Author Q&A: Hyeseung Song

Houston-raised author Hyeseung Song’s new memoir, Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl, published in July. It is a searing coming-of-age memoir about the daughter of ambitious Asian American immigrants and her search for self-worth. Unflinching and lyrical, Docile is one woman’s story of subverting the model minority myth, contending with mental illness, and finding her self-worth by looking within.

Helen MacDonald, New York Times bestselling author of H is for Hawk raves, "Docile is the rarest of things: a scorchingly honest, beautiful, hugely evocative memoir that’s also a proper pageturner: I read it breathlessly in a single sitting, transported and deeply moved. It's at one and the same time the story of a life and a meditation on identity, family, trauma, illness, and the nature of love, art, and success. It’s wonderful." 

Hyeseung Song is a first-generation Korean American writer and painter. She lives in Brooklyn and upstate New York.

Song answers some questions that I posed to her about Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl:

What inspired you to start writing Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl?

When I was a sophomore at Princeton more than 25 years ago, I suffered from depression. I was encouraged to take some time off, and as a bootstrapping measure, my immigrant parents shipped me off to my birthplace of South Korea. When I returned to campus a year later, I began writing searchingly about my family, in particular my father, a scientist and intellectual who risked everything to come to America in order to become not a millionaire, but a billionaire. His decisions established the framework of our lives, and I could not draw my origin story without sketching his. Years later, those short stories about his chase after Big Money would become the first chapters of Docile. I am a writer because of my father. 

Can you share something with me about your book that is not in the blurb?

In the 20-odd years I was writing my memoir, it had two other titles. The first iteration of the book was a memoir-in-essays titled Head Study. Each chapter chronicled some solution I had pursued in order to “fix the problem of myself” – whether it was to become a great daughter, a great student or a great painter. The title nodded to psychology and mental health, but also art since I refer to portraits and head studies interchangeably in my studio practice. 

While revising the structure of the book several years ago, I changed the title to Worth, because the overarching theme was how I located self-worth outside the matrix of achievement. Worth was nice but it never felt like a forever-title, and I changed it to Docile for publication, which I like a lot more. “Docile” is a racialized, gendered term to describe stereotypically an Asian American woman, and I love that this title is slapped on a cover that is colorful, loud, and even a little obnoxious, just like real Asian American women. 

What is the most difficult part about writing for you?

An old boyfriend read some writing of mine years ago and said that I was a better thinker than I was a writer. It was a funny, old boyfriend thing to say, but sometimes I feel that: I feel my ability fall short of what I really want to say. I’m not ashamed and have never despaired about that – I am alive; I still have time to improve and learn. But when the writing is really challenging, there are two major difficulties at play for me, and those difficulties are somewhat in opposition.

There’s the first problem of putting into the container of writing what I am actually thinking and envision saying. And then there’s the second problem of trying to figure out through the writing what it is I actually believe. In the latter, self-discovery problem, there’s a different flavor of curiosity at work. I constantly check in with myself by asking, is this honest? If the answer is yes, I have no qualms about where the writing will take me. Only excitement.  

Are you working on anything at the present that you would like to share with me?

A couple of years ago I started my second memoir, a book about artmaking, grief, and the importance of feeling one’s feelings. It covers a compressed time period during which, in the aftermath of my mother’s death, my father comes to live with me in Brooklyn and I work a tough job on Wall Street because I’m emotionally tapped out and can’t make paintings and also need a lot more money. This is a very sad time in my life during which I am grieving only under the surface, taking care of others, and not doing as good a job at taking care of myself. Across a vast and foggy distance is art, blinking its light. I try to swim towards it. 

I loved writing Docile, but this second book is much more a meditation about artmaking as well as the freedom and solace a life of art has brought me. My father died three weeks ago, three weeks after the publication of Docile, so I haven’t had a chance to revisit this second manuscript yet. I wonder how I’ll reorient around it. The book, at least for now, is titled A Theory of Pain. 

What are you reading now and what have you read recently that you loved?

I generally read a lot more fiction than memoir. Right now, I’m nearing the end of Parade by Rachel Cusk, who is one of my favorite contemporary writers. I’m also really enjoying Miranda July’s All Fours – her writing is clever and spirited while remaining very human. I’m slowly reading a galley of my friend Anne Anlin Cheng’s memoir Ordinary Disasters which comes out in October – I’m reading it slowly, because it’s one of those books I’m highlighting and annotating all over the place. 

For more book recommendations and bookish thoughts, see Cindy’s monthly Buzz Reads column, her award-winning Thoughts from a Page Podcast or follow @ThoughtsFromaPage on Instagram.