Hyeseung Song – författare

From Texas sugar cane fields, Ivy League halls to Hyeseung Song's homeland of South Korea and back again, this memoir is a journey through identity crises, mental health struggles and the quest for selfhood.Born to Korean immigrant parents, Hyeseung spends her early years in the sugar cane fields of Texas, caught between her father's "get rich quick schemes" and her beautiful, domineering mother who is skeptical of Western idealism.With her parents constantly at odds, Hyeseung learns more Korean words for hatred than for love. When the family's fake Gucci business lands them in bankruptcy, Hyeseung starts at a new school where she's immediately singled out with the question, "Can you speak English?"Growing up, Hyeseung internalizes Western expectations of the "model" Asian-American, striving for approval and getting into an Ivy League school. Yet, she resents the other high-achieving Asian students she meets and clings to her "token" status among her white peers.In an attempt to reconcile her identity, she takes a trip to Korea, facing an even greater crisis of self, and after a series of shocking events, she is admitted to a psychiatric hospital and ultimately attempts suicide. Marriage to a doting white physicist and a new career as a painter seem to offer refuge—until they don’t.Unflinching and lyrical, Docile is one woman’s story of subverting the model minority myth, contending with mental illness, and finding her self-worth by looking within.

From Texas sugar cane fields, Ivy League halls to her homeland of South Korea and back again this memoir is a journey through identity crises, mental health struggles, and the quest for selfhood.Born to Korean immigrant parents, Hyeseung spends her early years in the sugar cane fields of Texas, caught between her father''s "get rich quick schemes" and her beautiful, domineering mother who is skeptical of Western idealism.With her parents constantly at odds, Hyeseung learns more Korean words for hatred than for love. When the family''s fake Gucci business lands them in bankruptcy, Hyeseung starts at a new school where she''s immediately singled out with the question, "Can you speak English?"Growing up, Hyeseung internalizes Western expectations of the "model" Asian-American, striving for approval and getting into an Ivy League school. Yet, she resents the other high-achieving Asian students she meets and clings to her "token" status among her white peers.In an attempt to reconcile her identity, she takes a trip to Korea, facing an even greater crisis of self, and after a series of shocking events, she is admitted to a psychiatric hospital and ultimately attempts suicide. Marriage to a doting white physicist and a new career as a painter seem to offer refuge—until they don’t.Unflinching and lyrical, Docile is one woman’s story of subverting the model minority myth, contending with mental illness, and finding her self-worth by looking within.

From Texas sugar cane fields, Ivy League halls to Hyeseung Song's homeland of South Korea and back again, this memoir is a journey through identity crises, mental health struggles and the quest for selfhood.Born to Korean immigrant parents, Hyeseung spends her early years in the sugar cane fields of Texas, caught between her father's "get rich quick schemes" and her beautiful, domineering mother who is skeptical of Western idealism.With her parents constantly at odds, Hyeseung learns more Korean words for hatred than for love. When the family's fake Gucci business lands them in bankruptcy, Hyeseung starts at a new school where she's immediately singled out with the question, "Can you speak English?"Growing up, Hyeseung internalizes Western expectations of the "model" Asian-American, striving for approval and getting into an Ivy League school. Yet, she resents the other high-achieving Asian students she meets and clings to her "token" status among her white peers.In an attempt to reconcile her identity, she takes a trip to Korea, facing an even greater crisis of self, and after a series of shocking events, she is admitted to a psychiatric hospital and ultimately attempts suicide. Marriage to a doting white physicist and a new career as a painter seem to offer refuge—until they don’t.Unflinching and lyrical, Docile is one woman’s story of subverting the model minority myth, contending with mental illness, and finding her self-worth by looking within.

For readers of Crying in H Mart and Minor Feelings as well as lovers of the film Minari comes a “scorchingly honest…hugely evocative memoir” (Helen Macdonald, New York Times bestselling author of H Is for Hawk) about the daughter of ambitious Asian American immigrants and her search for self-worth.A daughter of Korean immigrants, Hyeseung Song spends her earliest years in the cane fields of Texas where her loyalties are divided between a restless father in search of Big Money, and a beautiful yet domineering mother whose resentments about her own life compromises her relationship with her daughter. With her parents at constant odds, Song learns more words in Korean for hatred than love. When the family’s fake Gucci business lands them in bankruptcy, Song moves to a new elementary school. On her first day, a girl asks the teacher: “Can she speak English?” Neither rich nor white, Song does what is necessary to be visible: she internalizes the model minority myth as well as her beloved mother’s dreams to see her on a secure path. Song meets these expectations by attending the best Ivy League universities in the country. But when she wavers, in search of an artistic life on her own terms, her mother warns, “Happiness is what unexceptional people tell themselves when they don’t have the talent and drive to go after real success.” Years of self-erasure take a toll on Song as she experiences recurring episodes of depression and mania. A thought repeats: I want to die. I want to die. Song enters a psychiatric hospital where she meets patients with similar struggles. So begins her sweeping journey to heal herself by losing everything. “A celebration of resilience and a testament to the power of art to heal and transform” (Chloé Cooper Jones, two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and author of Easy Beauty), Docile is one woman’s story of subverting the model minority myth, contending with mental illness, and finding her self-worth by looking within.