User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Inhaled this book this weekend morning and I am so glad I decided to pick it up after getting frustrated by my recents reads turning out to be either DNFs or very disappointing ones.
This short memoir deals with mental health and a lot of issues most of us keep thinking about almost everyday regarding our own unhealthy behaviour towards ourselves and others (including strangers!).
I feel this is a must read book and it has gained popularity over the years ever since it got published in Korea for so many reasons, one of the reason I feel is that it has a very comprehensive way of presentation which is very easy to follow regarding the talk between the author and the psychiatrist.
All I can say is that it brought me so much peace and comfort.
Rating: really liked it
I think one of the most important lessons that I learned from this book is that there is only one "you" in this world, and you are special in your own way, regardless of what happens. I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokpokki is a book originally written in Korean, about a woman diagnosed with dysthymia. Baek Se-hee wrote the dialogues during her sessions with a psychiatrist, and included her inner thoughts on how she wants to love herself better.
I don't read a lot of self-help books–I can't remember any apart from Loveability by Robert Holden, but I didn't even finish reading the book completely–so I was quite unsure what to expect from reading this. I had wanted to love this book, and that is exactly how it ended to be—and perhaps I love it more than I had hoped.
Although I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokpokki is actually a compilation of written dialogues between the author and her psychiatrist, I was able to immerse myself into the conversation, to the point that it felt very intimate, as if I was in her situation all along. I was never clinically diagnosed with depression or any other mental illness, but I went through my own dark moments and I could relate to most of the things that Baek Se-hee went through. The confusion in Baek Se-hee's dialogues mirror my own, and the psychiatrist's words sent me a blanket of comfort that I absolutely needed.
I had prayed for 2020 to start of well for me, but alas, January did not end as the best time for me. However, the presence of this book, the words and dialogues written by Baek Se-hee were able to help me cope with my own dark overwhelming thoughts. I didn't finish the book in one seating, it took a whole deal lot of times, but I am utterly grateful for it. I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokpokki is the kind of book that I will keep very close to me, and will reach out to it again whenever I'm at my lowest.
I definitely recommend everyone to read this book. I was able to relate to a lot of it, and I hope others will find comfort from it as well. I hope that even when you feel like dying, there is something that you still want to do to stay alive, no matter how small the matter is, even if it's only craving for some spicy rice cakes.
Rating: really liked it
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“I wonder about others like me, who seem totally fine on the outside but are rotting on the inside, where the rot is this vague state of being not-fine and not-devastated at the same time.”
There was something about the title and cover of this book that brought to mind Ottessa Moshfegh’s
My Year of Rest and Relaxation and a line from
Madame Bovary: ‘She wanted both to die and to live in Paris’. Naturally, me being a fan of both of those novels, I found myself intrigued by
I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki. This is a relatively short read which is made up of the transcripts from the author’s session with her psychiatrist over a 12-week period. While there are occasional breaks in this patient/psychiatrist dialogue, these are brief, lasting one or two pages and consist of the author musing on the words of her psychiatrist or offering her own words of wisdom. Now, on the one hand, I appreciated reading these sessions as they lead to discussions on self-esteem, depression, anxiety, peer pressure, one’s desire to fit in and be liked, toxic relationships, etc. Baek’s worries and everyday tribulations will likely resonate with many millennials. While I appreciate the honesty that radiated from these sessions, and from her willingness to confront, assess, and critique aspects of herself, I did grow a tad bored by them. I remember coming across a book (i think it was a book) where a character comments on how, most of the time, other people’s dreams do not strike us as interesting as our own ones. Well, this is how I feel about this book. Baek, understandably, finds these sessions to be enlightening as through them she gains self-knowledge and a more nuanced understanding of her mental health, I did not. As I said, I could certainly relate to some of the conversations they have around self-esteem and self-perception, but at the end of the day, these sessions were tailored for Baek, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit uneasy at being ‘invited’ in. Maybe because I have always associated therapists/psychiatrists with privacy, but there were several instances where I wanted to bow out and leave Baek some space. Part of me wishes that this book could have taken only certain exchanges from her sessions, and incorporated these into longer pieces where the author considers the issues they discussed. In short, I wanted to hear more from Baek, and less from her psychiatrist. If I were to record my hypothetical sessions with a therapist or whoever, I doubt anyone would want to read transcripts of it. And if they did, well, that’s kind of sus.
Anyway, jokes aside, this was by no means a bad book. I just think it could have benefitted from more original content (ie mini-essays/think pieces).
Rating: really liked it
Ebook giveaway from NetGalley
Recommended by Kim Namjoon
Say what you will about kpop, but BTS members have recommended some incredible fiction and nonfiction. This is the latter.
Sehee has a good job, family and partner support. Why then is she depressed?
This isn't severe clinical depression. It's the sort of day to day lows we learn to live with. Why do we learn to live with this? What makes this okay?
I enjoyed the discussion style format of this book. Asians aren't known for seeking mental health. This has traveled with them as they've emigrated.
Growing up in an Asian-American household, mental health wasn’t a thing we discussed. I feel like this is prevalent in many immigrant cultures. We need to start talking about this. Mental health is just as important as physical health. ✌🏽
Rating: really liked it
I reached for “I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki” by Baek Sehee for two main reasons: 1) I hoped to get a better insight into the way a standard therapy is conducted in South Korea, 2) I was interested to see how therapist’s culture influences the approach. The book, structured in the form of twelve conversations is a record of three months out of ten years of the author’s therapy, plus some loose chapters about her problems and thoughts.
The author’s statements and expressions of emotions resembled those of some of my students and it was interesting to see how her psychiatrist addressed her issues. Very quickly, though, I found their level of incompetence unbearable. It was pretty obvious for me from the beginning that Baek may be experiencing a burnout and may be suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (she ticks all the boxes) but the psychiatrist does not suggest or imply it even once. They (their gender is never revealed) give advice which in my cultural environment would be highly unprofessional (not to say that it isn’t helpful at all): “Just tell yourself, ‘I won’t drink so much next time’” or “Try to enjoy the present” or “Don’t think about the future too much. Your anxiety can become a burden to others”, to quote a few. The author complains about her low self-esteem, fear of being judged, obsession about her appearance, jealousy, anxiety, hypersensitivity (which she and her psychiatrist call ‘oversensitivity’), her desire to please others, especially men, but the therapy never goes anywhere. The conversations have no structure, no direction, they are all over the place, and I felt that the psychiatrist isn’t even interested in helping their patient. They didn’t probe thoroughly enough, often didn’t seem to ask the right and most obvious questions, didn’t address extreme patriarchy, which made me see clearly how much the therapist is the product of their culture, in which abuse towards women and alcoholism are normalised. Psychiatrist’s statements like: “We drink precisely to get drunk but now you’re envious of people who drink and don’t get drunk” or inquiring with an only slightly hidden shock why the author gained five kilos (“Really? You don’t look like you have. Was there a particular reason?”) made my skin crawl. Several times the psychiatrist openly judged the author, calling her childish, and blamed her for not telling them about experiencing side effects of prescribed medication. This for me is highly unprofessional and completely unacceptable. They also didn’t seem to lead the conversation well when the author shared her obsession of always looking beautiful for men and asked questions like: “Maybe I just don’t have the kind of face men like?”.
After three months of therapy the author states “Everything is a mess” and feels more out of control than before she started the therapy, which I fully understand, considering the low quality of sessions she had. Even if she sometimes felt the psychiatrist understands her, she never got any constructive guidance on how to solve her problems. What she received was several pieces of advice on how to avoid dealing with the problem, which seemed to be random ideas of her psychiatrist, not a product of their experience, qualifications and knowledge. For example, Baek complained about drinking too much but instead of investigating why she does that and what kind of coping mechanism her drinking is, her therapist just suggested avoiding friends with whom she goes drinking. This may be a common way of sweeping problems under the rug in Korean culture but it is totally inappropriate from the therapy’s perspective as it does not solve the root cause of the issue. I could name many more similar tips the author received. I learned from the book that the author spent ten years in therapy and didn’t end up much wiser. No wonder. The psychiatrist prescribed her a ton of medications without explaining the reasons for doing so, side effects, expected results and even ways of seeing when the medication starts working (!): “I’m going to change your medication a bit. The antidepressants will lift you from the ground a little more, and I’ll also include some mood stabilisers”. I have heard of this level of incompetence from some of my Asian students and I don’t need to mention how extremely frustrated it makes me. Denying a patient knowledge about their health and treatment is a gross misconduct.
The author claims to have learned several things - she understood that she can let herself be, that she can let herself feel whatever she feels, that she interprets events in her life depending on her mood. However, I would expect her to learn this and start processing the positive change within the first month of therapy, not after ten years. The fact that her psychiatrist didn’t give her any homework, didn’t explain what they are going to do in their therapy sessions, left me speechless.
This whole book is a case study on how NOT to do therapy and treat patients. It is also a really badly written (and, I suspect, translated - there are glaring linguistic mistakes) record, called by the publisher “a memoir”, of the author’s struggle with her mental health, reading about which can make many readers frustrated. Recognising yourself in the author apparently happens to some readers but the level of advice and support is so poor that I warn anyone hoping to actually find some guidance and clarity in it that it is most likely not going to happen. Save yourself time and go to a therapy. And if you find a therapist similar to the author’s psychiatrist - run away and find a more competent professional.
Rating: really liked it
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC of I WANT TO DIE BUT I WANT TO EAT TTEOKPOKKI by Baek Se-hee, a memoir/self-help book. I finished reading this book tonight, and while it wasn't what I expected, there were things about it that I enjoyed.
I loved the concept. Se-hee displays vision, creativity, and courage. This project is the invention of a genre: The "MySelf-Help Book"!
Se-hee is blunt yet charming, I couldn't help but respect her throughout this book. The best parts of the text are her essays, which come at the beginning of each chapter, and at the end of the book.
A whole group of essays concludes the book, and this is the best material -- personal, honest, beautiful. My favorite essay is "A Life With No Modifiers" p170.
I had one really big problem with this book and that was that Se-hee's psychiatrist gave her terrible treatment. If the psychiatrist in this book was my psychiatrist, I wouldn't have returned after the first session. Definitely not after he mischaracterized rationalizing and told me to go ahead with it. For sure not after his terrible advice on how to address my excessive drinking. That way he would never have the chance to make me think for a whole ten minutes that I have a personality disorder I don't actually have.
Se-hee deserves better, but it's not her fault she didn't get it. People get sub-par mental health care every day, all over the world. So I'm only taking off one star, even though that guy needs a new calling. Like with plants.
Rating 4 stars
Finished August 2022
Recommended to fans of medical memoir, mental health self-help; readers interested in psychology, psychiatry; readers seeking diverse voices
✔️August Pick 1/10
✔️52 Book Club Summer Genre Challenge: Self-help
*Follow my Instagram book blog for all my reviews, challenges, and book lists! http://www.instagram.com/donasbooks *
Rating: really liked it
‘You are fine now, just the way you are. You might say silly things when drunk, there may be side effects from the pills, but you’re fine. If the latter happens, all you have to do is call me up and swear at me.’
To think that I’ve waited for (quite a while for) this to be translated…Made me feel a bit silly. And while I think the translation was extremely well done, the writing just didn’t resonate with me. BUT still, I am so down for this – I love that journey for you, Baek Se-hee (as I failingly attempt to flip my hair like Alexis from Schitt’s Creek). Quit your job to turn your emotional shit into gold? I 'stan'. At least she seems very genuine about it all. BUT my point is – this isn’t the book I thought it would be. I was expecting some dark beast of a book riddled with a whole platter of fuckeries. It’s very mild, but that doesn’t mean the writing doesn’t matter. It still does; it just doesn’t resonate with me. I’m not the right reader for this. Reading Baek’s book, made me feel like I have vastly under-rated Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis.
‘I wonder about others like me, who seem totally fine on the outside but are rotting on the inside, where the rot is this vague state of being not-fine and not-devastated at the same time. The world tends to focus too much on the very bright or the very dark; many of my own friends find my type of depression baffling. But what’s an ‘acceptable’ form of depression? Is depression itself something that can ever be fully understood? In the end, my hope is for people to read this book and think, I wasn’t the only person who felt like this; or, I see now that people live with this.’
Structurally, the book is all over the place, or at least I didn’t enjoy how it was structured. I found the conversations between her therapist completely redundant. Lazy even. It’s like screenshot-ing and forwarding texts. I think this book is better suited for someone who has no idea what it’s like to talk to a therapist? I don’t know – because that could be a bit misleading as well. Personally, when I was seeing a therapist last, I went through about ten before I found one that suited me. It was a whole ordeal. I don’t think I’m that ‘picky’ per say, but Baek’s portrayal of ‘mental healthcare’ makes it all seems so simple and easy. But then again, Baek and I are clearly very different people with very different views. And I suppose I’m just the wrong reader for the book.
‘…empathy is an act of imagination. If I don’t plant the seed in myself, it will never grow. Which is why some people never seem to understand the lives of others. But the only way to create something inside me that is not there to begin with is through imagination. You’ve got to learn how to empathise, to imagine.
I used to treat empathy as something very difficult, and shut myself off from the things that didn’t affect me emotionally. But surely to create something in me that didn’t exist before and to extend emotional solidarity to another person is one of the rites of adulthood. We are so far, and yet so near to so many people.
To learn about and imagine the emotions that I don’t understand or immediately empathise with: that is the affection I extend to others, and the only way to ensure that what’s inside of us doesn’t dry up or rot…’
In her, book, Baek wrote about how she thinks ‘empathy’ is a form of one’s ‘imagination’. And that bothered me, somehow? I’m not disagreeing with her completely, but I still think of constantly being aware of someone else’s feelings is a kind of human/social responsibility? And the way she phrased it so simply felt kind of off-putting to me. Perhaps I’m only saying that because for me, there is no ‘on’ and ‘off’ switch when it comes to that sort of thing. I just sometimes 'pretend' to not be affected/care. I suppose that makes me sort of hyper-sensitive (usually when I’m in a ‘healthy’ state of mind)? For instance (though not the best example) I can usually tell what’s going on with someone I hold dearly when we talk on the phone. They would often be annoyed/delighted with my lack of surprise when they tell me about a certain thing. But I think being ‘empathetic’ and/or ‘sensitive’ doesn’t naturally mean that one always is always having enough emotional/mental energy to cater/attend to someone else’s needs. And I suppose there is also difference between being a ‘sensitive’ person and a ‘reactive’ person. Just because you mirror someone else’s emotions, doesn’t mean you’re necessarily ‘sensitive’ and/or ‘empathetic’. But that’s a whole other set of discussions. And the point is that I wish Baek would explore these kinds of matters more instead of just ‘chipping the surface’ and skipping over it. It left me very unsatisfied.
‘I am in a vague state at the moment, which is not good. I was born depressed and pathetic. I don’t have deep thoughts or powers of insight. The only things I’m good at are regret and self-criticism, and even these I can only pause, never stop completely. I understand all this with my brain, but I have the hardest time modifying my behaviour appropriately. I support feminism and rail against racism, but I find myself shrinking away from a passing foreigner or my body reacts with distaste at the sight of a lesbian who doesn’t put on make-up for valid political reasons.’
Also, I could have read it the wrong way as I’m not completely sure of it, but – the two times the word ‘lesbian’ appeared in the book, it made me rolled my eyes into a slimy, chewed-up gumball. The first time, she brought it up while talking to her therapist because she thinks of them as ‘minorities’ (after reading (I’m assuming it's Kim Hye-Jin’s Concerning My Daughter even though it wasn’t mentioned?) . Unnecessary segregation, but fine, we’ll just ignore that. And/but then she indirectly compared herself to the emotional ‘pains’/conflict them?? I get that she’s trying to say that a lot of our mental distress comes from societal pressures. But still a very unpleasant and unfair comparison. Not to trivialise her issues, but judging from what I’ve read, her emotional troubles come from body dysphoria and thinking that she’s not ‘achieved’ enough or whatever. While it’s completely okay to feel the way she feels about herself, I don’t know if I feel okay about her making these comparisons. What’s the point of it? Maybe I’m missing something?
‘There’s a desire to punish yourself, shall we say. You have this superego that exerts control over you, a superego built not only from your own experiences but cobbled together from all sorts of things that you admire, creating an idealised version of yourself. But that idealised version of yourself is, in the end, only an ideal. It’s not who you actually are. You keep failing to meet that ideal in the real world, and then you punish yourself. If you have a strict superego, the act of being punished eventually becomes gratifying. For example, if you’re suspicious of the love you’re receiving, and so act out until your partner lashes out and leaves you, you feel relief. You eventually become controlled more by imaginary outside forces than anything that is actually you.’
And to conclude, this Freudian block of trash just made my reading experience even worse. I thought of sending it straight into the DNF pile halfway through, but I finished it anyway (thanks to the absolutely flawless translation). I love Anton Hur. And will always read everything and anything he translates/write; and this is just a simple proof of that.
I guess I should’ve just ate some ‘tteok’ instead of reading this. But if you’re someone who thinks that Sarah Kane’s work is too ‘heavy’, maybe Baek is just right for you. I just want to clarify again, that this is not a badly written book, but I’m just not the right reader. If anything, I’m the ‘bad’ reader. And since I’m fine with being a ‘bad’ reader, there is no need for me to be ‘polite’ anymore, so allow me to shamelessly plug/recommend Tablo’s Blonote instead. Keep it in your tote, whether or not you want to read it. It does a whole ton more by being much less (in terms of word count anyway). It does enough even by just being. And my review of it , if it interests you.
Rating: really liked it
I Want To Die But I Want To Eat Tteokbokki is a weird one. It’s not a five star read that blew my socks off, but oh myyy it was such a comforting one.
This is all about Baek’s mental health, which was timed perfectly with a lil blip of my own. Baek suffers from depression, but specifically persistent mild depression. As someone who feels simply ✨hollow✨ rather than having, say, violent feelings and suicidal desire, this book absolutely got it.
The book is a write up of Baek’s time in therapy discussing this, as well as how she tends to use food for comfort. Usually the psychologist in me means that I have issues over confidentially, but as this is specifically Baek’s own stuff, I think I’m okay.
Generally this book was pretty repetitive. Little progress was made and Baek needed lots of reassurance she was doing okay. It wasn’t gripping or exciting, but also, that’s what therapy is like.
It’s hard, it’s a long game, and although probably life changing, it doesn’t feel like it at the time. This one won’t give you a lightbulb moment, but it might make you feel very heard and a lil warm.
V nice - which is all you sometimes want in a book. And for me, it’s porridge when I’m sad. Maybe with cinnamon and slightly too ripe bananas, maybe with alpro chocolate milk, absolutely piping hot and thick.
Rating: really liked it
This is a hard book to review or rate because according to how it is being marketed it is supposed to be "part memoir" and "part self help", but then, it is neither. This book is literally (yes, I mean literally) TRANSCRIPTS of her therapy sessions with her therapist with some short reflections re the sessions. I thought that the "therapy conversations" part were just going to be excerpts that serve as a jumping point into her actual thoughts and experiences as someone living with Persistent Depressive Disorder, but it was really 80% just "therapy conversations".
For a book that supposedly lays it all out, it lacked depth in terms of allowing the reader to step into the author's experiences with her struggles with her mental health (examples of books I read recently that did this well: The Limits of My Language: Meditations on Depression by Eva Meijer, Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me: Depression in the First Person by Anna Mehler Paperny). It also did not give the reader any insights into her process of seeking mental health support and being in therapy itself. Because again, you literally just get the back and forth between her and her therapist, not her internal thoughts or dialogues re what is being said in therapy.
I get that it is brave to bare your intimate conversations in the protected space of therapy out for the public to consume, but then, the way it was structured just makes it feel...a bit lazy.
Rating: really liked it
Thank you Bloomsbury, Edelweiss and Netgalley for the ARC, in exchange for an honest review.
The title and cover are excellent and I really wanted to like this book, but I’m afraid it isn’t for me. I DNF at page 74. I had expected this to be more of a memoir of depression with a bit of humour as well (the title and cover suggest at least that much) but it’s really a self-help book, existing of written down therapy sessions. I just couldn’t connect.
Rating: really liked it
I really enjoyed this inside into a person's therapy, it does fulfill a curiosity I can't deny.
I also really liked reading about her own reflections on therapy and her life, constantly trying to get healthy and better and love herself.
At times I thought that she must be such an exhausting person to be around, but also thought it must be more exhausting to be her.
Highly recommend if you are interested in the topic of low self-esteem and judging or criticising others and yourself.
Rating: really liked it
*This book, therefore, ends not with answers but with a wish. I want to love and be loved. I want to find a way where I don’t hurt myself. I want to live a life where I say things are good more than
things are bad. I want to keep failing and discovering new and better directions. I want to enjoy the tides of feeling in me as the rhythms of life. I want to be the kind of person who can walk inside the vast darkness and find the one fragment of sunlight I can linger in for a long time. Some day, I will.*
Rating: really liked it
I loved how relatable this one was. Where it’s not really a solution to a problem but just a way of getting to know ourselves. It’s great to read this from a reader's perspective, where I believe you can understand and empathize people more. Some things might appear ordinary to you, but for some people they might wreck them inside out. Considering this was written mainly from the author's environment and social context, it’s still a bit problematic on their societal issues like standard beauty, social status, gender, and superiority.
Rating: really liked it
i’ve always thought that art is about moving hearts and minds: faith that today may not have been perfect but was still a pretty good day, or faith that even after a long day of being depressed, i can still burst into laughter over something very small. i’ve also realised that revealing my darkness is just as natural a thing to do as revealing my light. that's exactly what this book did. I felt so validated and seen.
Rating: really liked it
Excuse me, I need to stare at the ceiling for a while…
