JOANNA CHOI KALBUS WAS born in North Korea, she emigrated in wartime to the United States as a child, speaking no English, and was immersed in the California school system before the existence of English as a second language programs. She succeeded and eventually earned her PhD in educational administration from the University of California and served as a teacher, principal, and regional superintendent for 35 years. At age 84, Joanna has just published her first book, a memoir called The Boat Not Taken, just out from Betty Books, an imprint of WTAW Books. It has been named by Ms. Magazine as one of the most anticipated feminist books of 2025. Listen in and read along as Joanna answers the question: can you write memoir at any age?

 

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Joanna: Thank you, Marion. Thank you for hosting me.

Marion: Well, it’s wonderful to have you here.

So, let’s set this up for our listeners. After World War II, the global superpowers cut Korea in half along the 38th parallel. You were born in what is now North Korea. When you were a child, your mother managed to get you to South Korea, but then when the North invaded the South, you had to flee, eventually getting to the United States where you lived your life. Your mother was 91 years old when she died.

And as I’ve read in several interviews with you, you say that with her death, you lost your life’s historian and you set out to understand more than the stories you had been told. So let’s start there. Many people are provoked by grief or loss to find out more about the lives they lived. What was it about the loss of your mother, do you think, that compelled you into a writing life?

Joanna: My mother and I lived together all of my life. And she was a widow, so I was the last child in Korean, maknae. So, she breastfed me until I rebelled. I was four years old and eating kimchi and her milk just didn’t taste good. So, I said, I said, “Omai,” I said, “I don’t want to take your milk anymore.” And she agreed, but I think she was sad because I am her last child. And then it was always my mother and me. And so, I slept with her until the day before I got married. And then after that, you know, we lived together. She lived with me then. And before my marriage, I lived with her.

Tables have turned by the time that I got a job. So, with that, I missed her so much. Not too many people have the luxury of having your Omai for 55 years of life. So that’s how it began. I first wanted to just commune with her. So, I started talking to her and talking meaning that I was journaling. And journaling, for me, is soul writing. You write all the stuff that you want to say. And that’s the beginning of how over the years that this book became a reality.

Marion: That’s lovely. Communing with her, communicating with her after her death. And I get that. Absolutely. And I know my audience well enough to know that they’re stuck on one detail from that intro, the age at which you first published.

So, let’s just get that out of the way right away, shall we? My audience is writers, many of whom worry that they have waited too long, or that they’re too old to write memoir. So, what do you say to those people who aspire to write and publish, but who think they may not be young enough to do so?

Joanna: I disagree. Age is not a problem for us writers. If you are in, you know, I love basketball. My team is the Warriors. And, you know, if you are an athlete, yeah, age matters, but not when you are writing because we have wisdom now. We have gone through so many experiences, both good, bad, and ugly. And I think that this is the prime time because you have all these memories you have, and you have chance to analyze and reflect. I learned a lot from writing my book. And so, I encourage everybody to write your memoir because every family story is important. And think about your progeny.

I wrote this book because I want to memorialize how wonderful my mother is. I have grandchildren and they don’t know their great grandmother.

And so it would be a contribution and legacy for your family if you write that book.

Marion: I agree.

Joanna: So go at it.

Marion: Go at it. We’ll just make that your slogan, go at it.

Okay. That makes sense to me. So I’ve read in interviews with you that you did not set out to write a piece of memoir. And as you said before, you wanted to commune with her. But as you went into this and you did a lot of reporting over many years, did you have a different form? Did you think that it was going to be purely for your family, for instance, because you’ve ended up with a very highly anticipated and well-published book. So, what did you think it was going to be after you moved from communing with your mother in journal form to starting to plan a book?

Joanna: First of all, I put all the writers on a pedestal because I didn’t think that I could ever write a book. I told another interviewer the genesis of my being uncalled for to be a writer.

When I came to this country, I was 10 years old and I spoke no English. But what happened was they put me in first grade, which was wonderful because those kids don’t know I don’t speak English. They keep chattering on and I fit in. But three months later, the nun thought that I was speaking some English and put me in third grade. And that sister said that we are to write a poem. I didn’t know that it has to rhyme. So I wrote, “The cat ate a rat.” Well, I got C minus in red ink. So that did not portend well.

So, when I started journaling, it was a private communing with my mother. But then I decided that I wanted to have vignettes because there were so many incidences and memories that I wanted to put in.

So, for example, when President Obama and his family adopted a dog and I said, “Well, I’ll write about my pet.” And that’s the title of one of the chapters. And, you know, I think what I got from the juxtaposition is what was most revealing in Western culture, that animals are pets, but at least in Korean culture, you know, they do service. They have to work to survive.

So those are the things that I, it’s not just talking about my pets, but what I wanted to convey is the differences and the nuances and cultural diversity in the world. And then so from there I had slew of vignettes, but I guess you can call them short stories, but I wanted to have a regular book that is, you know, introduction and then whatever the model is.

And so, then I was in quandary as to how I’m going to put all these vignettes into a book. And so that’s when the craft of writing portion came into my life.

Marion: Well, I’ve read in an interview that you believed you had to learn the craft of writing before you undertook this book and that for that you enrolled in writing classes at your local school districts, adult education programs. And after that you attended writers’ workshops, memorably one held with writers, Gail Tsukiyama and Jane Hamilton.

And I am a huge Jane Hamilton fan. I don’t know Gail, but I do know Jane. And I know Jane’s got a big book coming out in fall of 2025. So, talk to us about what you thought you needed to know in terms of the learning writing and what those writing workshops did for you.

Joanna: Oh, yes.

You know, it is very solitary writing. And I like that because I don’t want everybody looking around and being in a place.

I’m not very good when I’m in a classroom and someone gives me a prompt, and I have to write, because there are other people around. I have to be in my meditation mode and then really go deep inside of me to get all the feelings and emotions and what I’m experiencing out.

So, what I really appreciate was the camaraderie and the support and writing workshops and critique groups do for us writers. So, the social interaction with like-minded, enthusiastic writers are very necessary component of writing your book.

Marion: I agree. I think community is so important. And we know it’s a solitary experience. As you said, it’s great to be alone and have that communing in your case with your mother and the journals. But the community of writers is where we pick up some tips and some structure and some ideas. And we get some sense of structure about our work.

And I wonder if you, like, one of the things that really intrigues me about this book of yours, this beautiful book of yours is the title itself, The Boat Not Taken. And it’s intriguing and it’s a huge piece of the tale in terms of the boat. So, give us a little insight into the title. Did you come up with it? Did you think of it while you were in your writing class? And also, just give us a little bit of the story of that, the boat itself.

Joanna: Writing a book is like the river flowing down a stream. Sometimes you get a rock there and you got to deviate. And sometimes there’s other surprises and so on.

And the writer that I became had to adjust to all those things. The first title that I had was “The Legacy from Divided Land.” And when you think about it, that is a big, broad theme in my memoir.

Marion: Yes.

Joanna: Yes. I also was a professor in higher academics and I said, “Oh shit, no one’s going to read a title that says ‘The Legacy of Divided Land.’”

And you know, those titles always have a colon in it, which explains the legacy of divided land. So even though that is a broad theme and is apropos, but I thought now I better give it up for something more eye attractive.

Marion: Yep.

So then I thought, and now I’m in the midst of after she died, going to Korea. And this is the Confucius philosophy. My mother told me before she died, she said, “You have to burn my clothes so that I have something to wear in the afterlife.” Well, I had a red Weber barbecue pit, but I thought that was really not very nice of me to burn her clothes in a barbecue pit, is it?

So I took a journey to Korea so that her younger brother’s wife could help me out and burn the clothes with whatever the ritual that they do. So, second title was going to be “The Fateful Journey.” Then in one of the writer groups, we all like to say, “Oh, that is so cliche.” So I said, that is so cliche. So I crossed that one out. And the final one was The Boat Not Taken, because that is one of the turning points of my mother and my life.

Marion: Yes. When you don’t get on the boat to go back to North Korea, is that correct?

Joanna: Yes, yes. And I learned something more after. This is the beauty of writing your memoir. You reflect and you analyze, and you come to some kind of conclusion or deduction. The scene that, I know you read my book, but that scene for five-year-old daughter, I thought it was so cruel of that man to turn us away. But when you think about it as an adult, then you have a whole different conception of what he did.

I wouldn’t be talking to you if he didn’t slap my mother and told her, “Get the hell out of here.”

Marion: Right. And he’s saying, you don’t want to go back to North Korea. You want to get out of here. And the title is, of course, very familiar to Americans because of the great poem, “The Road Not Taken.”

So, there’s nothing cliche here. It’s a beautiful title. And it’s so intriguing because it is this idea that she wanted to go back to what she knew, to North Korea. She got you to South Korea. The war breaks out. She wants to go back to North Korea because it’s familiar. And the boatman says, “No,” and slaps her and says, “No, you’re not going back there.” And at the time it must have been terrifying. But of course, look what happened. You had a life in America. So yeah, it’s a great title. And I’m very, very glad you didn’t go with the other ones. Yeah. No, they wouldn’t have worked so well.

So there’s a big secret, a huge reveal, in this story that occurred to you in the story and appears in the book. And I’m not giving it away because everyone needs to buy this book and read it. But let’s talk about the process of discovery.

Since in this book, there are many discoveries that you had along the way to reporting on your own life and that of the life of your mother. So, talk to me about processing those while you’re writing. Does writing help us process the facts of our lives? Does it heighten it? Does it delay the process of really sort of metabolizing what happened?

When you know you’re writing about it, and you’re getting this news and you got some pretty shocking news along the way, what is the actual process of writing do for processing those life truths that you discover?

Marion: That’s a great question because it’s like agony and ecstasy in that when secrets are revealed and the person is in here for me to confront her, what do you do? And so there is a turmoil, turbulence. My nights were horrendous and at the same time it was cathartic for me to write all those raw feelings down on paper. It really made me feel not so helpless. Writing helped myself to deal with the shocking secrets.

Marion: That’s so generous.

Joanna: It’s a good thing that I wasn’t thinking, oh, you know, I’m going to have all these readers going to read about it so I have to better do this or that.

No. Readers were not in my radar. It was just my personhood, my spirit and my body and whatever it is in, it was shattered at that time. And then, of course, you could imagine what a shock it is because, you know, Omae and I were so close, and it seems like it was a betrayal and all that. So, it really helped me. And I learned a lot by writing my book is that facts and truth are not synonymous.

Marion: Oh, there you go. Yeah.

Joanna: Yeah.

Marion: Isn’t that fabulous? Facts and truth are not synonymous.

I’m so honored that you were so generous in that answer because I think a lot of people think I know I’m going to discover things, but I don’t know if I can handle it. But the writing itself allows for us to reflect and to process, I think, but you’ve just backed that up. So, thank you for that. That’s lovely.

So, you learned a lot, as you just said, you discovered so much. And let’s talk about keeping all that stuff straight. Did you draw a timeline? Did you put up a chart? How did you manage to handle the details of the story you were unearthing?

So, we’ve talked about the emotional aspect of handling the details, but what about the practical aspect?

Joanna: You know, when you are in grade school, at least that first grade school, you get this booklets, and you color in if the tree is there and you put green color on and then the sun you put yellow and so on.

And that was at the stage when I started to write. I had a timeline and it was bare bone timeline. My mother was born in 1905. Then she got married in 1924. And then my big brother, you never address older siblings by their name. So, it’s always my big brother. And then the little brother is eight years older than me, but he’s little brother. And we couldn’t go on about the writing process having to do with dual language and another question. So, what I had to do was that was a timeline, just like filling in the colors. But when the stories emerge, I have to fill in and mine memories, and so on, because I didn’t have any.

Well, we escaped and then there’s the war and anything that was there probably was all gone. So I don’t have any records. And then when we came over here, the relatives are in North Korea. I would think by now my mother’s family of that era would be all deceased. And if I could ever go back, which I won’t be able to go back anyways, I wouldn’t know any relatives. So, it’s a hard journey to do that. So, you have to mine your memories to do that. And then this is where the craft of writing comes in. You have all these emotional stuff that’s in your mind, a gestalt vision, and you know exactly how you feel, but how do you write it into words?

How do you convey that?

And that’s the hard part of making sure that the readers become you.

How do you write that? And that’s the hard part of writing the memoir, but it’s also very revealing. It was an evolution. I was at the bottom and then we just kept on climbing up until the publisher accepted my manuscript.

Marion: Yeah. Well, that started with that timeline, which I think is very helpful to people. Some people sketch out books, some people make a map, some people do, I’ve heard everything over the years. And in your case, you did a timeline of your lives, which I think is incredibly helpful as you discover things. And your structure really supports your story.

As you said, you’ve written them, you referred to them as short stories, vignettes, and structure is the most dreaded word for most writers. It can just send them right to bed and never get them to the typewriter or the computer.

Did you consult with your writing group? Did your publisher help you? What was your key to setting up the structure, both chronologically and in these small vignettes?

Joanna: I had to take all my vignettes and then put them in the order that would make it into a book. And by that, I mean, I borrowed the structure of fiction. So, in order to do that, what I did was I had five parts. And the first part was the Korea years.

And from 1905, when my mother was born and to 1951, when we came to America, that’s so that the readers would get a sense of sometimes if you go flashback and go this and that, people get confused. But I thought it would be better if we just go chronologically for the Korea years. And then, of course, it’s just reasonable for me to coming to America section, the immigrant life. So part two was from 1951 to 1959, when I graduated from high school and was going to UCLA for my bachelor’s degree.

And then you probably noticed that there’s a huge gap. Part three begins with the death of my mother in 1996. And that one, I had to do the best I can because we got flashbacks contained in that.

So yeah, structure is very important. And I had people read it. And if they’re confused about it, then I changed it. So yes, you do need to have feedback from your writing groups and other mentors that you rely on. So that’s what I did.

And then another turning point in writing this book was part four. That’s when I didn’t know what to do after the shock. I just did not know. I didn’t even know if I wanted to publish it because it is so shocking to me.

My world went awry. It just shattered me. So, I did the return to Asia part. And then, so it took a long time, as you can tell. It’s 29 years since my mother passed away. And the last part was resolution. So that’s how I structured it. More of a model of how fiction is written instead of my saying, well, I was born in 1941, I went to high school, and so on.

So, does that make sense to you?

Marion: It makes perfect sense to me. And it’s not a diary and it’s not an autobiography. It’s memoir. It’s got an argument. It’s got drive. And you did leave out a lot.

And as we start to wrap this up, I wanted to just talk about in the introduction, I spoke of you being dropped into a California school system. And you talked about that with, you know, no English as a second language option and that sink or swim mentality. And as I read your account of this, of your life, you and your mother, you lived in a shed for horses. It lacked a bathroom, but you persevered, developing a strong learning ethic and eventually earning a PhD and having a stellar career in education.

And I couldn’t help but feel that this is the book for right now. Because right now in this country, we’re engaged in a terrible struggle over immigration and who gets to live here.

And while you could not possibly have known what season and what political climate your book would be published in necessarily, when you began it all those years ago, this is the book for now. And it illustrates what people bring to this great country.

In other words, you’re part of a vital conversation. Do you feel that?

Joanna: Yes, I do.

Marion: Good.

Joanna: Because it is not just my memoir. I think that every family has a unique and individualistic history. But you know, the broader theme of all our family is how world events affects the trajectory of one family’s life.

So, I think that each one of us, when writing your memoir or reflecting on your family, you can see if the broad themes affecting the trajectory of your family’s history. So, it is very important that we learn from writing our memoir or reading from memoir. And since we’re winding up, I would like to ask the reader, did my memoir change you and how? And then to sum it up, my takeaway from writing the book is that the most valued word in the lexicon is empathy.

We lack empathy right now.

Marion: Yes, we do. Thank you, Joanna. Thank you for the book. Thank you for the conversation. Thank you for the life that you live that is an example to all of us. It’s an honor to meet you and the book is great. Thank you so much.

Joanna: Marion, I get the last word because I’m older than you. I wish you were doing The Memoir Project in 1996 so that I don’t have to go through all this work by myself.

Marion: Well, you figured it out. You figured it out, Joanna. The author is Joanna Choi-Culbis, whose debut memoir is The Boat Not Taken, just out from Betty Books, an imprint of WTAW Press.

Get it wherever books are sold. See more on the author at Joanna Choi Kalbus dot com. See more on the press at WTAW Press slash Betty.org. I’m Marion Roach Smith and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. QWERTY is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at Overit Studios.com. Our producer is Jacqueline Mignot. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing? Visit Marion Roach dot com, the home of The Memoir Project, where writers get their needs met through online classes in how to write memoir. And thanks for listening. Don’t forget to follow QWERTY wherever you get your podcasts and listen to it wherever you go. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a review. It helps others to find their way to their writing lives.

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