![]() ![]() ![]() But Yeong-hye never quite recovers-if anything, she seeks refuge in her own severed reality and finds a kind of distorted comfort in it. When words do not convince Yeong-hye enough, her family resorts to physical measures, exacerbating her already fragile mental state. As her body increasingly grows limp-her “complexion resembled that of a hospital patient”-Yeong-hye’s family attempts to convince her to start eating meat again. Giving up meat in such an abrupt fashion worries her husband, along with her Yeong-hye’s parents and siblings. The Vegetarian follows the story of a South Korean woman, Yeong-hye, who decides to become a vegetarian after having a series of disturbing dreams about meat. But upon seeing the translated version of The Vegetarian on numerous bestselling lists and receiving critical acclaim, I finally decided that the novel, written by Han Kang and translated from Korean, might be a good place to start studying my own culture through a literary lens. ![]() I lost a large chunk of my ability to read Korean quickly enough to actually experience a book in the language and thus never had the chance to explore the Korean literary canon. As a native speaker of the language who has lived in the United States for over a decade, I can say this with modest shame, but I can’t help but feel guilty. I’ve never read a book written in the Korean language. ![]()
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