A review by joannaautumn
The Magical Language of Others by E.J. Koh

4.0

” As I learned Japanese, roamed through Ueno and the elevator of that ryokan, I learned to isolate myself through language—from English to Korean to Japanese. It was so effective it was frightening, as if I could guard against others like a spy. Where I could hardly open my mouth before, it now seemed that no one could speak to me. Languages, as they open you, can also allow you to close. When I felt myself running toward seclusion, I heard my grandmother and my great-grandfather urging me to try—and how much harder one must try when learning to love. She never asked me to speak but to understand, rather than endure to forgive, and never to sacrifice, only to let go.”

A book is split into sections that interchange, the translation of the letters the author received from her mother living abroad and the memories of the author giving context to each letter.
Using general terms one can say that this memoir is about the author overcoming their struggles and affirming life and their place in it.

Looking closely, this memoir with epistolary parts is written in a way that keeps the reader both invested and engaged in the life of the writer and what they observed and dealt with over the years. Racism, sexism, classism, depression, suicide attempts, eating disorders, grief, murder, and isolation – a wide array of topics is arranged inside.

“When you age, wrinkles don’t make you older. They make you look more like yourself,” she warned me. “Everything comes to the surface eventually.”
“That wrinkle bore daughters, who gave more wrinkles by fighting; those with smooth foreheads bore sons, who compounded smoothness by restriction. In the end, there was no escaping a mother’s face.”

What strikes most is the feeling of isolation and abandonment that stretches over the three generations of women in the family. Each woman being caring and giving but at the same time distanced and aloof, unsure how to exactly demonstrate their feelings, how to vocalize them too. Language plays a big role in communication, but certain things don’t need a specific language, it’s in the actions and everyday kindness all around us that keeps the people going on.

”I ran toward his hand, outstretched with a mug of hot chocolate. He never asked where I had been or why I had been gone for hours but offered hot cocoa he made from a mix he had bought on his trip to the supermarket because he remembered the way it could cheer me up, and he had been hoping to do just that, though he did not know, always, the graceful way of doing so, but he tried anyway, his very best, reminding me that we were not stuck—we were liberated—and he understood at his young age that he was all I had in this world, and only when he had returned to his room and closed the door behind him did my tears fall freely.”

It’s also a thing not a lot of us pay attention to, and we often overlook things that are not vocalized.
What’s beautiful in this book is the realistic portrayal of grief, sadness and loneliness that comes out of the quiet, how often times we hurt ourselves more by our inactivity than others and how it shapes people; how everybody has their own way of communication and how hard it is to come to terms with the sides of yourself that are ultimately destructive.

It’s rare that I find a memoir from which I can apply what I have read to my own life(or I just haven’t been reading the right memoirs) but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one, despite it talking about a lot of serious and heavy topics, 4/5.
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I loved this, review to come.