Posted on 04/14/2011 8:22:53 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
'Please Look After Mom': A Guilt Trip To The Big City
by Maureen Corrigan
April 5, 2011
Mama Mia, who knew that Koreans outstrip Italians and Jews when it comes to mother guilt!
How else to explain why Please Look After Mom, a new novel by Korean novelist Kyung-sook Shin, has already sold over one-million copies in her native South Korea? This literary phenom is scheduled to be published in 22 other countries and has just come out in the U.S. The back cover of the American edition, brought out by Knopf, is filled with blurbs by heavyweights like Gary Shteyngart and Edwidge Danticat. They, too, must share a weakness for melodramas about maternal self-sacrifice, although Please Look After Mom outsniffles even those immortal weepies of the western canon, Stella Dallas and Mildred Pierce.
/snip
Having just read Patti Smith's award-winning memoir, Just Kids, for the second time, I'd urge you to pick her empowering female adventure tale about getting lost in the city instead. Smith will get your book club on its feet and pumping its collective fists in the air, rather than knocking back the wine and reaching for the cheap consolations of kimchee-scented Kleenex fiction.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
They closed the comments. The author was getting pounded. If you can’t take the heat lady, get back in the kitchen. :-)
Koreans do seem to excel at drama!
I am hooked to a few of their programs as a matter of fact, just waiting for the sub-titles. :)
mysoju.com and dramacrazy.net are two of the sites I frequent
I have a Korean mom. This reeks of racism. I was especially offended by the kimchi quote. I’m pretty thick skinned and can take the ignorant comments with a grain of salt. I will be the first to admit I have a “tiger” mom who pushed us to the brink but all 3 of us girls have turned out really successful (and we all play an instrument, of course)!
I wish those tickets to South Korea weren’t so expensive!! I’d love to visit.
here in the Philippines, we have lots of Korean dramas on our tv stations.
my favorites are the historical dramas about doctors/nurses. Fascinating.
Got the source link wrong. I took the link to comment section instead of the article itself. The correct one is:
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/05/135120998/please-look-after-mom-a-guilt-trip-to-the-big-city
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