Shoko's Smile: Stories - Softcover

Eunyoung, Choi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143135260 ISBN 13: 9780143135265

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

A bestselling and award-winning debut collection from one of South Korea's most prominent young writers.

In crisp, unembellished prose, Eun-young Choi paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in South Korea, balancing the personal with the political. In the title story, a fraught friendship between an exchange student and her host sister follows them from adolescence to adulthood. In "A Song from Afar," a young woman grapples with the death of her lover, traveling to Russia to search for information about the deceased. In "Secret," the parents of a teacher killed in the Sewol ferry sinking hide the news of her death from her grandmother.
In the tradition of Sally Rooney, Banana Yoshimoto, and Marilynne Robinson--writers from different cultures who all take an unvarnished look at human relationships and the female experience--Choi Eunyoung is a writer to watch.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Choi Eunyoung is a South Korean writer acclaimed for her nuanced yet poignant stories about women, queer people, victims of state violence, and other marginalized voices. She is the author of the bestselling story collections Shoko's Smile and Someone Who Can't Hurt Me, which have sold over 200,000 copies and 150,000 copies respectively in Korea and is being translated into several languages. Since her literary debut in 2013, she has received numerous accolades, including the Munhakdongne Young Writers Award (2014, 2017, 2020), Heo Kyun Literary Award, Lee Haejo Literary Award, and Hankook Ilbo Literary Award. Both of her story collections were selected as the best fiction title of the year by 50 Korean writers (2016, 2018). She has also published a Korean-English bilingual edition of her novella The Summer and contributed to many anthologies.
Sung Ryu is a Korean-English translator who grew up in South Korea, the US, and Canada, her most recent home being Singapore. Her translations include Tower by Bae Myung-hoon (2021), I'm Waiting for You: And Other Stories by Kim Bo-Young (co-translated with Sophie Bowman, 2021), and the Korean edition of Grandma Moses: My Life's History by Anna Mary Robertson Moses (2017). She translated the Jeju myth "Segyeong Bonpuri" (Origins of the Harvest Deities) for her MA thesis.

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Shoko's

Smile

I dig my hands into the cold sand and gaze at the black, shimmering sea.

It feels like the edge of the universe.

Shoko once told me that standing on the shore made her feel like she was standing on the outskirts of the world. As if she'd been pushed away from the center, away from people, until she reached the edge of the sea that was itself pushed away from the great ocean. She said it wasn't especially pleasant for two loners to come together, only to dip their toes in the water.

"Someday I'm going to leave the shore, and live in a city surrounded by buildings."

Shoko always said "someday." She said it at seventeen, and again at twenty-three.

She said she would someday move out to the city, someday travel around Korea for a week, someday have a live-in boyfriend, someday quit her job at the hospital, someday get a pet cat, she would be up for anything.

Shoko's English was easy to understand. Although anyone could hear her distinct Japanese accent, her pronunciation was accurate and her consonants and vowels linked smoothly. Under a wisteria tree where a group of Korean and Japanese students sat huddled, Shoko said in fluent English:

"Someday I'm going to get a caterpillar tattoo around my nipple."

All the girls blushed except me-I laughed.

Shoko and three other girls were touring my school for a program called "Cultural Exchange between Korean and Japanese Students." That was the year the ban on Japanese cultural imports was lifted. Shoko was from a Japanese city I'll call A, and went to a small all-girls high school that was apparently a sister school to mine. She was among the four best English speakers in her sophomore class, which was why she was chosen to visit my school.

The principal, excited by this small event, took the four students around to every classroom, in all three grade levels. The girls seemed inexhaustible, introducing themselves in cheery voices when they came to my class, their final stop. Shoko had a shy demeanor, but I suspected she wasn't actually shy and only spoke shyly out of habit.

In the days leading up to Shoko's arrival, Mom, Grandpa, and I cleaned the house whenever we had time. Shoko was in the same year as me, and I was one of the few tenth-graders who could speak English, broken as it was. This was the excuse my homeroom teacher used to ask Mom if Shoko could stay at my house for her week in Korea. Shoko and I remained about a handspan apart while we awkwardly made our way home.

I still remember how Mom's and Grandpa's faces broke into smiles when they saw us come through the front door. How they knew nothing about Shoko yet still beamed at her in welcome, just because she was a guest who had traveled a great distance. Grandpa's and Mom's animated faces as they greeted Shoko looked strange and comical to me, given that my family normally had trouble showing affection to the point of being too embarrassed to smile at each other.

"You must be Shoko. It's great to have you here. Our place is a bit small, but I hope you won't find it too uncomfortable."

Mom chattered away in Korean as if Shoko understood her, while Grandpa translated for her into Japanese and kept on smiling.

Go get me my ashtray, bring me a glass of water, fetch hot water for my feet: giving orders while watching TV on the couch was all Grandpa did. He'd be sitting where he always sat when I came home from school and only spare a brief glance at me before turning back to the screen. But this very same Grandpa had switched off the TV and was asking Shoko all sorts of questions. His voice sounded confident when he used Japanese. Even if he had learned it from harsh Japanese instructors, it was the only foreign language he could speak.

My family didn't talk much during meals. We would have the TV on, out of habit, and watch soap operas or the news while eating as quickly as possible. But as soon as Shoko turned up, Grandpa started jabbering away in Japanese and chuckled so often that I couldn't squeeze a word into the conversation. It was the first time I'd ever seen him talk or laugh so much.

Shoko knelt on the floor and very politely listened to Grandpa with a smile. Just as when I'd seen her bashful expression in class, I felt something was off about her smile. I sensed that she wasn't smiling because she was truly pleased, nor nodding because she really sympathized. The gestures were simply meant to make the other person feel comfortable.

Now and then Grandpa pointed at me and cackled in Shoko's presence. I asked her what he was on about, and she said he was telling her funny stories about me. Like the time I forgot to bring my backpack to school and had to come back home, or the time I peed my pants listening to a ghost story, stupid stuff like that. Grandpa had been furious with my accidents when they occurred, so I had no idea why he was recounting them as if they were fun memories we shared.

Shoko seemed to find it easier to communicate with Grandpa than with me. There were many things we couldn't talk about in English, but she and Grandpa could talk about pretty much anything in Japanese. Grandpa asked Shoko to call him "Mr. Kim." He said he wanted to be a friend, not old and boring like some school principal.

It was an evening in July shortly before summer break.

Shoko and I were chatting as we strolled along a nearby river. She said my family members were kind and funny. I didn't reply. My English was limited, but I wanted to show her that I liked her. I linked my arm with hers.

Shoko stopped in her tracks and looked at me, her face stiffening. She said formally in English, "I am heterosexual. I am not attracted to you sexually. Or to any other girls. I like boys."

A little taken aback, I told her I wasn't attracted to her, either, and explained that linking arms was a common way to display affection between friends here, so she shouldn't take it the wrong way. She didn't quite believe me, but understood what I meant when she saw hordes of girls arm in arm at school the next day.

Shoko said she lived with her aunt and grandfather. That was why my family didn't feel like strangers to her; if anything, she felt at home. Her aunt was the real head of the family, but wasn't around much because her job involved frequent travel. Her grandfather treated her like a princess, convinced that she was the prettiest and smartest girl in the world.

"I'm his religion, his whole world. Every time I remember that I want to die."

She said that on rainy days, when her grandfather came out to meet her with an umbrella, she climbed over the fence into her house to avoid running into him. Once, when he used a portion of what little money he had to buy her new clothes, she chucked them in the trash can still wrapped. The thought of her grandfather seeing her as some kind of girlfriend turned her stomach. As soon as she was done with high school, she would take off to Tokyo and never set foot in her hometown again.

"Then I'll give you my grandpa. Mine thinks I'm the dumbest girl in the world and nags at me to lose weight every time he sees me. He's never bought me so much as a pack of gum, let alone clothes."

Shoko smiled quietly at me. It was a pleasant but cold smile. Like she was a grown-up dealing with a silly little kid.

The house teemed with a curious liveliness during our week with Shoko. Grandpa went to the grocery store to buy watermelon after Shoko mentioned she liked the fruit. Mom set a goal to learn a new language whether it was English or Japanese. We had trilingual conversations over a plate of rice balls made by...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0143135260
• ISBN 13: 9780143135265
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland