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    Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life
    Unavailable
    Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life
    Unavailable
    Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life
    Ebook260 pages4 hours

    Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life

    By Christine Hyung-Oak Lee

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A memoir of reinvention after a stroke at age thirty-three.

    Christine Hyung-Oak Lee woke up with a headache on the morning of December 31, 2006. By that afternoon, she saw the world—quite literally—upside down. By New Year’s Day, she was unable to form a coherent sentence. And after hours in the ER, days in the hospital, and multiple questions and tests, her doctors informed her that she had had a stroke. 

    For months afterward, Lee outsourced her memories to a journal, taking diligent notes to compensate for the thoughts she could no longer hold on to. It is from these notes that she has constructed this frank and compelling memoir.

    In a precise and captivating narrative, Lee navigates fearlessly between chronologies, weaving her childhood humiliations and joys together with the story of the early days of her marriage; and then later, in painstaking, painful, and unflinching detail, the account of her stroke and every upset—temporary or permanent—that it caused. 

    Lee illuminates the connection between memory and identity in an honest, meditative, and truly funny manner, utterly devoid of self-pity. And as she recovers, she begins to realize that this unexpected and devastating event has provided a catalyst for coming to terms with her true self—and, in a way, has allowed her to become the person she’s always wanted to be.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateFeb 14, 2017
    ISBN9780062422170
    Author

    Christine Hyung-Oak Lee

    Christine Hyung-Oak Lee is a writer who lives in Berkeley, California. Born in New York City, Christine earned her undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley and her M.F.A. at Mills College. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in the New York Times and on BuzzFeed and the Rumpus, among other publications. She has been awarded a Hedgebrook residency, and her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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    Reviews for Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember

    3.5/5

    24 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is saved by its beautiful writing -- she truly is a skilled wordsmith. But as a memoir, it doesn't add up. The balance between medical and personal is off, and she doesn't let us in for some pivotal parts of her life. We don't find out until the epilogue, for instance, that she experienced 10 years of infertility (!) that was magically cured by her stroke (?).
    • 3/5
      OMG, this is an annoying woman. She doesn't show that she has ever thought about anyone but herself except in the way that she can use their stories to write her own. You know the old joke, "Well enough talk about me, tell me what you think about me?" Ha, ha, but rather grating when there's a whole book full of it. I know anyone living with a devastating life event must think a great deal about herself in order to recover, but I'm pretty sure that recovery can be facilitated by thinking about others, their lives and their feelings at least part of the time. Plus, she was a cutter. I feel about cutters the same way fundamentalists feel about transgender people - it's trendy, self serving and non-authentic. Another example of her narcissism. She does have a great many interesting medical details about strokes, medical treatments, and how parts of the body function; however, before she makes a firm pronouncement about the wonderful ability of the brain to regenerate itself while none of the other organs of the body can, specifically mentioning the liver, she should do a little research about other organs in the body.
    • 5/5
      The author suffered a stroke at age 33, due to an undiagnosed hole in her heart. While not visibly disabling, she spent long months trying to retrain her brain, and compensate for thoughts she couldn't seem to hold onto. She kept a journal of her recovery, its toll on her marriage, and the forced introspection. Parts of the book are disjointed, and I think she was trying to show us how her brain was working/not working during the recovery. This worked for me, but might not for everybody.