Q&A With Helena Rho

I’m delighted to be doing this Q&A with author Helena Rho, who is the author of the memoir, American Seoul & her fiction novel which came out today, Stone Angels. Helena’s writings have been featured in publications, including Slate, Sycamore Review, Solstice, Entropy, 805 Lit + Art, and the anthologies Rage and Reconciliation and Silence Kills.

Q: Hello Helena, congratulations on your new release Stone Angels! I can’t wait to read both of your books! Would you like to give a brief description of American Seoul & Stone Angels? 

A:  This is how I would describe my novel: In a Pachinko meets Persuasion, a forty-year-old woman journeys back to her cultural homeland and uncovers a harrowing secret. Combining elements of migration and identity with a slice of painful World War II history and a precious second chance at love, Stone Angels is a poignant family drama told through the bold and determined voices of three women, mothers and daughters and sisters, navigating the beauty and brutality of their lives.

American Seoul is my memoir-in-essays about abandoning the practice of medicine and pursuing my dream to be a writer, while relearning Korean and reconnecting with my mother’s family in Seoul.

Q: How long did it take you to write American Seoul & Stone Angels? What lessons and emotions do you hope readers learn and feel after reading your books? 

A: Both of my books took a long time to write—American Seoul over 10 years and Stone Angels about 7 years. 

I don’t presume telling readers what lessons they should learn or what emotions they should feel with my books. But I hope with Stone Angels, readers will identify with Angelina’s family and laugh and cry along with her and Gongju and Sunyuh, the other women at the heart of my novel. My central character, Angelina, chances upon a horrific family secret while she’s coping with an ugly divorce, unhappy children, and the death of her mother by suicide. Families are messy. I’d like to appropriate what Leo Tolstoy once said about families and put my own twist on it: All families, whether happy or unhappy, are unique and yet the same. Also, I really hope readers will avail themselves of the resources in my Author’s Note and learn more about the victims of sexual slavery by Japan during the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945).

Q: When writing your memoir American Seoul, which parts were fun memories to relive, and which parts were painful to remember and write down? 

A: The most fun chapter for me to write was “In Havana with Hemingway.” I’d gone to Hemingway’s home in Key West more times than I can keep track at this point, and I’d always wanted to visit the home in which he lived for over 20 years in Cuba. But until I saw the Korean drama, Encounter, I had no plans to go to Havana. My son, Liam, came with me and I tried to replicate some of the scenes from the K-drama, which was rather comical. Of course, I made a pilgrimage to Hemingway’s house, Finca Vijía, in San Francisco de Paula, outside of Havana, but I couldn’t feel his presence until I went to Cojimar, the inspiration for the fishing village in The Old Man and the Sea. Some painful chapters to write were about my childhood sexual abuse and surviving domestic violence. But the most difficult chapter to write in my memoir was about my mother’s death. 

Q: Since you’ve written nonfiction with your memoir American Seoul & fiction with Stone Angels, what is your favorite & least favorite parts of writing fiction and nonfiction?

A: I don’t think I’ll ever write another memoir. But I love writing fiction! Not so much the parts of Stone Angels that are narrated from Sunyuh’s point of view because she is a victim of sexual slavery by Japan during the Asia-Pacific War. Although I do hope her narrative will shed some light on this dark part of World War II history that’s not well known in the West. Hundreds of thousands of girls and young women were lured, coerced or kidnapped by the Imperial Japanese Army and sexually enslaved in battlefields all across the Pacific. These girls came from 35 sovereign countries, city-state, and autonomous territories, but unfortunately, history has mostly ignored them. The survivors are now in their nineties, and I fear that they will never receive justice. What they’re asking for is very simple: for the Government of Japan to formally apologize and acknowledge their war crimes and to offer reparations. I’ve interviewed several Korean survivors, and they said they don’t want the money, but as a gesture of goodwill, they would like an offer of reparations. Not donations, not charity. Gil Won-ok, a Korean survivor and human rights activist, recently passed away on February 16^th, and it would be a tragedy if her life was forgotten or if she were never to receive an apology from the government that systematically sex trafficked her across international borders and countries. I have no illusion that my novel will finally bring any reprieve for the victims. But I hope Stone Angels will contribute to the chorus of voices for truth and for justice to prevail. I fervently believe in what Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Q: Can you reveal any details about your next book whether its fiction or nonfiction? 

A: In 1592, in the Western hemisphere, Sir Francis Drake had already helped the Royal British Navy defeat the Spanish Armada, and a young playwright named William Shakespeare had written The Taming of the Shrew but had not yet written Hamlet. In the East, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a feudal warlord, who had just united Japan under his rule, invaded Korea and started the Imjin War (1592-1598). All seemed lost for the Koreans, except for the actions of one man—Admiral Yi Sun-sin, who saved his country. I’m writing a novel based on what I imagine would have been the women’s experiences during this devastating war, and the story is told through the lens of a fictional character, the admiral’s third wife, which is also the working title of my manuscript.

Q: What advice do you have for anyone wanting to write a memoir or fiction?

A: Find your people. Find a community where your work is treated with respect but critiqued honestly. Start a writing group (in person or online), join a writing meet-up, start a blog, attend a writer’s residency. No writer is an island, and we all need some kind of support to sustain us.