Chu-yŏng Kim

Kim Joo-Young

Inrae You Vinciguerra

Louis Vinciguerra

Hailed by critics, Stingray has been described by its author as “a critical biography of my loving mother.” Hailed by critics, Stingray has been described by its author as “a critical biography of my loving mother.” With his father having abandoned his family for another woman, Se-young and his mother are forced to subsist on their own in the harsh environment of a small Korean farming village in the 1950s. Determined to wait for her husband’s return, Se-young’s mother hangs a dried stingray on the kitchen doorjamb; to her, it’s a reminder of the fact that she still has a husband, and that she must behave as a married woman would, despite all. Also, she claims, when the family is reunited, the fish will be their first, celebratory meal together. But when a beggar girl, Sam-rae, sneaks into their house during a blizzard, the first thing she does is eat the stingray, and what follows is a struggle, at once sentimental and ideological, for the soul of the household.

Stingray

Set in the bedlam of the Korean War, the book probes beneath the surface of historical stereotypes to recapture the tragedy of partition from the perspective of a woman trapped by coincidence between two warring camps.

Chu-yŏng Kim

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