Cover

LOOKING AT THESE PICTURES I START WONDERING: how does a person show improvement with age? People say one matures with time, but how does it manifest? Does the energy in one’s eyes change? Does one grow more considerate toward others? Does one show more humility? More self-control? Become more patriotic? As I age, will I become more patient and cultivate a loving attitude toward others? Will I become selfless? Will that really happen just because of age? I remember the day my high school principal retired. It was a particularly hot day and the sun was blazing. During the retirement ceremony the students were told to stand in an open field with no shade, while the principal, and only the principal, got an awning over his head. He went on and on about his accomplishments. People like to say teaching is selfless and noble, but he seemed pretty self-absorbed, oblivious to the students’ wish for his speech to end so we could clap a bit and head back into the classroom. I don’t even remember that oblivious asshole’s name. What does it mean to become a “grown-up?” How does one go about doing that, growing up? Will I just become like my parents? I’d like to know if I can actually become a better person. Will I survive long enough to look back at my life and reflect on it fondly?

ALSO AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH BY KIM YIDEUM

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Translated by Jiyoon Lee, Don Mee Choi, & Johannes Göransson

Hysteria

Translated by Jake Levine, Soeun Seo, & Hedgie Choi

Title Page

BLOOD SISTERS

Kim Yideum

TRANSLATED FROM THE KOREAN

BY JIYOON LEE

Deep Vellum publishing
Dallas, Texas

Translator’s Note

Translator’s Note

“You must care a lot about this novel to spend so much time with it,” a new friend who had just learned about my translation project asked me. “What made you choose Blood Sisters for your project?” My answer at the time was something like this: translating this novel was an opportunity to create a productive conversation between two intertwined and porous cultural spheres: America of the late 2010s and Korea of the 1980s. Both spheres speak to struggles with mental health awareness, sexual violence, and hostile political climates. Also, describing and translating the Korean cultural practice of addressing each other by the role one plays (“teacher,” “boss,” “older brother,” and so on) allowed me to meditate on how we as humans seem to encounter one another first through the role we play in each other’s life with its accompanying expectations, and how puncturing the boundaries of those roles (dropping the honorifics and titles, falling in love) can be a precarious and daring act, a site of contact where desire, hatred, and identification take place.