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Christabel Choi
Christabel Choi enters anti-communist South Korea as a student in 1989 with a copy of the Communist Manifesto in her bag. She doesn’t realize that it could get her—or anyone she might lend it to—arrested or disappeared.
She soon finds herself the only woman in the company of men in a Buddhist temple boarding house: as an honorary little brother. At the university she attends over the mountain, she realized her classmates lead the dangerous fight to eliminate the remnants of dictatorship, usher in full democracy, and bring a decisive end to martial law.
The next eight months pass in a constant state of tension and turmoil. The campus erupts with demands for political freedom, fair pay for workers, apology and reparations for US and Korean government atrocities like the Gwangju Massacre and the April Uprising.
Recognizing this is an historic moment…both for Korea as a nation and for herself newly immersed into a Korean life…Christabel keeps a careful journal of her days. She records her frequent encounters with soldiers on the roads and mountain trails between her house, the campus, and throughout the city of Seoul. And she shares a fresh glimpse of food, places, friendships, and customs as she encounters them for the first time.
This unforgettable memoir is both the coming-of-age story of a sensitive young woman, and the portrait of a country struggling to emerge from decades of occupation, war, and authoritarian rule into one of peace, democracy, and prosperity.
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About The Author
Christabel Choi
Christabel Choi’s writing is inspired by treks over snowy mountain passes, tall ships on the high seas, transcontinental trains, and at least one circumnavigation of the globe. She grew up in rural Oregon, in a close family hailing from four continents. She has faced imminent death more times than she would like to recall.
Christabel is settled in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, her father, and alternately one or all of her three children. Her office is filled with bows, arrows, horse tack, piles of paper and books, scattered projects, a dog, and a cat. Her life motto is to leave it better than she found it—except for her office, where maintenance is a noble enough goal.
