Memoir, politics
Crown
October 2014
I first came across Suki Kim as a panellist at the exceedingly awkward “Inside North Korea” talk at this year’s Melbourne Writers Festival. I have written about this panel in more detail before, but Kim’s frustration at her co-panellists, and at the situation in and around North Korea generally, was as palpable there as it is in this book. Without You, There is No Us is a memoir of her time as a missionary English teacher at an elite university outside of Pyongyang. It is an incisive and self-reflective memoir.