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stelluh's review against another edition
4.0
Beautifully written. A little bit slow at times, but a great example of what it's like growing up with a traditional Korean mother, along with girlhood in general.
hyuneybear's review against another edition
4.0
This is a poetic, albeit somewhat disjointed and non-linear, recounting of various events in the author, her mother, and her grandmother's lives. The main storyline is how the author's life is affected by her parents leaving the USA to go to Korea for work and the author being left behind in America at fourteen years old to stay with her nineteen year old brother. Her mother sends her handwritten letters over the seven years that they are apart. I appreciated the author inputting her mother's original letters written in Korean so I could feel some of her mother's more nuanced emotions that couldn't fully be translated into English. While the narrative was not very organized, I didn't mind it. I felt like I was listening to a series of poems, each one making me feel different emotions of sadness, regret, hurt, hope, and healing.
(Story touches a bit on eating disorders, and a mutual interest between an adult and a minor)
(Story touches a bit on eating disorders, and a mutual interest between an adult and a minor)
mostlyreadingbooks's review against another edition
4.0
What a beautifully, heartbreaking memoir.
Having Korean in-laws really made me connect to the story and reading the translated letters I could literally hear my in-laws talking and giving advice and reminding me to eat my rice.
I’m somewhat blown away by the fact her parents just left and lived apart from their children for so long. The way Eun Ji struggled with the feeling of loneliness and then finds poetry is touching.
It really surprised me that in the end both kids just move on from the abandonment and find themselves living close to their parents once again.
I loved reading Eun Jins thoughts and how she tries to make sense of things by looking at her families past. Very touching
Having Korean in-laws really made me connect to the story and reading the translated letters I could literally hear my in-laws talking and giving advice and reminding me to eat my rice.
I’m somewhat blown away by the fact her parents just left and lived apart from their children for so long. The way Eun Ji struggled with the feeling of loneliness and then finds poetry is touching.
It really surprised me that in the end both kids just move on from the abandonment and find themselves living close to their parents once again.
I loved reading Eun Jins thoughts and how she tries to make sense of things by looking at her families past. Very touching
annetjeberg's review against another edition
4.0
This was a beautiful read. The translated letters by the author's mother were wonderful, and in a way very eerie. Talking about dysfunctional families... Koh's parents move back to South Korea to pursue a job opportunity for her father, leaving their teenage daughter, and barely adult son back in the USA. Over the span of multiple years, Koh's mother writes her letters, which Koh translated for the book.
Koh is a marvelous writer, who has beautiful way with words (she is a poet after all).
Koh is a marvelous writer, who has beautiful way with words (she is a poet after all).
lunabbly's review against another edition
3.0
I liked it because it was poignant and made me feel deeply the longing, yearning, and sadness that I have about my own mother. But I didn't think all of it was authentic always. I hesitate to say that it was embellished for the sake of beauty, but there were parts that didn't feel authentic about the emotion, the thoughts. It felt like someone else's thoughts and E.J. Koh wrote them because she doesn't quite know how else to describe the relationship with her mother and grandmother (paternal) and how language shaped so much of it. Or even the relationship her mother had with her maternal grandmother as well.
What we can speak but don't know how to translate...
I also liked that not everything was explained. Her eating disorder, her depression and anxiety -- all were mentioned and it felt like those were authentic narratives she was telling because she could tell them now. She could put it into writing and be honest not just with herself about her mental health, but with an audience, readers and not for the sake of identity politics "Oh I'm a first-generation Asian American with mental health illnesses and issues that cause me to act like x, y, or z," but more like she wanted to tell us because she's comfortable enough to tell us about what she was thinking at the time that she was binging and then purging her food and how it ruined her. There's not much detail about being in recovery, but that also shapes the memoir in many different ways as it gets woven into the story.
I would recommend.
What we can speak but don't know how to translate...
I also liked that not everything was explained. Her eating disorder, her depression and anxiety -- all were mentioned and it felt like those were authentic narratives she was telling because she could tell them now. She could put it into writing and be honest not just with herself about her mental health, but with an audience, readers and not for the sake of identity politics "Oh I'm a first-generation Asian American with mental health illnesses and issues that cause me to act like x, y, or z," but more like she wanted to tell us because she's comfortable enough to tell us about what she was thinking at the time that she was binging and then purging her food and how it ruined her. There's not much detail about being in recovery, but that also shapes the memoir in many different ways as it gets woven into the story.
I would recommend.
shannahtan's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
slow-paced
3.75
I struggled to get into this. I love that it ends up set in Seattle. It was just a little slow. I can understand how hard it was to be a poet in a Korean family. It must have been so hard to grow up with you parents in a different country so far away. Her mom is complex because she clearly misses her daughter, thinks about her, and is also trying to tell herself and her daughter that she’s a good mother.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts
kai3cll's review against another edition
3.0
A painful story of trauma, an eating disorder, and much more that I lost track of due to an abundance of pain.
The narration made me place myself in a position of detached involvement. I was detached as if half asleep while reading but also feeling the emotions. I felt this book more than understood it.
The narration made me place myself in a position of detached involvement. I was detached as if half asleep while reading but also feeling the emotions. I felt this book more than understood it.
longl's review against another edition
5.0
This week, I watched Past Lives by Celine Song, and also a few days later, finished The Magical Language of Others. My head feels dizzy and my emotions, frayed in a state of brittle fragility.
Stories like these make me reflect on my life and realize how much has accumulated in a silent and acknowledged (unacknowledged in the present) way. As I read, streams of my own personal stories flowed into the interstitial spaces between Koh's lines, paragraphs, pages, years—moving from San Jose to Sacramento; trying to finish college in Davis; Hong Kong becoming a forever presence and haunting; the aimless period after returning to California; Hong Kong once again with Taiwan and Beijing; going back to school but on different terms; an attempt to start a new, ordinary, life from an existing and fractured one.
While the emotional and historical labor of translation is centered here, I feel that it's the telling of a life (and for us as readers, the witnessing of one and its testimony) that is also a magical language.
One thing that I'll always remember, standing vivid in sharp relief against all other memories about writing, raft, and living, is of Joe Wenderoth staring at the ceiling and mumbling to us sitting there in Hart Hall that in the most profound and felt stories, you can feel the passage/passing of a life, the movement of its wide sweep in the air before you.
After finishing The Magical Language of Others, I put the book on my "return-to-library" shelf and watched the wind chimes and newly planted tree of my neighbor's across the street sway in the breeze outside my window, and for a moment, feel a sense of completion. It's not a finality, but a letting go, and a path to continued life.
Stories like these make me reflect on my life and realize how much has accumulated in a silent and acknowledged (unacknowledged in the present) way. As I read, streams of my own personal stories flowed into the interstitial spaces between Koh's lines, paragraphs, pages, years—moving from San Jose to Sacramento; trying to finish college in Davis; Hong Kong becoming a forever presence and haunting; the aimless period after returning to California; Hong Kong once again with Taiwan and Beijing; going back to school but on different terms; an attempt to start a new, ordinary, life from an existing and fractured one.
While the emotional and historical labor of translation is centered here, I feel that it's the telling of a life (and for us as readers, the witnessing of one and its testimony) that is also a magical language.
One thing that I'll always remember, standing vivid in sharp relief against all other memories about writing, raft, and living, is of Joe Wenderoth staring at the ceiling and mumbling to us sitting there in Hart Hall that in the most profound and felt stories, you can feel the passage/passing of a life, the movement of its wide sweep in the air before you.
After finishing The Magical Language of Others, I put the book on my "return-to-library" shelf and watched the wind chimes and newly planted tree of my neighbor's across the street sway in the breeze outside my window, and for a moment, feel a sense of completion. It's not a finality, but a letting go, and a path to continued life.