TISSNET 2021 || VARC PYSP || READING COMPREHENSION || 17.02.2021

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

In an especially unforgettable scene mid-way through Parasite – the savagely caustic 2019 hit movie directed and co-written by Bong Joon-ho – the middle-aged con woman Chung-sook Kim plaintively compares the evident differences in her personality to that of her family’s primary victim, the blithely trusting Mr. Park. “She’s nice because she’s rich,” says the grifter, “Hell, if I had all this money, I’d be nice too.”

It’s an especially resonant sentiment for our times, with the global economy paralysed by the worst inequalities recorded in the modern era, and the top 1% of the planet’s inhabitants securely in possession of more wealth than the remaining 99% combined. As his movie swept the Palme D’or at Cannes, and four Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director), Bong kept saying he wanted to represent the collective anxieties of those stranded in “society’s blind spots”.

Similar motivations underlie yet another superb South Korean cultural export, Yeoung-Shin Ma’s graphic novel Moms (Drawn & Quarterly), which was recently released in a deft, impactful English translation by Janet Hong. It illuminates subjects twice overlooked: the urban precariat that every country tends to ignore, and more specifically the interior lives of middle-aged working women trying to navigate the margins of late capitalism.

In an understated, rather moving afterword, 39-year-old Ma explains that – like an estimated 25% of his compatriots – he lived with his mother right through his 20s. It’s only after moving out that he “realised how difficult and frustrating household tasks are. Every time I’d carry out this menial work, I’d feel bad for my mom and it would make me think more deeply about her and her life.”

Then came breakthrough, “I presented my mom with a pen and notebook, with a note on the first page: “If you want your son to find success, write honestly about you and your friends, about your love life and theirs…I purposely gave her an expensive notebook. In less than a month, she produced a fair bit of writing.”

Ma says, “Her writing was at once a confession and letter to her son, with every entry concluding in regret or resolve, or in love for her children. Thanks to the melody and chorus she provided, I polished and revised her story, and brought it out into the world…I wonder if this is my first act of devotion to my mom, if, perhaps for the very first time in my life, I’m being a good son.”

Moms originally came out in 2015, and is the first of Ma’s 11 books to be republished in English. It’s easy to see why Janet Hong – its experienced and highly versatile Korean-Canadian translator – says she was “instantly drawn” to his style and subject matter. Over 368 painstakingly detailed and intensely atmospheric pages, the book draws us deep into the emotional landscape of Lee Soyeon (who stands in for Ma’s mother), and her friends-slash-rivals, as they strive to hold on to constantly fraying threads of their family, work and love lives.

There’s an uncanny verisimilitude to Ma’s work, which lifts this book to greatness. He’s both unflinching and empathetic to an unusual degree, so that readers become profoundly invested in the entrenched travails and minor triumphs of his characters. “I thought it would be more powerful to watch her make a mistake while reading about the regrets she had after making it,” the author explains. “We hear the truth about life in theory all the time, but we don’t always realize it in time to put it into action…My mom is a janitor, but she’s also a fighter for love.”

I emailed the translator Janet Hong to find out more about what singled this book out for her attention. “I haven’t really come across these types of stories about Korean women in their fifties, so I almost marvelled to think there was an entire world of people and relationships I knew nothing about,” she responded from her home in Vancouver. “I can’t imagine doing what Ma did. I have to applaud both Ma and his mother for their bravery.”

source: Reading Yeong-Shin Ma’s ‘Moms’ to understand why the Korean Wave has swept through parts of India

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

In an especially unforgettable scene mid-way through Parasite – the savagely caustic 2019 hit movie directed and co-written by Bong Joon-ho – the middle-aged con woman Chung-sook Kim plaintively compares the evident differences in her personality to that of her family’s primary victim, the blithely trusting Mr. Park. “She’s nice because she’s rich,” says the grifter, “Hell, if I had all this money, I’d be nice too.”

It’s an especially resonant sentiment for our times, with the global economy paralysed by the worst inequalities recorded in the modern era, and the top 1% of the planet’s inhabitants securely in possession of more wealth than the remaining 99% combined. As his movie swept the Palme D’or at Cannes, and four Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director), Bong kept saying he wanted to represent the collective anxieties of those stranded in “society’s blind spots”.

Similar motivations underlie yet another superb South Korean cultural export, Yeoung-Shin Ma’s graphic novel Moms (Drawn & Quarterly), which was recently released in a deft, impactful English translation by Janet Hong. It illuminates subjects twice overlooked: the urban precariat that every country tends to ignore, and more specifically the interior lives of middle-aged working women trying to navigate the margins of late capitalism.

In an understated, rather moving afterword, 39-year-old Ma explains that – like an estimated 25% of his compatriots – he lived with his mother right through his 20s. It’s only after moving out that he “realised how difficult and frustrating household tasks are. Every time I’d carry out this menial work, I’d feel bad for my mom and it would make me think more deeply about her and her life.”

Then came breakthrough, “I presented my mom with a pen and notebook, with a note on the first page: “If you want your son to find success, write honestly about you and your friends, about your love life and theirs…I purposely gave her an expensive notebook. In less than a month, she produced a fair bit of writing.”

Ma says, “Her writing was at once a confession and letter to her son, with every entry concluding in regret or resolve, or in love for her children. Thanks to the melody and chorus she provided, I polished and revised her story, and brought it out into the world…I wonder if this is my first act of devotion to my mom, if, perhaps for the very first time in my life, I’m being a good son.”

Moms originally came out in 2015, and is the first of Ma’s 11 books to be republished in English. It’s easy to see why Janet Hong – its experienced and highly versatile Korean-Canadian translator – says she was “instantly drawn” to his style and subject matter. Over 368 painstakingly detailed and intensely atmospheric pages, the book draws us deep into the emotional landscape of Lee Soyeon (who stands in for Ma’s mother), and her friends-slash-rivals, as they strive to hold on to constantly fraying threads of their family, work and love lives.

There’s an uncanny verisimilitude to Ma’s work, which lifts this book to greatness. He’s both unflinching and empathetic to an unusual degree, so that readers become profoundly invested in the entrenched travails and minor triumphs of his characters. “I thought it would be more powerful to watch her make a mistake while reading about the regrets she had after making it,” the author explains. “We hear the truth about life in theory all the time, but we don’t always realize it in time to put it into action…My mom is a janitor, but she’s also a fighter for love.”

I emailed the translator Janet Hong to find out more about what singled this book out for her attention. “I haven’t really come across these types of stories about Korean women in their fifties, so I almost marvelled to think there was an entire world of people and relationships I knew nothing about,” she responded from her home in Vancouver. “I can’t imagine doing what Ma did. I have to applaud both Ma and his mother for their bravery.”

source: Reading Yeong-Shin Ma’s ‘Moms’ to understand why the Korean Wave has swept through parts of India

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

In an especially unforgettable scene mid-way through Parasite – the savagely caustic 2019 hit movie directed and co-written by Bong Joon-ho – the middle-aged con woman Chung-sook Kim plaintively compares the evident differences in her personality to that of her family’s primary victim, the blithely trusting Mr. Park. “She’s nice because she’s rich,” says the grifter, “Hell, if I had all this money, I’d be nice too.”

It’s an especially resonant sentiment for our times, with the global economy paralysed by the worst inequalities recorded in the modern era, and the top 1% of the planet’s inhabitants securely in possession of more wealth than the remaining 99% combined. As his movie swept the Palme D’or at Cannes, and four Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director), Bong kept saying he wanted to represent the collective anxieties of those stranded in “society’s blind spots”.

Similar motivations underlie yet another superb South Korean cultural export, Yeoung-Shin Ma’s graphic novel Moms (Drawn & Quarterly), which was recently released in a deft, impactful English translation by Janet Hong. It illuminates subjects twice overlooked: the urban precariat that every country tends to ignore, and more specifically the interior lives of middle-aged working women trying to navigate the margins of late capitalism.

In an understated, rather moving afterword, 39-year-old Ma explains that – like an estimated 25% of his compatriots – he lived with his mother right through his 20s. It’s only after moving out that he “realised how difficult and frustrating household tasks are. Every time I’d carry out this menial work, I’d feel bad for my mom and it would make me think more deeply about her and her life.”

Then came breakthrough, “I presented my mom with a pen and notebook, with a note on the first page: “If you want your son to find success, write honestly about you and your friends, about your love life and theirs…I purposely gave her an expensive notebook. In less than a month, she produced a fair bit of writing.”

Ma says, “Her writing was at once a confession and letter to her son, with every entry concluding in regret or resolve, or in love for her children. Thanks to the melody and chorus she provided, I polished and revised her story, and brought it out into the world…I wonder if this is my first act of devotion to my mom, if, perhaps for the very first time in my life, I’m being a good son.”

Moms originally came out in 2015, and is the first of Ma’s 11 books to be republished in English. It’s easy to see why Janet Hong – its experienced and highly versatile Korean-Canadian translator – says she was “instantly drawn” to his style and subject matter. Over 368 painstakingly detailed and intensely atmospheric pages, the book draws us deep into the emotional landscape of Lee Soyeon (who stands in for Ma’s mother), and her friends-slash-rivals, as they strive to hold on to constantly fraying threads of their family, work and love lives.

There’s an uncanny verisimilitude to Ma’s work, which lifts this book to greatness. He’s both unflinching and empathetic to an unusual degree, so that readers become profoundly invested in the entrenched travails and minor triumphs of his characters. “I thought it would be more powerful to watch her make a mistake while reading about the regrets she had after making it,” the author explains. “We hear the truth about life in theory all the time, but we don’t always realize it in time to put it into action…My mom is a janitor, but she’s also a fighter for love.”

I emailed the translator Janet Hong to find out more about what singled this book out for her attention. “I haven’t really come across these types of stories about Korean women in their fifties, so I almost marvelled to think there was an entire world of people and relationships I knew nothing about,” she responded from her home in Vancouver. “I can’t imagine doing what Ma did. I have to applaud both Ma and his mother for their bravery.”

source: Reading Yeong-Shin Ma’s ‘Moms’ to understand why the Korean Wave has swept through parts of India

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

In an especially unforgettable scene mid-way through Parasite – the savagely caustic 2019 hit movie directed and co-written by Bong Joon-ho – the middle-aged con woman Chung-sook Kim plaintively compares the evident differences in her personality to that of her family’s primary victim, the blithely trusting Mr. Park. “She’s nice because she’s rich,” says the grifter, “Hell, if I had all this money, I’d be nice too.”

It’s an especially resonant sentiment for our times, with the global economy paralysed by the worst inequalities recorded in the modern era, and the top 1% of the planet’s inhabitants securely in possession of more wealth than the remaining 99% combined. As his movie swept the Palme D’or at Cannes, and four Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director), Bong kept saying he wanted to represent the collective anxieties of those stranded in “society’s blind spots”.

Similar motivations underlie yet another superb South Korean cultural export, Yeoung-Shin Ma’s graphic novel Moms (Drawn & Quarterly), which was recently released in a deft, impactful English translation by Janet Hong. It illuminates subjects twice overlooked: the urban precariat that every country tends to ignore, and more specifically the interior lives of middle-aged working women trying to navigate the margins of late capitalism.

In an understated, rather moving afterword, 39-year-old Ma explains that – like an estimated 25% of his compatriots – he lived with his mother right through his 20s. It’s only after moving out that he “realised how difficult and frustrating household tasks are. Every time I’d carry out this menial work, I’d feel bad for my mom and it would make me think more deeply about her and her life.”

Then came breakthrough, “I presented my mom with a pen and notebook, with a note on the first page: “If you want your son to find success, write honestly about you and your friends, about your love life and theirs…I purposely gave her an expensive notebook. In less than a month, she produced a fair bit of writing.”

Ma says, “Her writing was at once a confession and letter to her son, with every entry concluding in regret or resolve, or in love for her children. Thanks to the melody and chorus she provided, I polished and revised her story, and brought it out into the world…I wonder if this is my first act of devotion to my mom, if, perhaps for the very first time in my life, I’m being a good son.”

Moms originally came out in 2015, and is the first of Ma’s 11 books to be republished in English. It’s easy to see why Janet Hong – its experienced and highly versatile Korean-Canadian translator – says she was “instantly drawn” to his style and subject matter. Over 368 painstakingly detailed and intensely atmospheric pages, the book draws us deep into the emotional landscape of Lee Soyeon (who stands in for Ma’s mother), and her friends-slash-rivals, as they strive to hold on to constantly fraying threads of their family, work and love lives.

There’s an uncanny verisimilitude to Ma’s work, which lifts this book to greatness. He’s both unflinching and empathetic to an unusual degree, so that readers become profoundly invested in the entrenched travails and minor triumphs of his characters. “I thought it would be more powerful to watch her make a mistake while reading about the regrets she had after making it,” the author explains. “We hear the truth about life in theory all the time, but we don’t always realize it in time to put it into action…My mom is a janitor, but she’s also a fighter for love.”

I emailed the translator Janet Hong to find out more about what singled this book out for her attention. “I haven’t really come across these types of stories about Korean women in their fifties, so I almost marvelled to think there was an entire world of people and relationships I knew nothing about,” she responded from her home in Vancouver. “I can’t imagine doing what Ma did. I have to applaud both Ma and his mother for their bravery.”

source: Reading Yeong-Shin Ma’s ‘Moms’ to understand why the Korean Wave has swept through parts of India

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

In an especially unforgettable scene mid-way through Parasite – the savagely caustic 2019 hit movie directed and co-written by Bong Joon-ho – the middle-aged con woman Chung-sook Kim plaintively compares the evident differences in her personality to that of her family’s primary victim, the blithely trusting Mr. Park. “She’s nice because she’s rich,” says the grifter, “Hell, if I had all this money, I’d be nice too.”

It’s an especially resonant sentiment for our times, with the global economy paralysed by the worst inequalities recorded in the modern era, and the top 1% of the planet’s inhabitants securely in possession of more wealth than the remaining 99% combined. As his movie swept the Palme D’or at Cannes, and four Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director), Bong kept saying he wanted to represent the collective anxieties of those stranded in “society’s blind spots”.

Similar motivations underlie yet another superb South Korean cultural export, Yeoung-Shin Ma’s graphic novel Moms (Drawn & Quarterly), which was recently released in a deft, impactful English translation by Janet Hong. It illuminates subjects twice overlooked: the urban precariat that every country tends to ignore, and more specifically the interior lives of middle-aged working women trying to navigate the margins of late capitalism.

In an understated, rather moving afterword, 39-year-old Ma explains that – like an estimated 25% of his compatriots – he lived with his mother right through his 20s. It’s only after moving out that he “realised how difficult and frustrating household tasks are. Every time I’d carry out this menial work, I’d feel bad for my mom and it would make me think more deeply about her and her life.”

Then came breakthrough, “I presented my mom with a pen and notebook, with a note on the first page: “If you want your son to find success, write honestly about you and your friends, about your love life and theirs…I purposely gave her an expensive notebook. In less than a month, she produced a fair bit of writing.”

Ma says, “Her writing was at once a confession and letter to her son, with every entry concluding in regret or resolve, or in love for her children. Thanks to the melody and chorus she provided, I polished and revised her story, and brought it out into the world…I wonder if this is my first act of devotion to my mom, if, perhaps for the very first time in my life, I’m being a good son.”

Moms originally came out in 2015, and is the first of Ma’s 11 books to be republished in English. It’s easy to see why Janet Hong – its experienced and highly versatile Korean-Canadian translator – says she was “instantly drawn” to his style and subject matter. Over 368 painstakingly detailed and intensely atmospheric pages, the book draws us deep into the emotional landscape of Lee Soyeon (who stands in for Ma’s mother), and her friends-slash-rivals, as they strive to hold on to constantly fraying threads of their family, work and love lives.

There’s an uncanny verisimilitude to Ma’s work, which lifts this book to greatness. He’s both unflinching and empathetic to an unusual degree, so that readers become profoundly invested in the entrenched travails and minor triumphs of his characters. “I thought it would be more powerful to watch her make a mistake while reading about the regrets she had after making it,” the author explains. “We hear the truth about life in theory all the time, but we don’t always realize it in time to put it into action…My mom is a janitor, but she’s also a fighter for love.”

I emailed the translator Janet Hong to find out more about what singled this book out for her attention. “I haven’t really come across these types of stories about Korean women in their fifties, so I almost marvelled to think there was an entire world of people and relationships I knew nothing about,” she responded from her home in Vancouver. “I can’t imagine doing what Ma did. I have to applaud both Ma and his mother for their bravery.”

source: Reading Yeong-Shin Ma’s ‘Moms’ to understand why the Korean Wave has swept through parts of India

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

In an especially unforgettable scene mid-way through Parasite – the savagely caustic 2019 hit movie directed and co-written by Bong Joon-ho – the middle-aged con woman Chung-sook Kim plaintively compares the evident differences in her personality to that of her family’s primary victim, the blithely trusting Mr. Park. “She’s nice because she’s rich,” says the grifter, “Hell, if I had all this money, I’d be nice too.”

It’s an especially resonant sentiment for our times, with the global economy paralysed by the worst inequalities recorded in the modern era, and the top 1% of the planet’s inhabitants securely in possession of more wealth than the remaining 99% combined. As his movie swept the Palme D’or at Cannes, and four Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director), Bong kept saying he wanted to represent the collective anxieties of those stranded in “society’s blind spots”.

Similar motivations underlie yet another superb South Korean cultural export, Yeoung-Shin Ma’s graphic novel Moms (Drawn & Quarterly), which was recently released in a deft, impactful English translation by Janet Hong. It illuminates subjects twice overlooked: the urban precariat that every country tends to ignore, and more specifically the interior lives of middle-aged working women trying to navigate the margins of late capitalism.

In an understated, rather moving afterword, 39-year-old Ma explains that – like an estimated 25% of his compatriots – he lived with his mother right through his 20s. It’s only after moving out that he “realised how difficult and frustrating household tasks are. Every time I’d carry out this menial work, I’d feel bad for my mom and it would make me think more deeply about her and her life.”

Then came breakthrough, “I presented my mom with a pen and notebook, with a note on the first page: “If you want your son to find success, write honestly about you and your friends, about your love life and theirs…I purposely gave her an expensive notebook. In less than a month, she produced a fair bit of writing.”

Ma says, “Her writing was at once a confession and letter to her son, with every entry concluding in regret or resolve, or in love for her children. Thanks to the melody and chorus she provided, I polished and revised her story, and brought it out into the world…I wonder if this is my first act of devotion to my mom, if, perhaps for the very first time in my life, I’m being a good son.”

Moms originally came out in 2015, and is the first of Ma’s 11 books to be republished in English. It’s easy to see why Janet Hong – its experienced and highly versatile Korean-Canadian translator – says she was “instantly drawn” to his style and subject matter. Over 368 painstakingly detailed and intensely atmospheric pages, the book draws us deep into the emotional landscape of Lee Soyeon (who stands in for Ma’s mother), and her friends-slash-rivals, as they strive to hold on to constantly fraying threads of their family, work and love lives.

There’s an uncanny verisimilitude to Ma’s work, which lifts this book to greatness. He’s both unflinching and empathetic to an unusual degree, so that readers become profoundly invested in the entrenched travails and minor triumphs of his characters. “I thought it would be more powerful to watch her make a mistake while reading about the regrets she had after making it,” the author explains. “We hear the truth about life in theory all the time, but we don’t always realize it in time to put it into action…My mom is a janitor, but she’s also a fighter for love.”

I emailed the translator Janet Hong to find out more about what singled this book out for her attention. “I haven’t really come across these types of stories about Korean women in their fifties, so I almost marvelled to think there was an entire world of people and relationships I knew nothing about,” she responded from her home in Vancouver. “I can’t imagine doing what Ma did. I have to applaud both Ma and his mother for their bravery.”

source: Reading Yeong-Shin Ma’s ‘Moms’ to understand why the Korean Wave has swept through parts of India

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

In an especially unforgettable scene mid-way through Parasite – the savagely caustic 2019 hit movie directed and co-written by Bong Joon-ho – the middle-aged con woman Chung-sook Kim plaintively compares the evident differences in her personality to that of her family’s primary victim, the blithely trusting Mr. Park. “She’s nice because she’s rich,” says the grifter, “Hell, if I had all this money, I’d be nice too.”

It’s an especially resonant sentiment for our times, with the global economy paralysed by the worst inequalities recorded in the modern era, and the top 1% of the planet’s inhabitants securely in possession of more wealth than the remaining 99% combined. As his movie swept the Palme D’or at Cannes, and four Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director), Bong kept saying he wanted to represent the collective anxieties of those stranded in “society’s blind spots”.

Similar motivations underlie yet another superb South Korean cultural export, Yeoung-Shin Ma’s graphic novel Moms (Drawn & Quarterly), which was recently released in a deft, impactful English translation by Janet Hong. It illuminates subjects twice overlooked: the urban precariat that every country tends to ignore, and more specifically the interior lives of middle-aged working women trying to navigate the margins of late capitalism.

In an understated, rather moving afterword, 39-year-old Ma explains that – like an estimated 25% of his compatriots – he lived with his mother right through his 20s. It’s only after moving out that he “realised how difficult and frustrating household tasks are. Every time I’d carry out this menial work, I’d feel bad for my mom and it would make me think more deeply about her and her life.”

Then came breakthrough, “I presented my mom with a pen and notebook, with a note on the first page: “If you want your son to find success, write honestly about you and your friends, about your love life and theirs…I purposely gave her an expensive notebook. In less than a month, she produced a fair bit of writing.”

Ma says, “Her writing was at once a confession and letter to her son, with every entry concluding in regret or resolve, or in love for her children. Thanks to the melody and chorus she provided, I polished and revised her story, and brought it out into the world…I wonder if this is my first act of devotion to my mom, if, perhaps for the very first time in my life, I’m being a good son.”

Moms originally came out in 2015, and is the first of Ma’s 11 books to be republished in English. It’s easy to see why Janet Hong – its experienced and highly versatile Korean-Canadian translator – says she was “instantly drawn” to his style and subject matter. Over 368 painstakingly detailed and intensely atmospheric pages, the book draws us deep into the emotional landscape of Lee Soyeon (who stands in for Ma’s mother), and her friends-slash-rivals, as they strive to hold on to constantly fraying threads of their family, work and love lives.

There’s an uncanny verisimilitude to Ma’s work, which lifts this book to greatness. He’s both unflinching and empathetic to an unusual degree, so that readers become profoundly invested in the entrenched travails and minor triumphs of his characters. “I thought it would be more powerful to watch her make a mistake while reading about the regrets she had after making it,” the author explains. “We hear the truth about life in theory all the time, but we don’t always realize it in time to put it into action…My mom is a janitor, but she’s also a fighter for love.”

I emailed the translator Janet Hong to find out more about what singled this book out for her attention. “I haven’t really come across these types of stories about Korean women in their fifties, so I almost marvelled to think there was an entire world of people and relationships I knew nothing about,” she responded from her home in Vancouver. “I can’t imagine doing what Ma did. I have to applaud both Ma and his mother for their bravery.”

source: Reading Yeong-Shin Ma’s ‘Moms’ to understand why the Korean Wave has swept through parts of India

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

In an especially unforgettable scene mid-way through Parasite – the savagely caustic 2019 hit movie directed and co-written by Bong Joon-ho – the middle-aged con woman Chung-sook Kim plaintively compares the evident differences in her personality to that of her family’s primary victim, the blithely trusting Mr. Park. “She’s nice because she’s rich,” says the grifter, “Hell, if I had all this money, I’d be nice too.”

It’s an especially resonant sentiment for our times, with the global economy paralysed by the worst inequalities recorded in the modern era, and the top 1% of the planet’s inhabitants securely in possession of more wealth than the remaining 99% combined. As his movie swept the Palme D’or at Cannes, and four Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director), Bong kept saying he wanted to represent the collective anxieties of those stranded in “society’s blind spots”.

Similar motivations underlie yet another superb South Korean cultural export, Yeoung-Shin Ma’s graphic novel Moms (Drawn & Quarterly), which was recently released in a deft, impactful English translation by Janet Hong. It illuminates subjects twice overlooked: the urban precariat that every country tends to ignore, and more specifically the interior lives of middle-aged working women trying to navigate the margins of late capitalism.

In an understated, rather moving afterword, 39-year-old Ma explains that – like an estimated 25% of his compatriots – he lived with his mother right through his 20s. It’s only after moving out that he “realised how difficult and frustrating household tasks are. Every time I’d carry out this menial work, I’d feel bad for my mom and it would make me think more deeply about her and her life.”

Then came breakthrough, “I presented my mom with a pen and notebook, with a note on the first page: “If you want your son to find success, write honestly about you and your friends, about your love life and theirs…I purposely gave her an expensive notebook. In less than a month, she produced a fair bit of writing.”

Ma says, “Her writing was at once a confession and letter to her son, with every entry concluding in regret or resolve, or in love for her children. Thanks to the melody and chorus she provided, I polished and revised her story, and brought it out into the world…I wonder if this is my first act of devotion to my mom, if, perhaps for the very first time in my life, I’m being a good son.”

Moms originally came out in 2015, and is the first of Ma’s 11 books to be republished in English. It’s easy to see why Janet Hong – its experienced and highly versatile Korean-Canadian translator – says she was “instantly drawn” to his style and subject matter. Over 368 painstakingly detailed and intensely atmospheric pages, the book draws us deep into the emotional landscape of Lee Soyeon (who stands in for Ma’s mother), and her friends-slash-rivals, as they strive to hold on to constantly fraying threads of their family, work and love lives.

There’s an uncanny verisimilitude to Ma’s work, which lifts this book to greatness. He’s both unflinching and empathetic to an unusual degree, so that readers become profoundly invested in the entrenched travails and minor triumphs of his characters. “I thought it would be more powerful to watch her make a mistake while reading about the regrets she had after making it,” the author explains. “We hear the truth about life in theory all the time, but we don’t always realize it in time to put it into action…My mom is a janitor, but she’s also a fighter for love.”

I emailed the translator Janet Hong to find out more about what singled this book out for her attention. “I haven’t really come across these types of stories about Korean women in their fifties, so I almost marvelled to think there was an entire world of people and relationships I knew nothing about,” she responded from her home in Vancouver. “I can’t imagine doing what Ma did. I have to applaud both Ma and his mother for their bravery.”

source: Reading Yeong-Shin Ma’s ‘Moms’ to understand why the Korean Wave has swept through parts of India

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

In an especially unforgettable scene mid-way through Parasite – the savagely caustic 2019 hit movie directed and co-written by Bong Joon-ho – the middle-aged con woman Chung-sook Kim plaintively compares the evident differences in her personality to that of her family’s primary victim, the blithely trusting Mr. Park. “She’s nice because she’s rich,” says the grifter, “Hell, if I had all this money, I’d be nice too.”

It’s an especially resonant sentiment for our times, with the global economy paralysed by the worst inequalities recorded in the modern era, and the top 1% of the planet’s inhabitants securely in possession of more wealth than the remaining 99% combined. As his movie swept the Palme D’or at Cannes, and four Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director), Bong kept saying he wanted to represent the collective anxieties of those stranded in “society’s blind spots”.

Similar motivations underlie yet another superb South Korean cultural export, Yeoung-Shin Ma’s graphic novel Moms (Drawn & Quarterly), which was recently released in a deft, impactful English translation by Janet Hong. It illuminates subjects twice overlooked: the urban precariat that every country tends to ignore, and more specifically the interior lives of middle-aged working women trying to navigate the margins of late capitalism.

In an understated, rather moving afterword, 39-year-old Ma explains that – like an estimated 25% of his compatriots – he lived with his mother right through his 20s. It’s only after moving out that he “realised how difficult and frustrating household tasks are. Every time I’d carry out this menial work, I’d feel bad for my mom and it would make me think more deeply about her and her life.”

Then came breakthrough, “I presented my mom with a pen and notebook, with a note on the first page: “If you want your son to find success, write honestly about you and your friends, about your love life and theirs…I purposely gave her an expensive notebook. In less than a month, she produced a fair bit of writing.”

Ma says, “Her writing was at once a confession and letter to her son, with every entry concluding in regret or resolve, or in love for her children. Thanks to the melody and chorus she provided, I polished and revised her story, and brought it out into the world…I wonder if this is my first act of devotion to my mom, if, perhaps for the very first time in my life, I’m being a good son.”

Moms originally came out in 2015, and is the first of Ma’s 11 books to be republished in English. It’s easy to see why Janet Hong – its experienced and highly versatile Korean-Canadian translator – says she was “instantly drawn” to his style and subject matter. Over 368 painstakingly detailed and intensely atmospheric pages, the book draws us deep into the emotional landscape of Lee Soyeon (who stands in for Ma’s mother), and her friends-slash-rivals, as they strive to hold on to constantly fraying threads of their family, work and love lives.

There’s an uncanny verisimilitude to Ma’s work, which lifts this book to greatness. He’s both unflinching and empathetic to an unusual degree, so that readers become profoundly invested in the entrenched travails and minor triumphs of his characters. “I thought it would be more powerful to watch her make a mistake while reading about the regrets she had after making it,” the author explains. “We hear the truth about life in theory all the time, but we don’t always realize it in time to put it into action…My mom is a janitor, but she’s also a fighter for love.”

I emailed the translator Janet Hong to find out more about what singled this book out for her attention. “I haven’t really come across these types of stories about Korean women in their fifties, so I almost marvelled to think there was an entire world of people and relationships I knew nothing about,” she responded from her home in Vancouver. “I can’t imagine doing what Ma did. I have to applaud both Ma and his mother for their bravery.”

source: Reading Yeong-Shin Ma’s ‘Moms’ to understand why the Korean Wave has swept through parts of India

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

In an especially unforgettable scene mid-way through Parasite – the savagely caustic 2019 hit movie directed and co-written by Bong Joon-ho – the middle-aged con woman Chung-sook Kim plaintively compares the evident differences in her personality to that of her family’s primary victim, the blithely trusting Mr. Park. “She’s nice because she’s rich,” says the grifter, “Hell, if I had all this money, I’d be nice too.”

It’s an especially resonant sentiment for our times, with the global economy paralysed by the worst inequalities recorded in the modern era, and the top 1% of the planet’s inhabitants securely in possession of more wealth than the remaining 99% combined. As his movie swept the Palme D’or at Cannes, and four Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director), Bong kept saying he wanted to represent the collective anxieties of those stranded in “society’s blind spots”.

Similar motivations underlie yet another superb South Korean cultural export, Yeoung-Shin Ma’s graphic novel Moms (Drawn & Quarterly), which was recently released in a deft, impactful English translation by Janet Hong. It illuminates subjects twice overlooked: the urban precariat that every country tends to ignore, and more specifically the interior lives of middle-aged working women trying to navigate the margins of late capitalism.

In an understated, rather moving afterword, 39-year-old Ma explains that – like an estimated 25% of his compatriots – he lived with his mother right through his 20s. It’s only after moving out that he “realised how difficult and frustrating household tasks are. Every time I’d carry out this menial work, I’d feel bad for my mom and it would make me think more deeply about her and her life.”

Then came breakthrough, “I presented my mom with a pen and notebook, with a note on the first page: “If you want your son to find success, write honestly about you and your friends, about your love life and theirs…I purposely gave her an expensive notebook. In less than a month, she produced a fair bit of writing.”

Ma says, “Her writing was at once a confession and letter to her son, with every entry concluding in regret or resolve, or in love for her children. Thanks to the melody and chorus she provided, I polished and revised her story, and brought it out into the world…I wonder if this is my first act of devotion to my mom, if, perhaps for the very first time in my life, I’m being a good son.”

Moms originally came out in 2015, and is the first of Ma’s 11 books to be republished in English. It’s easy to see why Janet Hong – its experienced and highly versatile Korean-Canadian translator – says she was “instantly drawn” to his style and subject matter. Over 368 painstakingly detailed and intensely atmospheric pages, the book draws us deep into the emotional landscape of Lee Soyeon (who stands in for Ma’s mother), and her friends-slash-rivals, as they strive to hold on to constantly fraying threads of their family, work and love lives.

There’s an uncanny verisimilitude to Ma’s work, which lifts this book to greatness. He’s both unflinching and empathetic to an unusual degree, so that readers become profoundly invested in the entrenched travails and minor triumphs of his characters. “I thought it would be more powerful to watch her make a mistake while reading about the regrets she had after making it,” the author explains. “We hear the truth about life in theory all the time, but we don’t always realize it in time to put it into action…My mom is a janitor, but she’s also a fighter for love.”

I emailed the translator Janet Hong to find out more about what singled this book out for her attention. “I haven’t really come across these types of stories about Korean women in their fifties, so I almost marvelled to think there was an entire world of people and relationships I knew nothing about,” she responded from her home in Vancouver. “I can’t imagine doing what Ma did. I have to applaud both Ma and his mother for their bravery.”

source: Reading Yeong-Shin Ma’s ‘Moms’ to understand why the Korean Wave has swept through parts of India