Maureen Sun’s novel, The Sisters K, follows three sisters of a Korean-American father, Eugene Kim. There is Minah born in South Korea, to Eugene’s first wife. The family dynamics are stilted:
Jeonghee didn’t talk to Minah around her husband. When Eugene was home she treated Minah coolly, like a nuisance, and waited on him. Minah, far from being displeased, felt she had a secret relationship with Jeonghee. Eugene managed his dry-cleaning business from early morning to early evening and sometimes didn’t return home until late at night. Her bond with Jeonghee made the true, secret life of the household, which her father merely visited, where she and Jeonghee existed in their love.
Then, there are Sarah and Esther born to Jeonghee, his second wife. Emotionally, Eugene sees Sarah as his actual firstborn. He values his second wife’s frailty, as a contrast to “his first wife’s willfulness.” He names his second daughter, Sarah, and envisions her as a well-bred Korean girl, pure and excellent.
Sarah and Esther, the two younger sisters, do not receive Jeonghee’s actual attention as she is depressive and ailing. She passes away lonely and alone as a young mother in a new land. The two girls are invited into the family of a Russian immigrant family, which moved in to the “middle-to-lower-middle class white neighborhood” in California. Here, Sarah learns to play the piano. Esther is kept back at her home and cared for by hired help. All three of the children grow up emotionally deprived, however.
Eugene’s focus is on various entrepreneurial ventures. He takes on a mistress, Soojin (“Sue”). He does not see his home as his main focus, but he brings his frustrations in life to his family. Sun writes:
He yelled at them, he slapped them and knocked their heads and threatened
worse beatings and brutal privation. His anger they recognized and understood;
they heard it at school and saw it on TV. More unsettling was his laughter, the
grin and glee with which he patted the girls on the shoulder after they’d picked up
the shoes, bowls, or toys he’d thrown at them, the gentle chuckle with which he
pointed out the shards at their feet.
A thread of misogyny runs through his abuse of his daughters, which also carry sexual undertones. There are multiple references to calls to police for his mistreatment of the girls.
As the years pass, Minah returns to South Korea to learn more Korean and to teach English. She goes on to study law. Sarah goes to college and becomes a part-time adjunct college instructor. Esther goes to school for a time and then takes on menial jobs. The daughters have different resentments. Where their father disappointed them, they disappointed him. The centrifugal forces of life scatter the three, until their father reaches out. He is ill and perhaps dying, and he wants their attention.
Each of the characters have varying levels of insight about themselves and their lived experiences. Eugene “understood rage as the legitimate demand of love, self-pity as the tragic longing of love.”
The Sisters K is animated by the Minah’s, Sarah’s, and Esther’s different childhood experiences and resulting resentments. The “K” of the title may refer to “Kim,” but it is also evocative of Korean culture.
In old age, Eugene is reaping the outcomes from the relationships he built in his youth and middle adulthood. His essential nature has not changed.
The question is how the daughters will respond in the moment of their father’s weakness, given each of their histories with him. Will they succumb to their own spite and hatred (like a chip off the old block)? Will they discover redeeming care through empathy? Will they be sparked to greed at the prospect of an inheritance?
In The Sisters K, each generation inherits from the prior. Some may escape its nasty grasp, but others fail to achieve escape velocity. How people die is an extension of how they lived. This novel does not offer likeable characters that could make the narrative more engaging. The characters seem to live in amber, never quite able to recover from and move on from old wounds. They seem to be living their internal lives all the time, without the intrusion of any outer world. They live as if they cannot grow or change. The loss of early learning about humanity results in more brokenness in adulthood
Shalin Hai-Jew has worked in higher education for many years. She has edited dozens of nonfiction educational books and authored a dozen with a number of publishers.
