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A Memoir
by Jennifer Hope Choi
A Korean mother runs off to Alaska, sparking a greater season of wandering. Could her daughter be destined for the same?
When Jennifer Hope Choi first stumbled upon the "curse" known as yeokmasal―an allegedly inheritable affliction causing one to roam farther and farther from home―she immediately consulted her mother. "Oh yeah," Umma quipped. "I have that." Technically this wasn't a revelation. Since 2007, the no-nonsense open-heart surgery nurse had moved suddenly from the Golden State to the Last Frontier, shuttling over the next decade through seven states.
For much of her adulthood, Choi had fancied herself nothing like her immigrant mother, late-blooming vagabond spirit and all―until life in Brooklyn imploded, spurring her to relocate to South Carolina and reckon with startling truths. Artmaking had left her in debt, single, and jobless. Questions hovered, gathering ragged like fractus clouds: Was it time to give up writing? Would she ever have a place of her own to call home? Or was she doomed to bunk up with Umma in the Deep South indefinitely?
This probing memoir follows Choi through her many former homes, from a crumbling Chinatown tenement to a haunted museum in Georgia. Connections emerge, between her curious trajectory and idiosyncratic Korean identity narratives: a mystical Korean dog breed, pro golfers, modern Korean cults, the four pillars of destiny, and Korean American art. One question lingers throughout her search: What might be gained from living in residence with uncertainty?
Told with whip-smart sensibility, The Wanderer's Curse is an electric mother-daughter story, exploring ideas of belonging, self-determination, and possibility, leaving readers to wonder what we take with us generation to generation, what we wish we could leave behind, and how we move on.
"Choi's memoir is a sympathetic study in the way mothers and daughters so often talk past each other while seeking accommodation—or, in some senses, a truce—and understanding. Sometimes affecting, sometimes stumbling, but appealing in its moments of reconciliation and redemption." —Kirkus Reviews
"[T]ender and searching...Choi delivers a funny and relatable ode to the pleasures and pitfalls of calling many places home. It's a promising first effort." —Publishers Weekly
"Jennifer Hope Choi's The Wanderer's Curse is a moving, thought-provoking, honest examination of self. At once hilarious and poignant, it follows a mother and daughter as they drift apart, as they come back to each other in small gestures, as they love and fight and grow. A gifted essayist and journalist, Choi is searingly smart, not afraid of digging deep, even when things get uncomfortable. The Wanderer's Curse surprised me, delighted me, broke my heart. A stunning debut." ―Jaquira Díaz, author of Ordinary Girls
"The Wanderer's Curse is a spirited and searching memoir that not only transported me through time and space, but delighted me with unexpected tangents along the way. Jennifer Hope Choi has a voice all her own, and writes with a singular blend of wholeheartedness and perfect comedic timing about family, home, Korean Americanness, and so much more. Her 'curse' is the reader's blessing." ―Rachel Khong, New York Times best-selling author of Real Americans
This information about The Wanderer's Curse was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jennifer Hope Choi is a National Magazine Award–nominated editor at Bon Appétit. Her writing has been anthologized in The Best American Travel Writing and has appeared in the New York Times, Guernica, Lucky Peach, VQR, BuzzFeed, and the American Scholar.
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