Moderated by Professor Eunsil Oh, Department of Sociology, UW-Madison. Presented in partnership with Wisconsin Book Festival.
In this engaging Humanities Without Boundaries conversation, author Cho Nam-joo will talk about her recent and upcoming works as well as her writing process. Following the conversation, books will be sold on-site by A Room of One’s Own and are available for signing. This event is free and open to all.
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is the 2024-25 selection for the Great World Texts in Wisconsin program, in which teachers and students from 27 high schools across the state of Wisconsin will read and engage with Cho Nam-joo’s novel. On Tuesday, April 15, 2025, these students convene on campus to connect with one another, share the projects they created in response to their experiences reading the novel, and meet the author.
Cho Nam-joo’s visit to UW-Madison and Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 in Wisconsin is supported by the UW-Madison Libraries; the Cleary-Kumm Foundation; the Evjue Foundation; the Wisconsin Book Festival; the Anonymous Fund of the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and the Brittingham Wisconsin Trust.
About the text: Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman’s psychic deterioration in the face of rampant misogyny. In a tidy apartment on the outskirts of Seoul, millennial “everywoman” Kim Jiyoung spends her days caring for her infant daughter. But strange symptoms appear: Jiyoung begins to impersonate the voices of other women, dead and alive. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, her concerned husband sends her to a psychiatrist. Jiyoung narrates her story to this doctor—from her birth to parents who expected a son to elementary school teachers who policed girls’ outfits to male coworkers who installed hidden cameras in women’s restrooms. But can her psychiatrist cure her, or even discover what truly ails her? “A social treatise as well as a work of art” (Alexandra Alter, New York Times), Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 heralds the arrival of international powerhouse Cho Nam-joo.
About the author: Cho Nam-joo is a former television scriptwriter. In the writing of this book, she drew partly on her own experience as a woman who quit her job to stay at home after giving birth to a child. Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is her third novel. It has had a profound impact on gender inequality and discrimination in Korean society and has been translated into 18 languages.
About the moderator: Eunsil Oh is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Asian Languages and Cultures at UW-Madison. Oh conducts research on gender, work, and family in the context of East Asia. Using qualitative methods, she investigates cultural and structural foundations of work and family decision-making processes. Current projects include research that investigates the relationship between social change and gender norms in East Asia and the low fertility patterns in South Korea.