A Tale of Hope: Memory and Resilience in Kyung-Sook Shin’s I’ll Be Right There

Abstract

Written in Hangeul and translated to English, Shin’s I’ll Be Right There is a book  that sets itself apart from her contemporaries both in style of writing and also with the topic being dealt with. Jung Yoon, our protagonist receives a phone call from an old friend about their ailing professor, and things starts unravelling from there. The narration is non-linear: the past and the present are woven very intricately and there’s never a dull moment. Yoon’s memory of her university days in the 1980s – her professor, friends and the campus - they pop up in between pages in the form of long narrations with vivid imageries, taking the reader down her memory lane. The violent and oppressive past of South Korea in the 1980s has been very effectively recorded in this novel by Shin with hints of her own life sprinkled here and there, intertwining hope and resilience in it through her diligent storytelling skills. The protagonist Yoon has found and lost so much in the past, and she takes us on this vulnerable yet persevering journey through her memory – a journey that instills hope in us. This paper aims to bring out the elements of collective, cultural and rsonal memory in this novel; and also will attempt to substantiate that this novel can be used as a mnemonic aid to recollect the history of South Korea.