American Seoul
A Memoir

I did not love the author's bitter and defensive tone, and I got the impression there are major parts of the story missing throughout. But by far the strangest part of this book was the Acknowledgments -- after spending dozens of pages ruminating on her complicated relationship with her mother, and......more

Helena Rho's gripping memoir is at once depressing and uplifting - depressing for how she is treated both by family and then an abusive husband and uplifting because she decides to become the master of her own fate and take charge of a life she lived only to please others. I'm not that knowledgable......more

I first came across Helena Rho’s work in the 805 Lit + Art where they published the first chapter of American Seoul, “Crossroad.” I was immediately captivated by Helena’s writing. To be honest, I haven’t reviewed many memoirs. I looked up an article where it said a memoir is successful if it enterta......more

This is definitely not a memoir I could recommend reading if you're looking for something uplifting. Rather, it is a depressing account of a Korean woman, Helena Rho, who's family immigrates to the US when she is a child. She writes about how she hated being a pediatrician, how dysfunctional her par......more

Couldn’t put it down! Being half Japanese myself, I can see where her story could relate to stuff my dad (the Japanese one) had to go through with relationships between his parents who had been in the American internment camps when they were young. She perfectly describes a women’s situation in a mar......more