You were born in New York City, but a lot of your writing reflects your deep connection to your Korean roots. How did you grow up so close to Korean culture and how did it influence you?   

I was born in America, but my first language was Korean—my parents didn’t want me to grow up with an accent, having suffered so much as new immigrants in the 1960s. So they brought me to a preschool and asked how they could teach me to speak English like a native speaker. The head of my preschool told them they shouldn’t teach me English; that instead, the school would. This, I think, is an example of my relationship to being Korean. I speak unaccented English and am a cultural chameleon on the outside, but I am always going to be Korean, first. 

I was born in America, but my first language was Korean—my parents didn’t want me to grow up with an accent, having suffered so much as new immigrants in the 1960s. So they brought me to a preschool and asked how they could teach me to speak English like a native speaker. The head of my preschool told them they shouldn’t teach me English; that instead, the school would. This, I think, is an example of my relationship to being Korean. I speak unaccented English and am a cultural chameleon on the outside, but I am always going to be Korean, first. 

To that end, my parents sent me to Korea every summer from the age of 17 to 21. I stayed with my auntie and grandmother—and those summers were also formative to me in understanding firsthand the culture and country from where I came, and associating it with comfort and joy. 

 When did you first begin to write and publish?  

 I feel like writing and publishing are two different events. Writing happens a long time before publication. I’ve written my entire life—and I’ve wanted to become a writer since I was 8 years old. My parents supported that dream, but only in the sense that it was a dream. They couldn’t fathom an America that wanted to read what a Korean American person wrote. So I revised what I wanted to become: a doctor and a writer. I am delighted that my first book is in a sense, a melding of the two. I started writing seriously in my early 30s. I wrote my first piece, a short story called “Bile,” which I submitted to a literary magazine called Zyzzyva. It was immediately published—I was overjoyed, but then I started paying my dues: I wasn’t published again for a very long time. 

 Tell us about your upcoming book, Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember. What is the most important lesson you learned from your stroke and how did it impact your writing?  

 <Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember>  is a story of my stroke at the age of 33, and the ensuing recovery and lessons learned. Much of my recovery was informed by being a Korean American daughter of immigrants. And I learned to navigate the world with a 15 minute short term memory. In the end, I learned to get up. Always get back up. And live life with no regrets. 

This has informed my writing to no end; so much of writing is about perseverance and commitment. It is easy to quit. It is easy to hold back your true feelings on the page. But it is more rewarding to keep pushing forward and write with bold courage. 

   How does your Korean-American identity define or shape you as a writer?  

 My Korean American identity defines and shapes me in every single way imaginable. It is who I am, full stop, and I am proud of it. I am learning more and more the ways in which being Korean American informs my writing. And my own identity is expanding through my discovery each and every day. For example, most recently, I’ve been reading Korean writers like Han Kang and Kyung-sook Shin. And in reading them, I realized that in many ways my written English very much resembles the spare syntax of Korean writers.