Sou Linne BAIK debuted in the Kyunghyang Shinmun Spring Annual Literary contest in 2011. She is the author of the short story collections Falling in Paul, Wretched Light, Summer Villa, the full-length fiction books Blinding Greetings, the novellas To Love and Be Loved, the short story collection Please Don’t Let This Night Disappear, the essay collection Tender Each and Everyday, A Happy Feeling I Haven’t Felt in Ages, amongst others. She has been the recipient of the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award, the Hyundae Literary Award, Yi Haejo Novel Literature Prize, Munji Literary Award, Kim Seung-Ok Literary Award, and Young Writers Award. She has also translated many books including Agota Kristof’s The Illiterate, Marguerite Duras’s Summer Rain, Annie Ernaux’s A Girl Story, Françoise Sagan’s Toxic, and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Inseparables.
1. Life
Sou Linne Baik was born in 1982 in Incheon, South Korea. After she graduated from the Department of French Language and Literature at Yonsei University, she researched the works of Simone de Beauvoir at Sogang University in South Korea and Lyon 2 University in France, and was the first person in the country to receive a dual doctorate in French literature. Though she enjoyed creating stories from an early age, she thought that she lacked talent in writing novels and thus decided to major in French literature and language. However, after she entered graduate school, the renowned novelist Choe Yun encouraged her by saying that “the desire to write is talent” and she subsequently started to both research French literature and creatively write.
In 2010, she published the short story When A Ghost Appears and Disappears in Jaeumgwa moeum’s “mini-fiction” section, and in 2011, she won the Kyunghyang Daily News New Writer’s Contest with her short story Practicing Lies and made her debut. The preeminent literary critic, Kim Yunsik, who aimed to read and review all literature published in Korean, stated that she would become a household name. Concentrating primarily on short stories, she released short story collections such as Wretched Light, 2016 and Summer Villa, 2020, as well as the novel To Love and Be Loved, 2019. She also translated L'analphabète by Ágota Kristóf, an exiled Hungarian writer who wrote in French while living in Switzerland, into Korean under the title of The Illiterate, 2018.She received the Yi Haejo Novel Literature Prize (이해조소설문학상) in 2018 and the Hyundae Munhak Literary Award in 2020.
2. Writing
(1) General Characteristics
Sou Linne Baik’s novels meticulously depict the ethics of lonely people through foreigners such as diasporic Koreans, adoptees, and diasporic Chinese. Moreover, her works attempt to overcome circumstances where it is difficult to convey experiences and emotions through language by questioning conventional language. In addition, she admires and affirms female characters’ desires and is interested in real-life historical incidents. She has been praised for creating beauty through a method where she vividly and clearly describes the moments where desire and reality collide.
(2) A Foreigner’s Consciousness
The Wretched Light(2016) features a diverse range of foreigners as its main protagonists to demonstrate a foreigner’s consciousness. Examples include Vincent from Time Difference who was adopted and moved to the Netherlands at a young age, the step-grandmother in Chinese Grandmother who lived as a Chinese immigrant for 70 years, and Jae and Yun in High Tide who run a bed and breakfast in Venice. The work also expands the loneliness felt by foreigners to more broadly encompass the sentiments felt by those generally alienated from society. For instance, the character “Jude” in the story Strawberry Fields feels like a foreigner even in his own country.
(3) Language’s Possibilities of Communication
Her works also portray the possibilities of paradoxical communication while learning a foreign language. As seen in in the way the characters hesitate between words in The Potatoes’ Disappearance or write down the dictation of someone with aphasia in The Arrival of a Night with Blooming Flowers, communication is conducted through various incidents that occur as linguistic abilities disappear or memory problems appear. Like the scene in “Geojinmal yeonseup” where exchange students from various countries eat dinner together and attempt to converse in an unfamiliar foreign language, this kind of awkward communication is also portrayed as an effective method for healing wounds.
(4) The Possibility of Solidarity
Sou Linne Baik’s novels also represent the possibilities of solidarity through the process of accommodating historical incidents encountered in daily life. Summer Noon portrays the Tokyo subway sarin attack, the September 11th attacks, and the protests after the collapse of a textile mill in Paris. All the way in a café, the protagonist “I” hears the news that numerous workers died south of Paris. By creating a connection between a deadly blaze in an Alps tunnel and the Germanwings airplane crash in The Wretched Light the protagonist “I” also hears about these events. In her 2019 novel, Chinaehago, chinaehaneun, she depicts real historical events like the Korean War and the April 19th Revolution to portray a maternal relationship across three generations between “Grandmother – Mother – I.” In this manner, the lives of the grandmother and mother are connected to modern Korean history and the lives of these three generations are further rearranged into the broader framework of women’s history.
(5) Critical Reception
Sou Linne Baik’s novels have been appraised as precisely capturing the minute movements of the heart, such as the love, solidarity, and hatred that reveals itself through diverse human relationships, through the use of subtle and refined language. They have also been praised for tensely portraying prudent characters who, while cautiously examining the border that divides the self and the Other, have complicated conflicts but simultaneously co-exist with each other.
Reference
1) http://m.sogang.ac.kr/front/boardview.do?bbsConfigFK=58&pkid=503802
2) Kim Jiyeong. “Writer Sou Linne Baik: ‘Even Thinking About a World Without Novels is Terrifying.’” Dong-a Ilbo, 2 August 2018.
https://www.donga.com/news/Culture/article/all/20180802/91343740/1
3) Kim Sehee. “Beings that Write: Falling in Sou Linne Baik, Chinaehago, chinaehaneun, An Interview with Writer Sou Linne Baik.”
http://m.blog.naver.com/minumworld/221580272271
4) http://www.yes24.com/24/AuthorFile/Author/165640
5) Kim Jiyeong, “Writer Sou Linne Baik: ‘Even Thinking About a World Without Novels is Terrifying.”
6) http://www.yes24.com/24/AuthorFile/Author/165640
7) https://ridibooks.com/books/754018897
8) Yi Gyeongjin. “Speaking in a Foreign Language: The Novels of Cho Hae-jin and Sou Linne Baik.” The Quarterly Changbi, Summer 2014, pg. 270.
9) Choe Jaebong. “The Transformation and Intensification of Sou Linne Baik’s Novels.” Hankyoreh, 24 July 2020. http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/culture/book/955002.html
10) Sou Linne Baik and Yi Siseong. “[Email Conversation] To our fellow foreigners.” Oneurui munye bipyeong [Today’s Literary Criticism] Summer 2019, pg. 146.
11) https://www.aladin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?ISBN=8954673104&start=pnaver_02
12) O Gilyeong. “[Literature] What is literary intelligence: Reading the Novels of Yi Inhwi, Sou Linne Baik, and Choe Eunyeong.” Hwanghae munhwa [Hwanghae Culture] Spring 2017, pg. 262.
13) https://ridibooks.com/books/754018897
14) Im Mina. “Writer Sou Linne Baik: ‘The Sufferings of Life… I Want to Represent Them in my Own Way.’” Yonhap News, 18 August 2016.
https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20160817175400005
15) Pak Seongmin. “Our Selves Confined By Our Deflections.” Seoul National University Newspaper, 3 December 2017.
http://www.snunews.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=17669
16) https://ridibooks.com/books/754018897
17) Seo Yeongchae. “Up-and-Coming Sou Linne Baik’s Possibilities as a Writer.” In Polling in pol [Commentary], pg. 252.
18) Jeong Silbi. “Deo, deum, da: Sou Linne Baik’s Polling in pol (Munhak dongne, 2014).” Jaeumgwa moeum Summer 2014, pg. 378.
19) https://books.google.co.kr/books/about/%ED%8F%B4%EB%A7%81_%EC%9D%B8_%ED%8F%B4.html?id=EtYwngEACAAJ&redir_esc=y
20) Yi Gyeongjin. “Speaking in a Foreign Language: The Novels of Cho Hae-jin and Sou Linne Baik,” pg. 273-275.
21) Yang Gyeongeon. “When the Noon Light Collects Shadows.” In Chamdamhan bit [Commentary], pg. 308.
22) Sou Linne Baik and Yi Siseong. “[Email Conversation] To our fellow foreigners,” pg. 146.
23) Sin Saetbyeol. “For Harmonious Individualists: Thoughts on the Individual in the Novels of Choe Eunyoung, Sou Linne Baik, and Choe Hae-jin.” Oneurui munye bipyeong [Today’s Literary Criticism] September 2017, pg. 56.
24) Sou Linne Baik and Yi Siseong. “[Email Conversation] To our fellow foreigners,” pg. 146.
25) Jeong Uijeong. “Sou Linne Baik: ‘The Task of Creating Space for Women’s History’ - Chinaehago, chinaehaneun.” Channel Yes, 22 March 2019.http://ch.yes24.com/Article/View/38408
26) Sin Saetbyeol. “A Small History of Love.” In Chinaehago, chinaehaneun [Commentary], pg. 136-137.
27) Pak Seonhui. “[The Fragrance of Books] Hearts That Waver Between Friendship and Love.” Gyosu sinmun [Professor Newspaper], 18 July 2020.https://www.donga.com/news/article/all/20200718/102027159/1
28) Jo Yongho. “[Jo Yongho’s Literature Space] Peeping Outside the Window While Clutching the Doorknob.” UPI News, 24 July 2020.http://www.upinews.kr/newsView/upi202007230105
29) Hwang Yein. “Breaking Away From My Small World.” In Yeoreumui billa [Commentary], pg. 275, 286-287.
30) https://ridibooks.com/books/1508002743
31) https://www.ltikorea.or.kr/kr/pages/archive/translationBookView.do?booksIdx=14
32) https://www.ltikorea.or.kr/kr/pages/archive/translationBookView.do?booksIdx=126
33) https://m.sedaily.com/NewsView/1RVJB8QU9D/GH02#_enliple
34) http://www.gukjenews.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=1033125
35) http://mdilbo.com/detail/EHdc4G/587516
