I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Sehee, translated by Anton Hur
Local by Jessica Machado
Writing about yourself is so inherently self-indulgent that there are really only two ways to justify it. You are either so unique and different that simply reading about you is entertaining or otherwise illuminating—think Suki Kim’s experience teaching in North Korea in Without You, There Is No Us, or Charles Farrell’s life of fixing fights and dealing with the mob in (Low)life. The corollary here is you have to have lived a particularly interesting life, which most people have not. But even if you have, these kinds of stories run the risk of derailing into nothing more than “hey look at me, I have a cool life.”
The other way is to be so normal that you have to write about yourself in such a way that you are actually writing about something else. To “magnify the small and micrify the great,” as Emerson put it. This method leans on the idea that you’re not very special or unique, and so readers can find themselves in you, as long as your story is also not just your story. The most artful nonfiction, I think, arrives at a feeling equally personal and universal: that It Isn’t Just You.
This idea was stated explicitly in the prologue to I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Sehee, a memoir largely composed of transcriptions of and reflections on the author’s therapy sessions:
“I had an urge to find others who felt the way I did. So I decided, instead of aimlessly wandering in search of these others, to be the person they could look for — to hold my hand up high and shout, I’m right here, hoping that someone would see me waving, recognize themselves in me and approach me, so we could find comfort in each other’s existence.”
It’s written in a simple, straightforward style that belies its wisdom. The book’s greatest strength is its ability to put on display a deeply personal episode—being diagnosed with dysthymia and trying to treat it—and having it act as a canvas for just about anyone to project themselves upon. It’s easy to see ourselves, often uncomfortably, in Baek’s discussions of workplace frustration or the pettiness she’d sink to when she was insecure in a new friendship. “In the end, my hope is for people to read this book and think, I wasn’t the only person who felt like this,” Baek writes.
Local, a memoir by Jessica Machado, doesn’t meet that ideal. The premise is promising: Machado, who is from Hawaiʻi and is Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian), doesn’t quite feel the way she thinks she’s supposed to as a local. Much of this stems from her mom, a haole from the American south who loved Hawaiʻi, but could never be a part of it the way Machado’s Kanaka father was.
There’s a lot of ripe material here to talk about the tension of multicultural identity in a colonized place, what it means to belong somewhere, and how we reconcile the parts of ourselves that come from very different parents—but Machado never really does any of that. It was disappointing, because she’s clearly a good writer with an interesting perspective on those things.
When Machado writes about the inebriating largeness and sense of possibility that comes with living on the mainland, or the difficult, intimate moments spent with her aging mother, she writes with sincerity and resonance. But a lot of the rest of the book felt stiff and inauthentic. I was also thrown off by things like quoting as dialogue conversations between her parents when she was a child, and I don’t think I’m being persnickety to feel that way. I’m also wary of memoirs that portray people flatly, especially when that depiction is relentlessly negative. The temptation to use a memoir as a place to dole out revenge is real, and I’m not sure Machado entirely steered away from that temptation.
I don’t mean to sound harsh. Other people seemed to really like Local, and it’s always possible that it simply is not for me. It was still highly readable, and I’d recommend it for people who enjoy books about Hawaiʻi. But reading these memoirs back-to-back (Local first, then Tteokbokki) really highlighted the difference between writing about yourself, and writing about yourself for other people.
Reads from March
Education Commentary is Dominated by Optimism Bias by Freddie deBoer, Substack
What if climate change meant not doom — but abundance? by Rebecca Solnit, Washington Post
Place of Refuge by Timothy Schuler, Places Journal
Local Politicians Enthused By Return Of Base Ball by David Roth, Defector
A Moral Education by Garth Greenwell, The Yale Review
Books from March
Ongoingness: The End of a Diary by Sarah Manguso
Aside from the aforementioned memoirs, I also read Sarah Manguso’s meditation on keeping a diary. Manguso is a master at this type of aphoristic micro-essay form, and she vaults seamlessly into big ideas like memory and time and the illusion of control without losing her humor. Manguso is enviably good.
Writing from March
Hawaiʻi has been operating under the premise that we need to build 25,000-50,000 new housing units to meet demand. Local economist Paul Brewbaker says we need 3x that. So I talked to him about how he arrived at those numbers, and why we need to focus on increasing supply instead of trying to throttle demand (which, on top of being constitutionally and ethically dubious, also doesn't work).
I also wrote an essay about pickleball in Hawaiʻi for Hana Hou! Magazine, which will be out in June.
This newsletter is free, but if you like what you are reading and are feeling generous, here is a tip jar.