The market smelled of dried persimmon and salted fish. My mother's hands were always moving — peeling, sorting, folding. I used to count the wrinkles on her knuckles and think they were a map of everywhere she had ever been.
— Opening lines of Sun-Yi's manuscript, Chapter 1I was born in Busan in 1943. I grew up during a war that most people in the world have already forgotten, in a city that was simultaneously the last refuge and the beating heart of a nation. I watched my mother sell vegetables in the market to keep us alive. I watched my father leave one morning and not come back for three years.
I moved to Seoul at twenty-two, married at twenty-four, raised three children, and worked as a primary school teacher for thirty-six years. I have had a full life. But the story I never told — the one that matters most — is the story of that girl in Busan. The one who memorised her mother's face because she was afraid she would forget it.
I started writing twelve years ago, after my youngest daughter bought me a laptop. I have 140 pages in Korean, which I have partially translated into English with my granddaughter's help. The manuscript covers my childhood up to age 14. I need help with the second half: adolescence, leaving home, the strange grief of becoming someone new.
My eyesight is failing. I can still write for about one hour a day before the letters swim. What I am looking for is someone to work with me — to sit with me via video call, to take my spoken memories and help me shape them into the prose they deserve to become. The words are all there. I just need a partner to help me find them.
140 pages across 12 planned chapters. The first half lives in Sun-Yi's words. The second half lives in her memory, waiting.
Sun-Yi isn't looking for a ghost-writer to take over — she is looking for a careful listener who can help her voice become a book.
Sun-Yi taught children to read for thirty-six years. She has four grandchildren, a small apartment full of books, and a voice memo app on her phone where she has recorded over sixty stories she has not yet written down. She communicates primarily via video call and email. Her English is excellent, though she says she "thinks in Korean and dreams in Busan."
Tell Sun-Yi about yourself. She is a teacher at heart — she will be gentle, patient, and endlessly grateful.
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