Sewing Women is a story of a mother and two daughters whose lives are closely intertwined through sewing. In the beginning of the story, the mother leaves a needle for each daughter. This is similar to the Buddhist monastic tradition of passing on the teaching lineage by leaving to one’s successor one’s garments and alms bowl. The daughters are intertwined because of needles even before they start school. The ups and downs of the unfortunate life of distressed sewing women on Hanbok-jip Golmok, an alley full of Korean traditional clothing shops located deep in a marketplace, reflect the customs of a period in the past and stories of that time. For these women, sewing is not a mere means of living, but their way of life, and so they put craftsmanship into their work. “‘If one’s action of crafting a beautiful thing is art, my mother’s quilting is art, too,’ thought Geum-taek. As soon as the word art tumbled out of her mouth, Geum-taek’s heart trembled so heavily that she felt great pain as if her ribcage had been cracked open.” As this sentence from the novel shows, the life story of sewing women, who find the meaning of their life and artistic value from their work of sewing itself rather than from marriage or even recognition for their work, is very touching.

Kim Soom began her literary career by winning the Daejeon Ilbo Spring New Writers Contest in 1997. She is the author of the short story collections Would I Be Able to Touch Trees, Noodles, Your God, and the novels Sewing Women, One Person, Have You Ever Wished A Soldier to Become An Angel, The Drifting Land, The Listening Period, A Swallow Heart, and others. She has won the 2012 Heo Gyun Literary Award, the 2013 Contemporary Literature Award, the 2013 Daesan Literary Award, the 2015 Yi Sang Literary Award, the 2017 Dongni Literary Award, the 2020 Kim Hyun Literary Prize, and the 2020 Dong-in Literary Award.