Kindle Notes & Highlights
Some sentences are like ambushing soldiers, jumping out from behind the bushes inside of me on an autumn day like this one, while I am walking down the street to keep an appointment. They conquer reality in an instant and fill me up with an excitement that seems to be wrapped in light. I am willingly captured by these soldiers mid-ambush and turn my back on my appointment. I head home.
mallards.
“You are now different from me.”
Mom was born in the 1930s and I was born in 1963. By “different,” I gather that Mom is referring to generational gap.
How beautiful, to behold from behind, one who goes, knowing clearly when it is he should go.
Only when he was cooking did Father stop thinking about what other people thought about him. Right now, right this moment, writing this makes me happy. Only when he was cooking, Father stopped thinking about what other people thought about him, I write, and I feel happy. For I am probably the only one in my family who can describe Father like this. If Mother found out that I had described him this way, she might throw me a sidelong scowl. “Wouldn’t people look down on your father if they heard he was in the kitchen cooking?” she would say.
On holidays, Mom always took out new clothes that she had prepared for us (there were many children who did not get new clothes for the holidays); always bought us new sneakers to wear (many children went around in rubber flats); kept me out of the fields (many children worked in the fields, their faces tanned dark); did whatever she could to let us continue with school (many children attended only elementary school).
Literature, however, is destined to be rooted in the problem of life, and the problem of life has less to do with hope and what is right, but more with unhappiness and what is wrong. After all, isn’t life about living on even when one is trapped inside unhappiness without hope?
Ha Gye-suk
We have to join hands and claim our rights and interests. We have to secure raises and demand compensation allowance for menstruation leave. They have that under unpaid leave. But it’s our rightful leave, spelled out in the labor laws. We should get paid for working on those days. When we’re just a minute late for work, we get a late stamp on our time card, which results in an hour’s pay cut. No wonder so little ends up in our hands, after all the deductions here and there. And that’s because we let the company do whatever they want without resisting.”
president threw his ashtray at her,
Yu Chae-ok a
Cousin gets her cheek slapped by the head of administration for wearing the ribbon on her chest.
For fundraising for dismissed workers. For putting an end to the oppression of workers.
Cousin says she does not want to. “How come?” Cousin says nothing. “How come you don’t want to?” “How can I go back to school at this age?” “How old is that?” “Nineteen.” “That’s not so old.” “That is old. All my friends are graduating.”
answer, after watching the two of them speak. “She wants to be a photographer.” Oldest Brother says, “Some grand dream,” then adds, sounding apologetic yet firm, “It’s the same with marriage. If you work at a factory, you can only find someone on that level. To live a decent life in this country, the first thing you need is schooling.”
