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gab 's review for:
Please Look After Mom
by Kyung-sook Shin
this book 100% did not resonate with me. i feel like it just pushes the value of filial piety and ~give your 110% to your family~ which i just don't agree with. there were some lines and ideas i liked, but on the whole this felt like a passive-aggressive letter from a put-upon mother to her kids.
things i didn't like
- any man in this book besides chi-hon's boyfriend
- the mom's UNBELIEVABLE saintliness lol
- how chi-hon was shamed and felt bad for LIVING HER OWN LIFE just because her mom didn't agree?? go ride that plane, girl. there's so much guilt and a heavy burden placed on the female children lol like the second sister felt bad she occasionally felt frustration??
- the mom is held as a platonic ideal of motherhood which like... isn't healthy lol CLEARLY
what an exhausting read.
POST-DISCUSSION NOTES:
To be more clear about why I disliked this book, by virtue of its hyperbolic martyring of the mom character + the obvious takeaway being "wow they treated her badly and deserve to regret," please look after mom seems to speak for lionizing the dead and erasing all their mistakes lmao. I think the lack of nuance in the book really just irked me because the main values it was pushing (filial piety, duty to family, motherhood) just don't align with my own.
things i didn't like
- any man in this book besides chi-hon's boyfriend
- the mom's UNBELIEVABLE saintliness lol
- how chi-hon was shamed and felt bad for LIVING HER OWN LIFE just because her mom didn't agree?? go ride that plane, girl. there's so much guilt and a heavy burden placed on the female children lol like the second sister felt bad she occasionally felt frustration??
- the mom is held as a platonic ideal of motherhood which like... isn't healthy lol CLEARLY
what an exhausting read.
POST-DISCUSSION NOTES:
To be more clear about why I disliked this book, by virtue of its hyperbolic martyring of the mom character + the obvious takeaway being "wow they treated her badly and deserve to regret," please look after mom seems to speak for lionizing the dead and erasing all their mistakes lmao. I think the lack of nuance in the book really just irked me because the main values it was pushing (filial piety, duty to family, motherhood) just don't align with my own.