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My Korean Mom
Every immigrant kid knows the feeling: the horror and embarrassment of watching your super-foreign parents muddle through social situations when you've long sold them out and assimilated into the New World. The anguish, anger, and guilt sucks! But when you're packed school lunches with fermented things and fish with eyeballs when every other kid gets a bologna sandwich, you wonder if you'll ever really fit in.
My Korean Mom is a bittersweet love letter from Mary H. K. Choi to her mother that hopes to convey the frustration, shame, loyalty, and searing adoration that's part and parcel of being the kid of an immigrant. It's not as if she could tell her mother to her face how much she loves her. That's just not how it's done.
Mary H. K. Choi has written for GQ, The New York Times, New York, Wired, and Glamour. She is the former editor of MTV Style and executive producer of the documentary House of Style: Music, Models and MTV. She has also written comic books for Marvel and Vertigo and hosts a podcast on jobs called Hey, Cool Job. It's available on iTunes.
My Korean Mom is a bittersweet love letter from Mary H. K. Choi to her mother that hopes to convey the frustration, shame, loyalty, and searing adoration that's part and parcel of being the kid of an immigrant. It's not as if she could tell her mother to her face how much she loves her. That's just not how it's done.
Mary H. K. Choi has written for GQ, The New York Times, New York, Wired, and Glamour. She is the former editor of MTV Style and executive producer of the documentary House of Style: Music, Models and MTV. She has also written comic books for Marvel and Vertigo and hosts a podcast on jobs called Hey, Cool Job. It's available on iTunes.
Audio CD
Published May 24, 2016
About the author
Mary H.K. Choi
23 books2,610 followersMary H.K. Choi is a Korean-American author, editor, television and print journalist. She is the author of young adult novel Emergency Contact (2018). She is the culture correspondent on Vice News Tonight on HBO and was previously a columnist at Wired and Allure magazines as well as a freelance writer. She attended a large public high school in a suburb of San Antonio, then college at the University of Texas at Austin, where she majored in Textile and Apparel.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 7, 2022
Mary H. K. Choi reflects on her relationship with her mother in a short essay. Theme: guilt. Kids can be cruel, especially kids trying to fit in and are embarrassed by their immigrant parents, and she was. Author was really honest about some events. The Choi family isn't an emotionally demonstrative one, so maybe this is her way of letting her mother knows she loves her?
Review unfinished, but that's essentially it. May be spruced up later, but don't get your hopes up.
Also available as an article, read it here:
>https://aeon.co/essays/i-love-my-mom-...
Review unfinished, but that's essentially it. May be spruced up later, but don't get your hopes up.
Also available as an article, read it here:
>https://aeon.co/essays/i-love-my-mom-...
September 19, 2021
This is very well written and easy to listen to, though I could not really relate to the author at all. Her mother sounds lovely though.
July 29, 2021
This is a short story of an immigrant teen trying to fit in as she follows her father and family, from Korea on their trek through Hong Kong and finally settling down in Austin, Texas, somewhat reminiscent of the minari characters plopping down their trailer home on a plot of farm in rural Arkansas. Whereas the minari story weaves skillfully the characters' complex and conflicting emotions and their fragile sense of family and belonging in a foreign land, this story is superficial and unoriginal, and poorly written. It reads more like a journal entry of a teenager just learning how to write or a bad college essay. I'm not quite sure whether the author is assuming this shallow, valley girl voice and tone in an attempt at subtle literary expression, or she doesn't know what her voice is yet. She does stop chattering about herself eventually and recounts the time when she and her mother reconnect, which I liked, albeit it felt like an afterthought. The story, bitter yes a bit, hardly sweet, could have been much more, perhaps even interesting, if she had actually written about her mom as the book title promises instead of meandering through random tidbits of memory from her uneventful past. 'Please look after mom' by a Korean writer kyung sook shin is a better read.
March 15, 2022
literal perfection. so relatable. love that mary hk choi was fiercely advocating for her self interests from such a young age with her “i told my mom i loved money more than i loved her.” i cry. adore adore adore this short audible original and highly recommend everyone take 15 minutes out of their day to listen to mary hk choi narrate her love letter to her mom <3
read for #koreadathon 2022
read for #koreadathon 2022
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June 28, 2022A sorry and declaration of love from the author to her mother.
I get why she’s guilty.. Her mother bore the brunt of her anguish as she tried to assimilate.
Then then there’s the conundrum of how to make amends. What are the options for expression when it isn’t done? It’s a bind. Make the expression and don’t acknowledge it to the person the expressing is for. That’s the best I can come up with right now.
I get why she’s guilty.. Her mother bore the brunt of her anguish as she tried to assimilate.
Then then there’s the conundrum of how to make amends. What are the options for expression when it isn’t done? It’s a bind. Make the expression and don’t acknowledge it to the person the expressing is for. That’s the best I can come up with right now.
March 31, 2022
Her mom is amazing! The humor in this is great and her mom's life is bittersweet, like any decent life.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews