American Seoul: A Memoir

“Sometimes I want to burst into song... just to assert my presence,” writes Rho in her debut, a rancorous reflection on the turmoil wrought by displacement. Indeed, Rho asserts herself, often forcefully, making clear from the outset the many “scars of trauma” her body bears: “the sexual abuse when I was eight... the cultlike conditions of being raised by an immigrant Korean mother with major depression... the nightmare of marrying an emotionally and physically abusive man... the trauma of being oppressed by the white patriarchal court system.” This deep hurt roils beneath the narrative as Rho details her parents’ unhappy marriage, her and her family’s uprooting from Seoul to Uganda and eventually New Jersey in 1975, and her mother’s slide into mental illness. Despite playing “dutiful daughter” to her parents’ rules—honor your elders, “be a good girl,” become a doctor—disappointment followed Rho into her adulthood with a car accident in 2003 that left her severely injured, and fraught court battles with her ex-husband during their divorce. It’s a tough read made more difficult by Rho’s choppy transitions between tenses and her lashing out at perceived enemies (“I hated every judge who refused to see what SS was doing.... Yes, Justice Barbara Jaffe, I’m talking about you”). Unfortunately, spite keeps this one from rising above the wreckage. (May)