[Book Sip] Records of Betrayed Youth 'Their Words or Silence'

Some sentences encapsulate the entire content of the book itself, while others instantly reach the reader's heart, creating a point of contact with the book. We introduce such meaningful sentences excerpted from the book. - Editor's note

This is the author's second full-length novel, a unique work that showcases the most experimental writing and style among the author's early works. Like the previous novel, the author focuses on women and the working class. Through literature, she brutally examines these two statuses as a 'sociological self-reflection' and 'literary social science,' scrutinizing how they operate hypocritically within social norms.

My parents are workers, so I must become what they say, not their current selves. I still want to become a teacher, but I don't know if I can reach that point. Watching anxiously all the time, really irritating, my father. If you keep burying your nose in books all day, doesn't your head hurt? Reading is not his strength. At best, he reads the local newspaper Paris-Normandie or a little of the central daily France Soir. Sometimes, when he lets his guard down while reading, he bites his lips. Maybe he's right. Studying is too hard.

I realized that the reason he acts so harshly is, for example, because he inherited someone else's place. Surely, that was what he had been thinking all along. I never wondered about the women he had slept with before. The reason he acts that way was never properly revealed, but I felt that to him, I was only a woman who reveals men, nothing else. Come to the dorm to meet me. I refused. On the way back, he said that the female instructor I liked was his woman. It might be better if no words get through to her ears, but oh well, it doesn't matter. For the first time, a terrifying chasm formed between the boys and me.

The Words or Silence of Them | Written by Annie Ernaux | Translated by Jeong Hye-yong | Minumsa | 204 pages | 14,000 KRW

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.