My Sister, Bongsoon

The author of seven previous novels, Gong Ji-young won the very prestigious 21st Century Literary Award in 2000. She is now one of the most acclaimed contemporary woman writers of Korea. Through her novels which were published in 1990, 1991, 1993, two in 1994, 1997 and My Sister Bongsoon which was published in 1998, Gong has become one of the most influential writers appealing to the new generation of Korean women and men. She explores the pain, conflicts and complexities of women searching a place in the new Korea.

My Sister Bongsoon is an autobiographical novel. Through the eyes of Jiang, a precocious five-year old girl, the author relates how Bongsoon, a live-in maid who was uneducated, unloved but innocent and hard-working like most of the maids of those days, views the emerging new world of Korean reality. There is anguish, insight, but also immense painin this novel.Gong wrote: I decided to picture Bongsoon and many other maids like her who existed in the early stages of economic growth and who were simply ignored amid the hctic development of that era.

My Sister Bongsoon is my personal reflection as a comfortable middle-class person on all those women who we just neglected!