The Wanderer's Curse

One of Electric Literature's Best Nonfiction of the Year • One of Condé Nast Traveler's Best Books of Spring • One of Garden & Gun's Best Books of Summer

A Korean mother runs off to Alaska, sparking a greater season of wandering. Could her daughter be destined for the same?

When Jennifer Hope Choi first stumbled upon the “curse” known as yeokmasal—an allegedly inheritable affliction causing one to roam farther and farther from home—she immediately consulted her mother. “Oh yeah,” Umma quipped. “I have that.” Technically this wasn’t a revelation. Since 2007, the no-nonsense open-heart surgery nurse had moved suddenly from the Golden State to the Last Frontier, shuttling over the next decade through seven states.

For much of her adulthood, Choi had fancied herself nothing like her immigrant mother, late-blooming vagabond spirit and all—until life in Brooklyn imploded, spurring her to relocate to South Carolina and reckon with startling truths. Artmaking had left her in debt, single, and jobless. Questions hovered, gathering ragged like fractus clouds: Was it time to give up writing? Would she ever have a place of her own to call home? Or was she doomed to bunk up with Umma in the Deep South indefinitely?

This probing memoir follows Choi through her many former homes, from a crumbling Chinatown tenement to a haunted museum in Georgia. Connections emerge, between her curious trajectory and idiosyncratic Korean identity narratives: a mystical Korean dog breed, pro golfers, modern Korean cults, the four pillars of destiny, and Korean American art. One question lingers throughout her search: What might be gained from living in residence with uncertainty?

Told with whip-smart sensibility, The Wanderer’s Curse is an electric mother-daughter story, exploring ideas of belonging, self-determination, and possibility, leaving readers to wonder what we take with us generation to generation, what we wish we could leave behind, and how we move on.