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    Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life
    Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life
    Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life
    Audiobook7 hours

    Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life

    Written by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee

    Narrated by Emily Woo Zeller

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

     A memoir of reinvention after a stroke at thirty-three, based on the author’s viral Buzzfeed essay

    Christine Hyung-Oak Lee woke up with a headache on New Year’s Eve 2006. By that afternoon, she saw the world—quite literally—upside down. By New Year’s Day, she was unable to form a coherent sentence. And after hours in the ER, days in the hospital, and multiple questions and tests, she learned that she had had a stroke. For months, Lee outsourced her memories to her notebook. It is from these memories that she has constructed this frank and compelling memoir.

    In a precise and captivating narrative, Lee navigates fearlessly between chronologies, weaving her childhood humiliations and joys together with the story of the early days of her marriage; and then later, in painstaking, painful, and unflinching detail, her stroke and every upset, temporary or permanent, that it causes.

    Lee processes her stroke and illuminates the connection between memory and identity in an honest, meditative, and truly funny manner, utterly devoid of self-pity. And as she recovers, she begins to realize that this unexpected and devastating event provides a catalyst for coming to terms with her true self.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateFeb 14, 2017
    ISBN9780062669957
    Author

    Christine Hyung-Oak Lee

    Christine Hyung-Oak Lee is a writer who lives in Berkeley, California. Born in New York City, Christine earned her undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley and her M.F.A. at Mills College. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in the New York Times and on BuzzFeed and the Rumpus, among other publications. She has been awarded a Hedgebrook residency, and her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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    Reviews for Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember

    3.5/5

    31 ratings4 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Unfortunately I read it a few months ago, after my stroke [May 17, 2020...interesting. My dad's birthday. He would have been 103 years old.]

      And I remember very little. I need to really start taking notes! My short term memory right now is about 15-30 seconds. Mornings you will find me walking back and forth between my bedroom & study looking for things, and of course I'll forget what I was looking for, but may find something else I need...and I can be back and forth for close to an hour.

      Imagine getting dressed to go out. Fortunately, with COVID19 I don't do that much away from home.

      I'll listen to it again & review after. I'll probably remember parts as I listen. But some of it will seem totally new to me. Sigh. I am loading up today on books about recovering from stroke. I don't know what I would do without online book memberships!

    • 5/5
      The author suffered a stroke at age 33, due to an undiagnosed hole in her heart. While not visibly disabling, she spent long months trying to retrain her brain, and compensate for thoughts she couldn't seem to hold onto. She kept a journal of her recovery, its toll on her marriage, and the forced introspection. Parts of the book are disjointed, and I think she was trying to show us how her brain was working/not working during the recovery. This worked for me, but might not for everybody.
    • 4/5
      This is saved by its beautiful writing -- she truly is a skilled wordsmith. But as a memoir, it doesn't add up. The balance between medical and personal is off, and she doesn't let us in for some pivotal parts of her life. We don't find out until the epilogue, for instance, that she experienced 10 years of infertility (!) that was magically cured by her stroke (?).
    • 3/5
      OMG, this is an annoying woman. She doesn't show that she has ever thought about anyone but herself except in the way that she can use their stories to write her own. You know the old joke, "Well enough talk about me, tell me what you think about me?" Ha, ha, but rather grating when there's a whole book full of it. I know anyone living with a devastating life event must think a great deal about herself in order to recover, but I'm pretty sure that recovery can be facilitated by thinking about others, their lives and their feelings at least part of the time. Plus, she was a cutter. I feel about cutters the same way fundamentalists feel about transgender people - it's trendy, self serving and non-authentic. Another example of her narcissism. She does have a great many interesting medical details about strokes, medical treatments, and how parts of the body function; however, before she makes a firm pronouncement about the wonderful ability of the brain to regenerate itself while none of the other organs of the body can, specifically mentioning the liver, she should do a little research about other organs in the body.