DOCILE

The emotional journey of a Korean American writer and painter from child to adult shows her struggle to fulfill her parents’ dreams while finding her own way in the world.

How do you attain academic and financial success without selling your soul? How do you find meaning in life? These are two of the many existential questions that haunted Song as she grew up as one of the few Asian American students in her suburban Houston high school, then as a striving Ivy League college and law school student, before defying her parents and stepping off the corporate track to become an artist. The author also grappled with her identity, caught between two cultures. Like many offspring of immigrant parents, she felt neither truly Korean nor American. It was not until her time as a college intern in South Korea, where she was sexually assaulted—and then shunned—that she realized the U.S. was her home. “I had tried to operate as a Korean in Korea,” writes the author, “but attempting to fit into my native country, about which I had an abstract, mythical understanding, had only compromised me.” Song describes how she suffered several bouts of depression that were so bad she had to be hospitalized. In straightforward prose, the author chronicles these periods of hopelessness, as well as her anguish about her distant relationship with her husband, who helped nurse her back to health. Many characters flit in and out of the text; while some are fully fleshed, others are two-dimensional. Across nine chapters, Song covers most of her life, which means that some seemingly important topics—such as her reconciliation with her mother—get short shrift. Nonetheless, the author’s voice is strong and assured throughout the narrative.

A cleareyed look at the difficulty of navigating different cultures and expectations.