The biggest takeaway from a memoir is that you have to play fair. Within the first draft, I was writing very angrily because I had a lot of resentment and a lot to process. Through revision is where a lot of learning happened and a lot of forgiveness happened.
One of my more recent favorite memories is of traveling to Jeonju with my aunt and uncle. After my mother passed away, my aunt and I became a lot closer, and I've really grown to cherish the relationship we formed together as adults.
Food in general is really important for any diaspora, and it's really important for Korean people. This was a connection my mom and I could always have together that made her feel like I was more hers.
I don't think a lot of Korean people even make kimchi. My mom certainly didn't, so it's a very extra thing to do in the same way that I guess baking bread can be an even longer process that you're unsure about for a long time.
I'm a huge fan of the Korean attitude toward service and infrastructure, which is shaped by a preference for speed and efficiency, values I truly yearn for in the US.
My favorite thing that I'm learning, in particular, is that the type of love between an immigrant parent and their child growing up in America is a particular nuanced type of love.
I got married two weeks before my mom passed away, and then a year later, I was receiving some kind of artistic success that I'd never had. All of these really beautiful things happened where I was in love and I had a career I loved, but it was all kind of under the shadow of this really dark and painful thing.
It was really difficult to tour on 'Psychopomp' for a year and do the press cycle and talk to people three or four times a day about my mom dying.
My dad and I actually don't speak anymore. It's still something that I'm trying to figure out and I definitely don't have all of the answers to.
I just have to live my life knowing that there could be a good chance that I might die in middle age.
Once death was really close to me, I suddenly became very fearful of it. I think that lit a fire in me like, 'What do you have to say before it happens?'