Review: "Bearing My Seoul" by Taryn Blake

Bearing My Seoul by Taryn Blake
Published November 2021 via Gold Apple Books
★★★

In 2008, Blake took a leap: she'd always wanted to live abroad, and so she packed up and moved to Seoul to teach English. She didn't speak Korean and wasn't a trained teacher—but Seoul sucked her in, and a planned year turned into more than five.

Bearing My Seoul is a collection of linked essays, though they're interconnected enough that I wouldn't recommend dipping in and out; better to read the book straight through as a memoir. Blake brings a lively energy and sense of humor to the book, plus a valuable directness—I was especially curious about this book because so few of the American-moves-abroad memoirs that I've read (and...I've read a lot of those...) have been from the perspective of a Black woman, and what people see and assume when they look at you is going to have a fundamental impact on your experience in a given place.

I'd love to see a full memoir version of this experience—the current version is quite slim, and with more fleshing out and details we'd get a richer experience. But it pushed me through a bit of a reading slump, so I can't be disappointed!