Part memoir, part self-help book, and completely engrossing, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Sehee is a book that captures the edgy relationship many millennials and Gen Z-ers have with hopelessness, hunger, and the pressure to be perfect. A runaway bestseller in Korea where her readers include RM of BTS, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki is newly translated into English by International Booker Prize shortlisted translator Anton Hur.
Baek Sehee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her — what to call it? — depression? She feels persistently low, anxious, self-doubting, but also judgmental of others. She hides her feelings at work and with her friends, but she’s constantly spiraling, overthinking, and worrying. The effort is exhausting and overwhelming and keeps her from forming deep relationships. This can't be normal. Is this normal? But if she's so hopeless, why is she always craving her favorite street food: the hot, spicy rice cake, tteokbokki? Is this just what life is like?
Recording her dialogues with her psychiatrist over a twelve-week period and expanding on each session with her own reflective micro-essays, Baek Sehee gives voice to mental health challenges that are still taboo, especially in Korean culture, openly disentangling the feedback loops, knee-jerk reactions, and harmful behaviors that keep her locked in a cycle of self-rejection. I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki is a powerful testament to acceptance with a youthful voice—a therapy memoir for the social media generation.
In this episode of New Narratives in Korea, Baek Sehee discusses her bestselling book, her success and the challenges of dealing with mental health.
Wednesday, November 9, 2022 | 5 PM (EST)
The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017
About the Speaker:
Born in 1990, Baek Sehee studied creative writing in college before working for five years at a publishing house. For ten years, she received psychiatric treatment for dysthymia (persistent mild depression), which became the subject of her essays, and then I Want to Die, but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki. Her favorite food is tteokbokki, and she lives with her rescue dog, Jaram.
