Eyes of the Mirror

The journey to a strange land must be one of the oldest plots in literature, but it has flourished through millennia because of the infinite variations in travelers and destinations. In "Eyes of the Mirror," Margaret Emerson stakes out a route-and ultimately a destination-distinctly her own. At a desperate, midlife juncture she embarks on a two-year stint teaching English in a public school in a remote region of South Korea. With rudimentary Korean language skills and little access to other native speakers of English, she is on her own in a culture in which everything is unfamiliar, unclear, uncertain, and often incomprehensible. She sets about her work teaching middle school girls and establishing a life for herself-furnishing and settling into an apartment; shopping for food and clothing; dealing with strangely different institutions, customs, mind-sets, all meticulously detailed in spare, clear prose. We end by experiencing with her the stripping of an individual of almost everything familiar and immersion in a context where we never know for sure what our words or actions mean to others or what they mean by their behavior toward us. Her return to the United States turns out to be an intensification of this experience as she develops diabetes with devastating, life-threatening effects when the disease is misdiagnosed and mistreated. Now her own body becomes alien territory to her in a deepening journey into the core of her being. This is a powerful, memorable, and ultimately inspiring book. Reading it is a journey not soon forgotten.