Black Girl from Pyongyang by Monica Macias

She moves to Spain first, then various countries, hustling away doing cleaning and shop jobs to keep going, spending quite a lot of time researching her father and their home country and working out whether their reputation is warranted (she apparently interviews thousands of people and presumably there’s another book in that).

Monica’s eyes are gradually opened to the single-perspective education she’s received, and matures from running away from an American she encounters on a permitted trip to Bejing to living in New York for three years. Then her mum goes back home to look after her oldest brother, who had been sent to Cuba, and Monica resolves to forget her previous life and become only Korean, to such an extent that she forgets Spanish, her native tongue, then can’t communicate with her mum (there’s a long string of regret about their relationship).

Monica is placed in a military-style school (there are no others) and we are surprised to read that girls are introduced to the school just for Monica and her older sister to have classmates, matched to their height so a few years older, as Monica is really tall for her age! It seems to be that you are not allowed to have real friends, too, as the child she is closest to is only allowed to be a friend and watcher. From then on we are given a life story which involves quite a lot of work but also quite a lot of flying around the world, and a narrative that the two strong man country leaders she is raised by are benevolent and misunderstood by the rest of the world. Born in Equatorial Guinea, West Africa, to a Guinean father and Spanish mother, Monica and her siblings and mother are sent to North Korea when she, the youngest, is seven, for their own safety as her father becomes president of the country after its independence from Spain (and quite soon afterwards is assassinated by his own nephew in a coup). This lifestyle has helped me to focus on my tasks and goals, to be productive and manage stress successfully.Īs seen in the quote above, this book records an exercise in taking what you’re given and trying to do the best you can with it, and you can’t help but admire Macias for doing that under the circumstances. Even now, as an adult, structure is threaded through my daily habits. Monica Macias – “Black Girl from Pyongyang”įrom that day on, I realised that I had no choice but to accept the order and discipline of the school, and finally embraced the rigours of the life I had been given. Who would have thought you would read a book about someone from West Africa moving to North Korea? My second NetGalley read of the month and a very interesting one at that.

Black Girl from Pyongyang by Monica Macias