Vulture Best Books of the Year (So Far)
A New York Times Editors Choice Selection
A fierce international best seller that launched Korea's new feminist
movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman's psychic
deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny.
Truly, flawlessly, completely, she became that person.
In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis
of Seoul lives Kim Jiyoung. A 30-something-year-old "millennial
everywoman", she has recently left her white-collar desk job - in order
to care for her newborn daughter full-time - as so many Korean women are
expected to do. But she quickly begins to exhibit strange symptoms that
alarm her husband, parents, and in-laws: Jiyoung impersonates the voices
of other women - alive and even dead, both known and unknown to her. As
she plunges deeper into this psychosis, her discomfited husband sends
her to a male psychiatrist.
In a chilling, eerily truncated third-person voice, Jiyoung's entire
life is recounted to the psychiatrist - a narrative infused with
disparate elements of frustration, perseverance, and submission. Born in
1982 and given the most common name for Korean baby girls, Jiyoung
quickly becomes the unfavored sister to her princeling little brother.
Always, her behavior is policed by the male figures around her - from
the elementary school teachers who enforce strict uniforms for girls, to
the coworkers who install a hidden camera in the women's restroom and
post their photos online. In her father's eyes, it is Jiyoung's fault
that men harass her late at night; in her husband's eyes, it is
Jiyoung's duty to forsake her career to take care of him and their
child - to put them first.
Jiyoung's painfully common life is juxtaposed against a backdrop of an
advancing Korea, as it abandons "family planning" birth control policies
and passes new legislation against gender discrimination. But can her
doctor flawlessly, completely cure her, or even discover what truly ails
her?
Rendered in minimalist yet lacerating prose, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
sits at the center of our global #MeToo movement and announces the
arrival of writer of international significance.
