Dear Ju Ly,

Hi Ju Ly! It must be almost Sunday morning where you are. It’s Sunday evening here. We’ve had gorgeous weather since yesterday. Those precious good weather days when it’s sunny, not too warm, and the air is clear. I just took out the trash, and the breeze in the evening air was lovely too.

And my cats, Mango and Yuzu, they both welcome me back home even when I’m just returning from taking out the trash. I feel so happy in those moments. I greet them back—kkuwelppepttyak—happily chirping and trilling along. These days, I often miss those two so much that I run all the way home from the bus stop to see them. I truly feel the wonder of living with creatures you only love more and more each day…. And even though I’m always low-key angry, when I think about it like that, I feel blessed to have such good beings in my life.

Ju Ly, I’m relieved to hear that you enjoy living there as a foreigner. Of course, I’m guessing you don’t want everything, but if you can say something is “good” overall, then I think that’s quite good. I hope you can be happy in your day-to-day life, Ju Ly, as often as possible.

You wrote to me about memoirs and biographies. Your line, “I often read essays by writers I liked, but there wasn’t really a reason to read biographies or memoirs,” piqued my interest. It made me wonder about how you differentiate between memoir and essay. To answer the question you posed in your letter, I would say that up until my mid-20s, I read many memoirs, autobiographies, and critical biographies of politicians and historical figures. That’s what I was interested in. And I’d spend my time thinking about “What should I dedicate my life to?” and other questions I no longer really consider. I tried to find answers in books by people who seemed to live according to their principles. Of course, since then, I’ve become much more cynical.

A while back, I penned a short piece on autofiction as a genre. I wanted to interrogate the impact of the term “autofiction.” As if asking the reader a question, I wrote the piece thinking about how they should approach a text labeled as “autofiction.” Whether it’s with the tension created between “autobiography” and “fiction” or perhaps even something akin to relief. I’m writing this paragraph to answer your question, Ju Ly, but I’ve realized I’ll never label my writing as “autobiography” or “memoir.” Even though I’ll always write stories from my own life. Ju Ly, I want to hear more about your thoughts on taking the memoir and autobiographical writing workshop. And I want to hear about what you’d like to write next.

Hope you get to sleep in this Sunday,

Boyoung