I really enjoyed Starry field. I learned a lot of korean history but also insight into the author's experience in tracing her lineage.

"For my story is our story, and involves the reclamation of the lives forgotten and seemingly buried forever in our ancestral homeland."

Starry Field is Margaret Juhae Lee's retelling of her search to rediscover her family's history buried in documents and stories tied to Korea's dark past. Margaret recounts her multiple visits to Korea and her experiences and learnings while she's there. As time passes and she begins her journalism career she is focused on the life of her grandfather, Lee Chui Ha. A man that had a rebellious side and was later imprisoned. Margaret is determined to uncover the truth.

I enjoyed reading this memoir as it was intriguing to read about the lengths Margaret went to learn about her grandfather and the rest of her family along the way. Her stories pull readers in to feel all of the emotions expressed by her family members through their interviews and by Margaret herself as she remembers and dictates each of these memories. By the end of her journey, she has collected a book of history across three generations that she can proudly share with her two children. Their family stories will never be lost again.

I was once told, "Every family has a historian.". In my family, this is the role I play. Though not a trained journalist (or a writer for that matter), I've had to endure the difficulty of interviewing the older generations in my family. Sorting through fact vs fiction and pushing through the lack of desire to share stories was disheartening at times. But it's always rewarding when you piece together a story or add to a branch in the tree.

Thank you to Melville House and Netgalley for the opportunity to read an advanced digital copy of Starry Field. Opinions are my own.

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Starry Field does provide a good deal of information about this author's experience and it is well written; however, it is similar to many other memoirs about a similar subject matter.

Thanks to NetGalley and Melville House Publishing for the ARC!

Margaret Juhae Lee’s "Starry Field" is a remarkably engaging family history that is only occasionally hampered by an unforthcoming memoir.

Lee works professionally as a journalist, and it shows in the best way. The journalistic approach is even more rewarding than one might expect, with Lee writing rich and affectionate profiles through interviews with her family members, thoughtfully curating which elements will be most interesting and relevant. I’m sure I speak for many readers when I say that I’ve been given an exceptionally short-sighted and biased view of Korean history, and Lee intuitively and preemptively accounts for such ignorance. The interviews themselves are also framed beautifully, allowing for all the wonderful idiosyncrasies of family—the extraneous details that are important because they are important to the person sharing them. Lee’s craft is admirable here, as these kinds of inclusions are exactly what allow her to plumb the deep complexities of both familial and cultural history.

Unfortunately, the memoir-tinged sections do not fare as well. I think memoir is about closing the distance between the real and imagined self, and doing so requires some level of interiority and ugly self-disclosure. Throughout "Starry Field," the author often feels like an intruder in her own story, a little too preoccupied with unnecessary image control. For example, she repeatedly notes her political and religious stances almost defensively, and it struck me as odd each time because they don’t amount to much. In a memoir, I’m already on the narrator’s side, and I want to see what the writer explores when they have nothing to prove. In this book, it reads almost as if Margaret Juhae Lee is moving to establish her place in a lineage of political courage, and I just don’t know that it fully clicks. I think her journalistic prowess in reclaiming and reviving her family history does more than enough work in that regard.

Lest those criticisms sound harsh, I still think the book is exceptional in many ways, and it also makes me want to read a follow-up memoir if Lee explores her themes with more vulnerability. The final chapter and epilogue suggest it’s an exciting possibility, should the author choose. In the meantime, "Starry Field" is a fascinating look at how much is lost if families do not archive and memorialize their past, and I’m really excited to share this book with other people.

Starry Field is a search for Margaret Juhae Lees family roots in Korea.Raised in America a Korean America she starts traveling to Korea to research her family history .A well written memoir that kept me interested as the author unravels more and more information.#netgalley #melville

I received a copy of Starry Field from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Starry Field chronicles Ms. Lee's investigations into her family's past. A child of two worlds, Ms. Lee recounts her childhood as a Korean American child in the United States, contending with her Korean and American identities and tracing her family's past through the tumultuous Japanese colonization and subsequent revolutionary periods in Korea. She gears her reflection through her search for information about her paternal grandfather, who died as a young man. Lee's memoir introduces us to 3 generations of her family, her grandmother, who was left a young widow, her father, a child left fatherless at a young age, and her own experiences in America and Korea.

Lee's investigation of her family and of herself make for an interesting read and invites the readers to reflect on the importance of their own past to move forward towards their futures.

Starry Field by Margaret Juhae Lee was an interesting, complete memoir of family discovery and understanding. I felt like I was there during each trip to Korea and understanding more of the author's family as she was discovering as well. I find this to be an incredibly important feat for memoirs, to make the readers care is a must for memoirs. I know this sounds obvious, but this memoir stands out.

Starry Field is a memoir about a woman of Korean descent who grows up in Houston and returns to Korea several times to learn about her family's history. The story focuses on learning about the mysteries around her grandfather's life. Ms. Lee does very thorough research and spends a lot of time with her admirable grandmother, the matriarch of the family.

Starry Field briefly touched upon many elements of Korean history. However, the non-linear timeline of the memoir made it difficult to follow. I am really interested to learn more and relied on my own Google searches to fill the gaps that I struggled to close with the book.

Thank you to Melville House Publishing and NetGalley for an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Margaret Juhae Lee does excellent work using the search for the history of her activist grandfather as the center point around which she blended together the stories of no less than three generations of her family. I found "Starry Field" to ultimately be a wonderfully touching and intimate read.