Press calls a “convention predominantly organized by whites, spotlighting books predominantly written, edited and published by whites.” With all that it seems to me that the publishing industry could use that cultural diversity course I took!
So, in discovering what the discussion topics would be for this week’s Armchair BEA I was so pleased to have saved this particular book review. Last weekend our book club met to discuss Please Look After Mom, an award-winning translated novel set in South Korea. Yes, you read that right – the location was South Korea, the characters were ALL South Korean and the author was a female with a female translator! {oh, and she won a few awards for this book too!} A beautiful yet heart-breaking portrait of how a family discovers mom is an individual and not “just mom.”
The mom in this novel disappears at a hectic subway station in Seoul while trying to keep up with her husband. When the family gathers to create flyers to post around the neighborhood they realize that they don’t have a recent picture of mom. The story continues in the voice of the daughter, Chi-hon, eldest son Hyong-chol and the husband. Each takes a turn at inner reflection and guilt in their part in mom’s disappearance, lack of photos, and basic deplorable behavior toward their mother.
In our book club we talked about our own mother’s and how this book made us look at the relationship {or lack thereof} that we have with this woman who gave us life.
To you, Mom was always Mom. It never occurred to you that she had once taken her first step, or had once been three or twelve or twenty years old. Mom was Mom. She was born as Mom.
This is a book that should be read by anyone with a mom. The initial diving in takes a bit of getting used to as it is written in 2nd person “You.” At first I thought it was the way the book was translated but by the end of the first section the point of view was apparent, easily understood and added to the reading experience.
The fourth part is Mom’s own story, in her words, and had me anxious to get to book club so I could see if I was guessing correctly about where mom went – sometimes I can be just a little slower on the uptake 
It was fascinating to read about some of the differences in culture and yet also some of the very same ways marriage and motherhood are viewed the world over. How the first-born, especially the male first-born, is revered in the South Korean culture was disconcerting yet also reminded me of how things are in the Southern United States. In my family on my mom’s side, the males were also revered. Was it a cultural thing? a farming thing? Who knows – but it was interesting to see the similarities and differences.
I wish I had taken pictures of the food – especially the Kimchi with squid – but alas, I didn’t. I can tell you what all we had though! My book club likes to cook food that goes along with the book so for Please Look After Mom we had traditional Korean food. Our resident vegetarian brought the most delicious Korean Veggie Pancakes aka Pajun. One of our members couldn’t make it, but she cooked enough food for all of us AND all of YOU – she sent three huge containers of Kimchi – the one with the squid, a fermented version and a regular version. Oh my gosh was it s.p.i.c.y. We also had fried rice and Korean barbecue beef, Spicy Korean Cucumber Salad aka Oi Muchim, and copious amounts of wine. My oldest daughter hosted so we had an extra attendee – the Little Monkey provided the first dessert of Chips Ahoy cookies – he made certain to pass one cookie to each of us which was too too precious. . .then we had fresh strawberries and cream. . .of which the Little Monkey ate half. All in all we had a marvelous time and so much food! Please join us for our next book club – we will probably have enough food!
