Miss Kim Knows and Other Stories by Cho Nam-Joo, translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang, House of Anansi, 2024
Cho Nam-Joo, author of the bestselling novel Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982, has returned with Miss Kim Knows, a collection of eight short stories featuring an intergenerational array of characters and their struggles in a contemporary South Korea. The first story follows an elderly woman named Dongju as she visits her older sister, Geumju, who is housed in a care home for Alzheimer patients. Geumju’s health has devolved to the extent that Dongju is reminded of her son, whose life she had begged the doctor to save: “it didn’t matter if he had to lie in bed unable to talk or open his eyes.” As she compares the two, she wonders about the meaning of her life, and eventually, as the story goes on, we are made to learn that Dongju has also lost both her husband and her younger sister. The truth, that “death is so close and so common,” is brought to close regard. This opening tale then sets the tone for the rest of this collection, wherein we must reckon with what it means to live, what kind of life is worth living, and what it means to sacrifice one’s life—or to give up on it.
In “Dear Hyunnam Oppa,” a young woman moves to Seoul and dates a man for ten years before he makes a casual proposal of marriage, upon which she is forced to contemplate being bound even more inextricably to him. She asks for time to think and writes a long letter in response, taking us from their first interaction to the announcement that she is breaking up with him and moving to a place he shouldn’t try to find. She expresses gratitude for all the help he has offered since her arrival in Seoul many years ago, but her letter unveils the suffocation she felt—that despite her appreciation for his clear and insistent instructions when she first moved to Seoul, she does not want to continue to relinquish control to him. “There’s so much I want to do,” she says, “I can’t give up on my own life.” The longer the letter goes on, the more insufferable this male character becomes—a caricature of the archetype he is supposed to represent; he even expresses to the narrator’s friend how much he appreciates that she “isn’t like other girls,” and when the friend doesn’t take it well, he turns on her, calling her a bitch (classic). The most compelling element in this story came from its disturbing ordinariness—that a reader is able to understand the exact trajectory of the relationship, as well as all the little seemingly benign phrases (“be careful”; “let me”) that culminate in an unbearable cage and a watchful eye she cannot be rid of. In light of her apology in the beginning, the partner’s “care” is revealed as a desire to be obeyed, in control, and never doubted—especially as that is the only form of love he offers. He does not want the narrator to be “corrupted” or to make significant decisions on her own, but also wants her to be socially “capable” and successful. In clear, compelling prose, Cho demonstrates how “daily” this relationship is, how casually it chips away at her narrator’s sense of self, how she is unable to name or pinpoint her discomfort as her boyfriend gaslights her. Her friends (sometimes unknowingly) re-ignite her initial feelings of dissatisfaction, but ultimately agree that her gnawing unease should not be brushed under the rug, and it is these friendships that allow her to “see [herself] for who [she is].”
Another important aspect of this collection is its refusal to privilege the narratives of younger women, instead attempting to draw a line of feminine struggle from grandmothers to mothers and daughters. In “Grown-up Girl,” Cho calls upon us to confront our own biases and complacency through the narrative of a mother—considered “feminist” in her time and context—who struggles to support her daughter in a case of sexual harassment. She asks all the questions we expect: could it have been misunderstood? Doesn’t the girl have a history of inviting that kind of attention? And of course: “boys are [just] stupid.” The most interesting aspect of this story is that the mother is made to confront her own limits in order to go “beyond” what she thought was “enough” activism.
Throughout the collection, we realize that there is nothing easy in the effort towards collective liberation; the work is daily, unforgiving, incessant. Most of the time, it is easier to turn a blind eye—to believe that everyone is well-intentioned (or, at least, not ill-intentioned) and things are “not that deep.” It’s easier to believe that you’ve tried your hardest, that the point you’ve reached is good enough, and that those trying to go further are simply doing too much. It is easier to believe this than to admit that you are spent, and that the difficulty of maintaining what you have worked towards has made you fearful, reluctant to ask for more. Cho captures this inter-generational struggle well.
In “Dead Set,” a female writer is first harassed by internet trolls who leave insults and comments of all sorts—many of them threats of sexual violence and harassment. Then, a teacher from her high school days—now a professor—accuses the writer of stealing her story for her book. The writer is plunged into a mire of difficult emotions, but agrees to comply with her lawyer’s repeated suggestions to report the online trolls. “Things couldn’t go on like this,” she decides. Seeking some peace of mind, she goes on “responding, complaining, suing, and filing petitions.” Yet, in the wake of this, she is left unable to write. “Seasons changed,” she laments, “while I was unable to put down a single word.” With the same subtlety applied throughout the collection, Cho demonstrates how smaller injustices can pile up and how difficult it becomes to address each one. Many of us would opt to simply ignore them, overestimating our ability to withstand.
With compelling narratives featuring ordinary people—a missing father whose credit card activity is the only thing that reassures his beloved daughter that he is alive; an underpaid and overworked staff member who gets fired before strange things begin happening in the office—Cho is sensitive to her characters’ anger and frustrations, contrasting their emotional intensity with the ordinary nature of pedestrian difficulties and discriminations. This dissonance is further extended with moments of confusing memory sequences—which character remembers correctly, and which has lapses? Jamie Chang’s translation captures these haunting senses of vertigo while elegantly balancing the many distinct voices running through the collection; we know exactly who is speaking because we are so in tune with these characters’ emotional states—even as they oscillate between rage and exhaustion, certainty and hesitation, shy forgiveness and uncompromising rejection.
One criticism, however, pertains to the immediate and self-centered nature of the collection’s characters. While exploring the myriad lives of men and women—homemakers, professionals, students, young and old, middle class—Cho paints portraits of individuals who seems obsessed with living their life independently; it’s often clear that they’ve been forced to care for others entirely at their own expense. This is something we’ve come to accept as a part of reality, but Cho’s notion of what causes this—patriarchy—is disappointing in its oversimplification. While it may not be fair to expect that all stories include some discussion of colonialism or the horrors of capitalism and neoliberalism, I do find the absence of that exploration glaring when such forces seem to undergird the entire collection.
There is something to be said about the sinister dailiness of capitalism that promotes a collective amnesia of the horrors in South Korea’s recent history: Japanese occupation, Western imperialism, the violent severing of the peninsula, US-backed massacres, among others. Otherwise, the relative absence of these events, or any reflection on the negative effects of rapid industrialization and voracious capitalism, is glaring—particularly in a collection which crosses the generations that would have lived through all of them. Though the banal unhappiness that plagues the characters of Miss Kim Knows could be seen as an isolated force of alienation, loneliness, or patriarchal domination, one might consider how other forces in society could possibly contribute to the nation’s pervasive dissatisfactions.
Ruwa Alhayek is a Ph.D. student at Columbia University, studying Arabic poetry and translation in the department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies. She received her MFA from the New School in nonfiction, and is currently a social media manager at Asymptote.
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