“[A]s my mom and I both know she failed to love me right, we also both know she always did love me,” writes Sung Yim in their new memoir, What About the Rest of Your Life. “That’s why love can be both arbitrary and dangerous.”
That line contains Yim’s central throughline: the way loving an abuser can mean eventually conflating love with abuse, and Yim’s ongoing journey to reprogram this particular piece of their consciousness. What About the Rest of Your Life is a bit of a stretch for local press Perfect Day Publishing. It’s more challenging than its more easygoing predecessors, which isn’t a critique, but a sign of progress. This is new territory, and it’s exciting to see the local press take on a promising young writer’s debut memoir.
It’s also not an easy book to read.