Found in Translation

When Kim Jiyoung was born, her mother, Oh Misook, wept over the misfortune of bringing another girl into the world. “It’s okay,” her mother-in-law said. “The third will be a boy.” There was such pressure to produce a son that when Oh Misook fell pregnant again, she resorted to a secret sex-selective abortion. The practice was gaining popularity in South Korea at the time, as if girls were a medical problem. And when she finally delivered a boy, her two daughters took a back seat.

Years later, Jiyoung lives in Seoul, where her roles as wife and stay-at-home mother are predestined, expected. She builds a short career in marketing — curbed by marrying and having a child of her own — in a company where she is passed over for promotions because her employer “did not think of female employees as prospective long-term colleagues.” We meet her when the everyday oppression has driven her to a mental health collapse.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, the third novel by...