“
Soojung Jo writes with clarity, wisdom, and the bravery required to fully illuminate the human condition. This is a brilliant and cinematic debut, heart-wrenching and triumphant, liberating and expansive. From Kentucky to South Korea, from West Point to parenthood, from anger and grief to healing and joy, this is a vital contribution to adoption and American literature. This is an exciting and beautiful new voice.”
– Lee Herrick, author of Gardening Secrets of the Dead
“This is perhaps the most compelling book I have read on the experience of being an adopted person and an adoptive parent. Soojung Jo – thank you for this amazing gift to adoptive parents everywhere who themselves are not adoptees. This must have been so hard to write (not to mention time-consuming) but your effort will provide enormous and meaningful insight to parents like me who want to understand my child’s experience. Your honesty and humor give you unparalleled credibility. This book is a MUST READ for any adoptive parent raising a child who is a different race or is from a different culture than themselves. This book is a MUST READ for anyone interested in understanding the human condition. This memoir moved me, taught me and kept me up three nights in a row! I hope it will do the same for others. Thank you!!”
-LJ (review from Amazon.com)
“Soojung Jo has a written a book that is honest, riveting, and at points, incredibly heartbreaking. Early on, Soojung reveals that as a child, she wasn’t sure if she was real or not real; one gets the sense that Ghost of Sangju is a testimony, a demonstration to both the world and herself that she is, in fact, extremely real, that her experiences and history are important to chronicle. If decades of literature have hidden adoptee stories such as Soojung’s from view, with this brave memoir she has firmly asserted that her narrative, and others like it, can no longer be ignored.”
-Karissa Chen, Fiction & Poetry Editor, Hyphen
Soojung Jo | writing 