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A review by wholeottabooks
I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-hee
reflective
fast-paced
2.0
Synopsis: A Korean woman working in publishing seeks out professional help for mental health concerns about self criticism, depression, isolation, and more. She records her sessions with her therapist and transcribes them into a compilation which is the bulk of this book.
My thoughts: I’ll start by saying this… it feels really wrong to rate a memoir. I was really looking forward to this book. As a MSW student training to be a clinician, this book really peaked my interest. A woman being extremely vulnerable with her inner most thoughts? Sign me up! I went in with the expectations of a lot of the author’s self reflection, depth, and some sort of processing or analysis. This book is exactly as I wrote in the synopsis and not much more... a transcribed copy of segments of her time with a therapist. Although the author was self reflective, there was little to no processing of anything she was absorbing or learning from her sessions. The transcripts just bounced from concern to concern and then ended off with a set of brief essays that were irrelevant to the first half of the book. I’m extremely disappointed in this book and know and hope that others will find it valuable. But as someone already in the mental health field I didn’t find anything new or worthwhile. As someone going into the field of MH, I found it extremely violating that the author would publish these transcripts without her therapists consent. Yes, she asked for permission to record the sessions but the therapist agreed because she mentioned that she uses them because she struggles with remembering what was said. Therefore, in my opinion, the therapist gave consent to what her true intentions were (or what her new intentions were if that wasn’t her initial intention). This irked me and it hurt hearing the therapists reaction to learning about the published transcripts of their sessions. Overall, there are better texts that depict the struggles of mental illness and I would not recommend this one.
My thoughts: I’ll start by saying this… it feels really wrong to rate a memoir. I was really looking forward to this book. As a MSW student training to be a clinician, this book really peaked my interest. A woman being extremely vulnerable with her inner most thoughts? Sign me up! I went in with the expectations of a lot of the author’s self reflection, depth, and some sort of processing or analysis. This book is exactly as I wrote in the synopsis and not much more... a transcribed copy of segments of her time with a therapist. Although the author was self reflective, there was little to no processing of anything she was absorbing or learning from her sessions. The transcripts just bounced from concern to concern and then ended off with a set of brief essays that were irrelevant to the first half of the book. I’m extremely disappointed in this book and know and hope that others will find it valuable. But as someone already in the mental health field I didn’t find anything new or worthwhile. As someone going into the field of MH, I found it extremely violating that the author would publish these transcripts without her therapists consent. Yes, she asked for permission to record the sessions but the therapist agreed because she mentioned that she uses them because she struggles with remembering what was said. Therefore, in my opinion, the therapist gave consent to what her true intentions were (or what her new intentions were if that wasn’t her initial intention). This irked me and it hurt hearing the therapists reaction to learning about the published transcripts of their sessions. Overall, there are better texts that depict the struggles of mental illness and I would not recommend this one.
Content Warnings
Minor: Domestic abuse, Mental illness, Alcoholism, Eating disorder, and Body shaming