I am mentally ill, spiritually broken.
Teenager Joon is a Korean immigrant living in the Bronx of the 1980s. Her parents have crumbled under the weight of her father’s infidelity; he has left the family, and mental illness has rendered her mother nearly catatonic. So Joon, at the age of thirteen, decides she would be better off on her own, a choice that commences a harrowing and often tragic journey that exposes the painful difficulties of a life lived on the margins. Joon’s adolescent years take her from a homeless shelter to an escort club, through struggles with addiction, to jobs selling newspapers and cosmetics, committing petty crimes, and finally toward something resembling hope.
In raw and beautiful prose, Nami Mun delivers the story of a young woman who is at once tough and vulnerable, world-weary and naive, faced with insurmountable odds and yet fiercely determined to survive. In the process, Mun creates one of the most indelible characters in recent fiction and establishes herself as an extraordinarily talented new voice.
Brutally honest, linguistically inventive, and profoundly moving. Miles From Nowhere will haunt and inspire a generation of readers.
I’m so glad that I spotted this post tonight. It caught my eye at the first sentence. It seems so ridiculously relevant to what I posted earlier… This has to be a sign. I’m now excited to dig into this novel.
Dear Mom,
Hi Mom. You often tell me how much you love my little brother’s frankness and expressing of feelings for you, so I decided to do the same. As you can see, I wrote you a letter, but I’m not giving you a Mother’s Day present. It isn’t because I have no money or anything. It’s simply because I am not thankful for you. Yes, this means that I’ll be better off without you.
I’m not exactly a happy-go-lucky, normal child as you already know. I can’t keep myself going. I can’t handle myself. I can’t depend on anyone, not even on Jesus or Buddha or Gandhi or whoever else. I have zero motivation and it’s hard to carry out the obligations I was born with for the rest of my life. Everything is frustrating. I’m moderately going, but I am not the best at anything. To be the best at anything, I’ve started too late.
You’ve started too late. You can’t just beat the shit-fuck out of my then-young self every day, move with the family to the Americas, and pretend as if everything is now O.K. and normal. You can’t just neglect my then-young self every day, move with the family to the Americas, and pretend as if you love me and I love you oh-so-dearly. Moving to the Americas doesn’t mean shit. I know it appears as if I’m a good student because I’m top 2% of the class; I know it appears as if we’re a happy family because that’s what we show to the public; I know it appears as if you have the best children in the world because that’s what we make it look like. I know all that. The public may be buying this bullshit we’ve created for them, and maybe you are too, but I obviously am not. We are not happy and we are not perfect.
You treated the trash bags you took out every week better than you did me. I wasn’t loved as a child. I was a “nobody” as a child. I haven’t learned to love. I haven’t learned to value myself. In fact, I fucking hate myself. I curse myself every day just so I can die earlier. I can’t bear all my bullshit. I can’t take all these obligations that I have to carry out as your lawful daughter. I can’t take myself.
I know you try your best to be a good mother to me. You try to care for me, you try to love me. But your trying doesn’t mean shit to me. I needed that as a child. I don’t need that anymore. I’ve already grown without a token of love. I’m already a dead plant. I’m already useless, hopeless, needless. My heart is dead. It can’t be revived. Your caring is now just an excessive, troublesome problem that I hate to deal with.
Your being is a burden on my already-damaged soul. Without you, there will be no expectations or standards to live up to; without you, there will be no life burdens to carry on for the rest of my life. You may disagree to this. You may think that you won’t need my success and support. But your thoughts and stands are wrong. This isn’t a matter of your simple decision. This is a matter of obligation that I was born with: I must be a good daughter; I must be successful, then later, supportive of my extended family; I must be this, I must be that. Well, the truth is, I’ll never become what I consider ideal. We started on the wrong end, and it’s irreversible because we’ve already come too far.
Now, you don’t have to interpret this as “I hate you” or “I wish you were dead.” I don’t hate you, I hate myself. I don’t wish you were dead, I wish I was dead. I’m just saying that you caused this mentality of mine. You shaped my perspective like this. I loved you the most as a child, and you neglected me, and you hit me like shit, and now, my fragile heart targeted by your harsh, cruel rejection, I’m not human anymore. I have no love inside me, and I’ve become numb over time to the point where I just don’t care anymore.
I’m sorry if I treated my little brother the same way you did me when I was little—getting easily frustrated because of imperfection then hitting him—actually, no, I’m not sorry at all. I can’t see the world be unfair. So I take a step towards making the world a fair place: doing the same to my little brother. I don’t feel sorry at all.
They say the past is the past, but I guess I’m still living in the past while everyone else is living in the present. Mom, you don’t understand how I feel and what I think. You’ll never understand me totally. But it’s okay. I don’t need you to.
…After all, I don’t need anyone…
Thank you for trying to be a good mother. But next time, try a better timing, maybe earlier, before you ever have sex with anyone.
Bye.
Sincerely,
Your daughter
Where do we go, from here, when we know it hurts but we just can’t seem to let go, from here. So work things out but we both end up hurt. And it seems to disappear ‘cause the love we had just ain’t no longer here. And I’m lost, on a road, with no speed limit, a heartbreak collision is near, don’t pull me over.
I hate teamwork unless it’s with people more skilled than I am. Unfortunately, that is not the case most of the time.
Bad boys like good girls ‘cause innocence is fun to corrupt.
I hate it when people keep bringing up my past. Okay, I get it. I grew out of what I used to be. I changed. I’m still changing. I’m trying to become a better person. So just leave me alone, please.
