Hyeseung Song joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about being raised by a “beautiful but domineering” mother, breaking free from a legacy of self-worth via external achievements, writing complicated mothers, making the switch from memoir-in-essays to linear memoir, allowing her mother to “speak” for herself, the intersection or mental health, race, and racism, intergenerational trauma and engaging with pain, gaining the distance and time necessary to tell our stories, and her memoir Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl.

Also in this episode:

-self-expansion

-a life of art-making

-forgiving yourself

Books mentioned in this episode:

Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick

They Called Us Exceptional by Prachi Gupta

What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo

Hyeseung Song is a first-generation Korean American writer and painter. She lives and works in New York City. 

Connect with Hyeseung:

Website: www.hyeseungsong.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hyeseungs

Twitter: https://x.com/hyeseungs

Get Docile: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Docile/Hyeseung-Song/9781668003664

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Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book.

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Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers