About this Event
Event guidelines:
- All attendees are strongly encouraged to wear a face mask at all times.
- Tickets are limited to restrict capacity at our store, and each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
- Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
- A signing will follow the talk.
- Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
- The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/7N-DIaRFTdc
- As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.
If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].
A Korean mother runs off to Alaska, sparking a greater season of wandering. Could her daughter be destined for the same?
When Jennifer Hope Choi first stumbled upon the “curse” known as yeokmasal—an allegedly inheritable affliction causing one to roam farther and farther from home—she immediately consulted her mother. “Oh yeah,” Umma quipped. “I have that.” Technically this wasn’t a revelation. Since 2007, the no-nonsense open-heart surgery nurse had moved suddenly from the Golden State to the Last Frontier, shuttling over the next decade through seven states.
For much of her adulthood, Choi had fancied herself nothing like her immigrant mother, late-blooming vagabond spirit and all—until life in Brooklyn imploded, spurring her to relocate to South Carolina and reckon with startling truths. Artmaking had left her in debt, single, and jobless. Questions hovered, gathering ragged like fractus clouds: Was it time to give up writing? Would she ever have a place of her own to call home? Or was she doomed to bunk up with Umma in the Deep South indefinitely?
This probing memoir follows Choi through her many former homes, from a crumbling Chinatown tenement to a haunted museum in Georgia. Connections emerge, between her curious trajectory and idiosyncratic Korean identity narratives: a mystical Korean dog breed, pro golfers, modern Korean cults, the four pillars of destiny, and Korean American art. One question lingers throughout her search: What might be gained from living in residence with uncertainty?
Told with whip-smart sensibility, The Wanderer’s Curse is an electric mother-daughter story, exploring ideas of belonging, self-determination, and possibility, leaving readers to wonder what we take with us generation to generation, what we wish we could leave behind, and how we move on.
Jennifer Hope Choi is a National Magazine Award–nominated editor at Bon Appétit. Her writing has been anthologized in The Best American Travel Writing and appeared in the New York Times, Guernica, Lucky Peach, VQR, and BuzzFeed. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
T Kira Māhealani Madden is a diasporic Kanaka 'Ōiwi (Native Hawaiian) writer, photographer, and amateur magician. She is the Founding Editor of No Tokens, a magazine of literature and art, and the author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls. Her debut novel, Whidbey, is forthcoming with Mariner, HarperCollins in 2026.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Books Are Magic Montague, 122 Montague Street, Brooklyn, United States
USD 10.89 to USD 32.65
