I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki: A Memoir

The South Korean runaway bestseller, debut author Baek Se-Hee’s intimate therapy memoir—think Crying in H Mart meets Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.

PSYCHIATRIST: So how can I help you?

ME: I don’t know, I’m—what’s the word—depressed? Do I have to go into detail?

Baek Sehee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her—what to call it?—depression? She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgmental of others. She hides her feelings well at work and with friends; adept at performing the calmness, even ease, her lifestyle demands. The effort is exhausting, overwhelming, and keeps her from forming deep relationships. This can't be normal.

But if she's so hopeless, why can she always summon a yen for her favorite street food: the hot, spicy rice cake, tteokbokki? Is this just what life is like?

Recording her dialogues with her psychiatrist over a 12-week period, Baek begins to disentangle the feedback loops, knee-jerk reactions, and harmful behaviors that keep her locked in a cycle of self-abuse. Part memoir, part self-help book, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki is a book to keep close and to reach for in times of darkness. It will appeal to anyone who has ever felt alone or unjustified in their everyday despair.

About the Author

Born in 1990, Baek Sehee studied creative writing in college before working for five years at a publishing house. For ten years, she received psychiatric treatment for dysthymia (persistent mild depression), which became the subject of her essays, and then I Want to Die, but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki. Her favorite food is tteokbokki, and she lives with her rescue dog Jaram.

Anton Hur was born in Stockholm, Sweden. He is the winner of a PEN Translates grant and a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, among many others, and his translations include Kyung-Sook Shin’s Violets, Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny, and Sang Young Park’s Love in the Big City.