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

Baek Sehee

Nov 2022 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA

About this ebook

The New York Times bestselling therapy memoir translated by International Booker shortlistee Anton Hur.

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, but 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 desire 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 twelve-week period, and expanding on each session with her own reflective micro-essays, Baek begins to disentangle the 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 the first book in a duology to keep close and to reach for in times of darkness.

Ratings and reviews

I'm a bumbling idiot on an imperfect journey. Thank you Baek Se-hee for giving me a moment to feel at ease with my imperfection.

juygtpuui. m my

soo good

About the author

Baek Sehee (1990-2025) was born in Goyang, South Korea and studied creative writing at Dongguk University in Seoul before working for five years in publishing. For ten years, she received psychiatric treatment for persistent depressive disorder, which became the subject of her essays, and then her memoirs I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, books one and two, which have been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

Anton Hur was born in Stockholm, Sweden. He is the author of No One Told Me Not To and the novel Toward Eternity. His translations include Bora Chung's Cursed Bunny, which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award.