Grandmother Character Analysis

Hyeonseo’s grandmother. Grandmother is an ardent communist, and she secured her family’s high songbun during the Korean War when she hid the family’s Communist Party identification cards instead of destroying them when the Americans came. Grandmother never approves of Mother’s relationship with Father, and she initially refuses to allow them to marry. She arranges for Mother to marry the man from Pyongyang instead, and is furious when Mother leaves him after Hyeonseo is born to marry Father instead. When Hyeonseo is just a young girl, Grandmother tells her that the man from Pyongyang is her biological father, which begins Hyeonseo’s struggles with her identity. At the end of the book, when Mother accompanies Hyeonseo and Brian to Chicago, Hyeonseo wonders what Grandmother, who is presumably dead by this time, would think about them being in America, one of North Korea’s sworn enemies. Grandmother is a fierce protector of the family’s songbun, and she represents the importance of family within Lee’s memoir.