If you ever wondered why someone writes a memoir, this is the article for you! Memoirs can be a beautiful form of self-expression, so check out how Helena Rho developed her story and her style!
Author Biography
HELENA RHO is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominated writer and a former assistant professor of pediatrics. She received her Doctor of Medicine in 1992 and has practiced and taught at Top Ten Children’s Hospitals—the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh. Her essays have been included in anthologies published by Southern Methodist University Press: “The Burden of Baby Boy Smith” in Rage and Reconciliation (2005) and “The Good Doctor” in Silence Kills (2007). She was awarded a writing fellowship in TWP: To Think, To Write, To Publish, a National Science Foundation program through the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes at Arizona State University. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Slate, Crab Orchard Review, Entropy, Sycamore Review, Solstice, Fourth Genre, 805 Lit + Art, and is forthcoming in Post Road.
Her essay, “The Men in Medicine and the Theory of Evolution,” was recommended on LitBloom. She has been interviewed on Radio Free Brooklyn by Vijay R. Nathan. She is a devoted fan of Korean dramas, Korean green tea, and the haenyeo of Jeju Island. For more information visit helenarho.com
When did you start writing? Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?
I won an award for best essay when I was in seventh grade, so I suppose that is when I started writing? But I wrote in a diary well before that, which I shudder to think now what I could possibly have thought was interesting as a young girl!
And I wrote about my patients in fits and pieces when I was in medical school and pediatric residency. But the thought of being a writer wasn’t even a possibility in my mind until I took a sabbatical from medicine. And then, I left medicine only because I was literally crashed out of it by a terrible car accident.
It took a long time for me to pursue my dream of being a writer.
You received your MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh. What is the most important lesson you learned about writing or having a writing career while receiving your MFA?
Lee Gutkind, the publisher of Creative Nonfiction Magazine, was my mentor during my MFA and he always emphasized the discipline required to be a writer—he told stories of Robert Frost getting up every day at 4am to write. Every day.
So I knew that writing had to be approached like any other job. Every day you have to get up and go to work. But I wasn’t prepared for how much time the craft of writing would take.
You can’t teach a person to have the desire to write. But you can teach someone the craft of writing. And you have to practice the craft of writing to become a good writer. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers, would probably say that it takes 10,000 hours of practice!
“Rho’s story reveals the importance of resilience, strength, and human connections in choosing what sort of life to live. A poignant, personal, sometimes painful chronicle of self-awareness and understanding.”—Kirkus Reviews
About: American Seoul
Helena Rho was taught that to be a good Korean daughter she had to be quiet and obedient, modest and forbearing. Following the path laid out for her by her family, she became a pediatrician, married a successful doctor, and had two beautiful children. It didn’t matter that on the inside she was suffocating. Her job, she thought, was to endure.
It was only after a traumatic car accident at the age of forty that Helena found the courage to leave medicine and become a writer. In a cathartic and bracing memoir, AMERICAN SEOUL: A Memoir (Little A; May 1, 2022), Helena charts her journey toward healing and self-discovery under the impossible conditions of patriarchy and white supremacy. She unpacks multiple generations of family trauma, beginning with her mother’s unhappy marriage to her father, a serial cheater who stole from his own daughters. From watching her mother’s example, Helena came to think that to be
Korean (and particularly to be a Korean woman) was to be doomed to a life of suffering. She sought to escape her perceived fate, only to find herself trapped in her own unhappy marriage.
As she fights to prioritize her own mental health, Helena recalls how racism and sexism left her uncertain of her own self-worth, unable to speak of the sexual abuse she experienced as a child, nor the double standards forced upon her as an Asian-American female doctor. She recalls her shame for being unable to perform the duties of a male heir under Korean traditions of patriarchal inheritance; her eagerness to live up to the model minority stereotype; and her discomfort in feeling neither fully Korean, nor fully American.
Helena’s journey toward healing begins with facing decades of repressed trauma and ends with reclaiming her Korean identity. Through reconnecting with distant family, she learns to take joy in being Korean and finds connections that sustain her on the difficult road to self-discovery.
Helena Rho’s story is a reminder that it is never too late to begin living for yourself.
American Seoul is a memoir. What was it about this time in your life that you felt you needed to write about it?
I begin my memoir with my car accident because it set into motion many significant moments in my life: I abandoned medicine; I began an MFA program in writing; I started re-learning Korean.
In a way, I became Korean again, and this journey back to my birth culture and the language of my mother triggered my desire to be defined as a writer, not just as a daughter or a mother or a woman or a wife.
It helped me stand up for myself during my divorce and to continue defining myself on my own terms. I needed to write my narrative, not anyone else’s.
You have an extensive background in pediatric medicine. How has that shaped your writing career? Are there any lessons you learned from that background that you use in your writing?
Because I had a career in medicine first, I was older when I became a writer—I’m still mad that I wasted all those years!
No, seriously, being a doctor has given me an expertise on human anatomy and physiology that I’ll refer to in terms of character and plot and even dialogue for as long as I write.
And being a doctor has given me insight into human psychology and also taught me the value of hard work. It takes a lot of hard work to be a good writer!
Did you have a specific writing routine/process for American Seoul? Has that changed at all?
A writing routine? That’s hilarious!
When I first started writing the essays that would become my memoir, I wrote after my young children went to bed. When I was going through my divorce, I didn’t write for years. When my children got older, I fit my writing around their school schedule, snatching a few hours between making dinner and doing laundry, for instance.
Now I write in the mornings. As soon as I get up and make coffee, I stare out a window and start writing.
Why do you think you’re drawn to creative nonfiction as a storyteller?
A lack of imagination! I originally went to MFA school to write essays about my patients because I wanted to give voice to the poor inner-city children that society mostly forgot about.
And getting an MFA in nonfiction, at the time, seemed manageable compared to fiction because the events of my life had already happened to me. I just had to find an interesting way to tell the story, instead of inventing characters and plot and dialogue from whole cloth.
Now I’ve embraced writing fiction—I’ve finished one novel and I’m working on yet another.
You’re represented by Amy Elizabeth Bishop at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. How did you find Amy? What was it about Amy that made you want to work with her? Do you have any advice on what writers should look for in an agent?
I found Amy because I looked specifically for agents who wanted narratives by BIPOC writers, specifically, Asian American writers. And I love Amy!
She’s a wonderful agent. By which, I mean she keeps my interests in mind when negotiating with publishing houses and not her interests. And she advocates for me and gives me advice that will help me, even though it may conflict with her ability to make more in commissions.
You’d think that book agents should be like this, but I’ve heard some horror stories from other authors, so I know how special Amy is. She is not only a great agent, but also a truly kind and generous human being.
As a new author, what do you suggest for aspiring authors? Any advice or suggestions that worked for you that you can pass along?
It’s sometimes a rough and lonely road to becoming an author. But keep the faith and always remember why you love writing.
Also, as another famous writer, Samuel Beckett, once said, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
What book(s) are you reading at the moment?
I’m still extensively researching for my novels so I’m re-reading a lot of fiction for historical notes and also to remind myself of narrative voice, character, and place: The Calligrapher’s Daughter by Eugenia Kim, Human Acts by Han Kang, Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, Three Junes by Julia Glass, and The Prince of Mournful Thoughts by Caroline Kim.
What book(s) most inspired you to write?
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, which I first read as a 17-year-old, was seminal in my journey as a writer. But books by women writers were the most inspiring to me: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.
So now that American Seoul is out, what are you working on? Do you have another memoir in the works?
The expression, “Never, say never,” exists for a reason. But I’m going to say that I never want to write another memoir. It’s so hard to write a memoir.
A few years ago, I started a novel and I’ve just finished the terrible first draft! It’s a multigenerational story of three Korean women from the time period of World War II to contemporary time. I call it, “what would happen if Pachinko meets Americanah.”
I love Min Jin Lee’s sprawling saga of Koreans in the diaspora and I also love Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s hilarious novel on race and modern Nigeria with a big dash of love and romantic relationships.
What do you hope people take away from reading your books?
That wherever you are in the world and whatever you identify as, you are human. And to be human is to suffer. But to also experience great beauty and joy.
I hope my readers experience the bewildering and beautiful acts of being human.
