Grief, Resilience, and Sustainability: Applying the UNESCO Competency Framework to K. J. Chien's The Ones Left Behind

Abstract

This paper analyzes K. J. Chien’s 2025 short story The Ones Left Behind in terms of the UNESCO Competency Framework of Education to Sustainable Development. The paper employs a close reading of The Ones Left Behind and illustrates how the story's main character, Grace Chan, applies sustainability competencies in her everyday life. Grace is the proprietor of a family restaurant in Puerto-China, a New York district well-suited to the climate. She has lost her entire family and is now confronted with another foe, a faulty storm-water system that can destroy the mulberry trees that her grandmother planted. The research uses four fundamental competencies: Systems Thinking, Anticipatory, Normative, and Strategic. Besides the core competencies, two secondary competencies have been used, i.e., Collaboration and Self-Awareness. The analysis reveals that Grace pursues the ecological effects of the interdependent systems, acts based on the risks of the future rather than waiting until she is certain, lives by her principles in a world of opposing forces, and takes local action now to fix blocked pipes in the infrastructure. Another instance of collaborative problem-solving is her collaboration with Quique Flores. The paper concludes that sustainability competencies can be made visible in human terms through literary fiction, which can be better understood than through abstract definitions. The Ones Left Behind reveals that the concepts of grief, community, and local action cannot be discussed outside of the context of real sustainability practice.