Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-Jim, translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang, is, at its core, a story about learning how to accept what one cannot change. This theme finds expression in the narrator’s relationship with her daughter.

Readers could interpret the narrator, who remains nameless throughout, as eternally pessimistic. She says, early on, that what it means to grow old is “crossing off items from the list of things you enjoy.” Very little offers the narrator joy. She just cannot locate it, and that frustrates her. Although the particular circumstances characterizing her life may be specific, this theme is universal.

The narrator’s daughter, referred to as Green, asks to move in, due to financial hardship. As an older, widowed woman, the narrator is also struggling; she cannot afford to quit her job as a caretaker in an elderly residence home. Green brings her long-time partner, Lane, whom the narrator simply calls “the girl.” The narrator asks, “Where on earth did my daughter find someone like this? At a time when everyone her age is looking for a healthy, successful prospective husband, where did my daughter and this Lane start to go wrong?”

What I like about Kim’s portrayal of the narrator is a continual display of inner turmoil. She really does not give us a break; we are constantly amidst the ongoing anxiety and distress the main character experiences. Her mind does not let her rest. At the same time, the narrator chooses suffering; she intentionally selects it as her way of experiencing the world. The book is a portrait of suffering, which starts with an act of resistance — the narrator resists what she knows she cannot change.

Questions of identity add dimension to the narrative. These questions relate not only to motherhood, as in how one comes to identify as a mother and not much else, but also to sexual orientation, belonging, meaningful work, and relationships. We aren’t defined so much by who we are inherently, the book seems to suggest, but by what constitutes us, or what we think constitutes us. The narrator asks herself, “Why am I ashamed of this child that came out of me? I don’t like the fact that I am ashamed to be her mother. Why is she making me deny her, and by extension myself and this entire life I’ve lived?”

Lane, Green’s girlfriend, is caring and patient; she acts more like a daughter towards the narrator than does Green. From simple acts like packing a lunch for the narrator, to helping her care for Jen, the elderly woman the narrator brings home from the residence, Lane proves herself a wonderful, capable partner. As she and the narrator care jointly for Jen, the narrator forgets — for a time — the grudge she holds against Lane. Yet, the narrator always returns to the fact that Lane is a woman, and that fact strips away all of her excellent qualities.

The story deepens as Kim traces the rise and fall of emotions, each with their own colors and patterns. As one parent recently told me, parenthood inevitably involves profound losses — the loss of hidden expectations or dreams, the loss of freedom, and eventually the loss of the child’s physical presence from the household. Loss defines the journey of raising an individual, Kim suggests. “That child who sprang from my own flesh and blood is perhaps the creature I’m most distant from,” the narrator says. She tiptoes at the edge of outright rejection — which would mean losing her daughter forever — and acceptance, which, to this narrator, means the same thing. She is teetering. What will she do? We never find out.

Perhaps it isn’t for us to find out. That isn’t the point.

The point is time. Some need more time than others to accept what can’t be changed, and the narrator isn’t sure she has that kind of time. In addition, she believes that understanding would constitute “giving up” on her daughter, “giving up on her opportunity to live a proud, normal life,” which she cannot allow.

The tone turns slightly hopeful after the narrator witnesses several days of protest at her daughter’s university. Green protests on behalf of a colleague who is terminated unfairly. The protestors shout: “We are just here. We just are. We just want to be acknowledged, like, Yes, we see that you are here. That’s all we’re asking for.” The narrator considers how these teachers deserve to do the work they are good at and that they deserve fair compensation. What she doesn’t realize is that protesters’ words echo what her daughter has been saying all her life. Green just wants to live the life she is good at, to be good at the person she is.

At one point, the narrator reflects: “I still have inside me the person who doesn’t want to understand anything, the one who wants to understand everything, the one who’s watching this from a distance, and so many other versions of me locked in an endless, repetitive battle.” This tireless repetition plays out throughout the book, and frankly, it’s exhausting. Yet this exhaustion successfully reflects on the experience of those continually yearning for acceptance. Those on the other side experience a suffering all their own.

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