INFERNO

A publishing professional makes her writing debut with a memoir that details her experiences with postpartum psychosis.

As Cho notes, she and her husband, James, were two Korean Americans who never paid "attention to Korean traditions,” but as they planned for a trip across the U.S. to show off their infant son to friends and relatives, "the rules [of their culture],” which included a "hundred-day celebration" for their baby, suddenly mattered. Then, a week before the event, Cho experienced a harrowing break with reality. Not only did the author believe she was Dante’s Beatrice, responsible for leading her husband out of hell; she also believed her baby son had "devils’ eyes.” James took her to a psychiatric hospital. In the dream state of madness, she felt "removed from time,” and memories from childhood and adolescence intermingled with the present. It was as though she was caught in "an infinite loop" in which events, including a past abusive relationship, happened "again and again but with slight variations.” Cho’s sense of self fractured to the point where she could not recognize the faces of members of her husband's family in pictures. At the same time, the psychosis also seemed to bring her closer to the ancestors who fled North Korea at the beginning of the Korean War and sacrificed connections to loved ones they would never see again. Thinking of them, the author remarks that her experiences "felt so familiar, pre-written somehow,” as if the psychosis somehow replayed a kind of epigenetic trauma. Cho also candidly describes the depression that gripped her in the months following her break. “I wondered if [my son] could sense it,” she writes, “this stranger who had taken his mother’s place.” Haunting and emotionally intense, this powerful memoir explores the hidden connections that tie families across generations, offering poignant meditations on the meaning of motherhood and identity.

A compelling look at a mysterious mental illness.