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victoriathuyvi's review against another edition
3.0
I thought it was beautifully written and certain sections captivated me. And while I thought the style of this memoir was special in its distinctiveness, it also made me feel detached. Maybe that was the intent as the mom's heartfelt letters were one-sided as were the families, literally detached. That's poetic. But it still felt hard for me to love this book and want to indulge in it more.
sboedecker1024's review against another edition
4.0
I'm always interested in immigration and expat experiences, having moved around so much myself. This one was a unique structure but didn't captivate me as much as I had hoped. I did love the inclusion of the original letters from her mother - gave me a chance to practice my Korean!
mariielise's review against another edition
5.0
This book took my breath away. If you know me, you know that I give 5 stars sparingly... but I knew from almost the first page that it would be a 5 star book. If you know me you also know that the mother-daughter relationship is the holy grail of my literary search. Up there with Annie John (Jamaica Kincaid) and The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan) this memoir joins my list of books which have captured the nuance of the life-giving and life-crushing love between mother and daughter. One of my favorite lines came after Eun Ji’s mother just left for Korea and Eun Ji moved in to her brother’s house: “I looked for her in every room. When I could not find her, I felt as if I would die.” More than capturing the mother-daughter bond, though, E.J. Koh teaches us what it means to take everything we think we know about our moms and ourselves, and to let both go. She reminds us that we are composites of our parents, who are composites of theirs, so we are at the mercy of deep histories which told our stories long before we were alive to tell them ourselves. This is a book spanning generations and telling the same story each time: that no matter how old we are or where we are living or which rooms we enter, we never stop looking for our mothers first.
flordelmal's review against another edition
4.0
Han pasado 10 meses desde que leí este libro y creo que no hay semana que pase en el que no piense en él. Ya me empieza a costar recordar detalles más específicos dentro de la narrativa, pero la sensación que me generó en su primer momento sigue conmigo, y todos sus reflexiones acerca del lenguaje, de la comunicación y de las lenguas creo que nunca se me van a olvidar.
Es difícil entenderse entre unos y otros, es difícil no sentirse aislado, a la deriva entre dos (o más) lenguas, pero el deseo de comunicarse es algo que siempre va a acompañar al ser humano.
Es difícil entenderse entre unos y otros, es difícil no sentirse aislado, a la deriva entre dos (o más) lenguas, pero el deseo de comunicarse es algo que siempre va a acompañar al ser humano.
shiloniz's review against another edition
5.0
This book is an exceptional read: part memoir, part history, part generational saga. E.J. Koh moves fluidly from memoirist to historian, from historian to biographer with swift and deft strides that feel expansive even as the text itself is spare. What connects all of these elements is her journey through language beginning first with her mother(s) language, Korean, but grounded firmly in American English. We journey with her to the language of Japanese, another branch of her ancestry, where we discover that language is more than words; it is movements, attitude, everything that goes unsaid. We discover, not for the first time, but with her, as she understands the language of the body and of men through the language of dance. Finally, we come to poetry, the language of letting go, or reckoning. There is so much in this text that I can not speak to or fathom, but the way in which we excavate our lives and those of who we love to get at the heart and root of grief, trauma, sorrow, and more potently, hope, compassion and love, is a universality that speaks to the many languages we all speak.