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4.21 AVERAGE
4.21 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
fast-paced
really interesting book which has given me a greater understanding of gender inequality and discrimination in korea !
Necesaria lectura para entender La Vegetariana.
Es un libro demasiado plano y frío, pese a ello consiguió enfadarme a niveles insospechados.
Es un libro demasiado plano y frío, pese a ello consiguió enfadarme a niveles insospechados.
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
As a Chinese woman that grew up partially in China and has one foot in that culture, I was very reluctant to start this book. I knew it’s going to be either trauma inducing, or at least slightly triggering.
I heard of this book not through Instagram or booktok or YouTube, but on a Weibo blogpost, where, in Chinese, the feminist blogger introduced this book, and its film, as an extremely accurate depiction of what it’s like being a woman, that really showed all the minute hardships modern women go through in their current society.
After reading the book, I concur with that opinion. It’s an extremely, almost uncanny, accurate depiction of the life of an average East Asian woman. I don’t know much about women’s life in Japan, but in terms of China, it’s almost exactly the same. The sense of suffocation, the constant stress, never a prolonged period of careless happiness. The fact that Jiyoung’s grandparents favoured their son instead of their daughters, reminding me of my own grandmother, who only allowed my mom to eat the wings of the chicken and nothing else, and leaving all the good meat to her son. Jiyoung mother supported her son when he wanted to pursue higher education, my grandmother stopped sending my mother money after she got into university, while still supporting her son even after his marriage. My brother at sixteen years old needs both his parents to go with him to a brand new country. I got tossed on an international flight alone at ten.
If it’s in China, her teenage years wouldn’t be defined by constant sexual harassment, but instead by constant kidnapping attempts by human traffickers wanting to sell a city-girl to some thirty-year old man in the countryside needing a wife to continue his lineage. She would not have to deal with male colleagues putting a spy camera in the ladies bathroom, but she would have to deal with constant domestic abuse from her husband. The novel wouldn’t end with her going to therapy under a tone-deaf male psychiatrist, but would instead be a courtroom transcript or a news report about how her husband beat her to death with a bat, and received a sentence of one year imprisonment with a five year probation.
This book is my reality and my nightmare brought to life. It is not a case of “I sympathise with this character.” But more of, “I know so intimately these everyday traumas, that I know that if I had made one decision wrong in my past, that if I make one decision wrong in my future, this is who I will be.” And Kim Jiyoung’s life, is an absolute nightmare.
I heard of this book not through Instagram or booktok or YouTube, but on a Weibo blogpost, where, in Chinese, the feminist blogger introduced this book, and its film, as an extremely accurate depiction of what it’s like being a woman, that really showed all the minute hardships modern women go through in their current society.
After reading the book, I concur with that opinion. It’s an extremely, almost uncanny, accurate depiction of the life of an average East Asian woman. I don’t know much about women’s life in Japan, but in terms of China, it’s almost exactly the same. The sense of suffocation, the constant stress, never a prolonged period of careless happiness. The fact that Jiyoung’s grandparents favoured their son instead of their daughters, reminding me of my own grandmother, who only allowed my mom to eat the wings of the chicken and nothing else, and leaving all the good meat to her son. Jiyoung mother supported her son when he wanted to pursue higher education, my grandmother stopped sending my mother money after she got into university, while still supporting her son even after his marriage. My brother at sixteen years old needs both his parents to go with him to a brand new country. I got tossed on an international flight alone at ten.
If it’s in China, her teenage years wouldn’t be defined by constant sexual harassment, but instead by constant kidnapping attempts by human traffickers wanting to sell a city-girl to some thirty-year old man in the countryside needing a wife to continue his lineage. She would not have to deal with male colleagues putting a spy camera in the ladies bathroom, but she would have to deal with constant domestic abuse from her husband. The novel wouldn’t end with her going to therapy under a tone-deaf male psychiatrist, but would instead be a courtroom transcript or a news report about how her husband beat her to death with a bat, and received a sentence of one year imprisonment with a five year probation.
This book is my reality and my nightmare brought to life. It is not a case of “I sympathise with this character.” But more of, “I know so intimately these everyday traumas, that I know that if I had made one decision wrong in my past, that if I make one decision wrong in my future, this is who I will be.” And Kim Jiyoung’s life, is an absolute nightmare.