Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published. This is less a book and more a transcript of a few therapy sessions that frankly aren't very productive, well structured, or particularly insightful.

Above all, my biggest take away from her story is how important it is to speak to people about how you’re feeling. Chapters address topics such as honesty, self-surveillance, self-esteem, medication, physical attractiveness, and more. Despite being fairly short, it failed to hold my concentration for long, and I must admit that I found myself skim-/speed-reading at times, which is never a good sign. or for those who want to understand how complicated one’s mind can be when one constantly needs external validation, and on top of it, is extremely empathetic.

despite the issues i have with the book, i still would recommend readers give it a try because this honestly felt like free therapy to me. Although I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokpokki is actually a compilation of written dialogues between the author and her psychiatrist, I was able to immerse myself into the conversation, to the point that it felt very intimate, as if I was in her situation all along.

Pada akhirnya, buku ini berakhir bukan sebagai pertanyaan maupun jawaban, melainkan sebagai sebuah harapan.She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgemental of others. Baek, understandably, finds these sessions to be enlightening as through them she gains self-knowledge and a more nuanced understanding of her mental health, I did not. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive.

But if she's so hopeless, why can she always summon a yen for her favorite street food: the hot, spicy rice cake, tteokbokki?

The way the book is written, with these honest conversations between Baek Se-Hee and her therapist, makes it feel so real. I wanted more of the author’s narrative, and the brief pages in between transcriptions were helpful but not enough to make it feel like a story. The author and therapist both acknowledge that at the end - there's no conclusion, there's just this. In this candid if stilted debut, South Korean essayist Sehee documents the intensive therapy sessions that led her out of depression and anxiety.