Aug 20, 2026
Estelle Erasmus speaks with Hyeseung Song, author of Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl, about shaping nearly 40 years of life into a memoir, finding the right structure, and writing honestly about family, identity, and mental health. They also talked about how Hyeseung's life as an artist and painter informs the way she sees and writes the self.
In this episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYAjyA26P14&t=4s
Hyeseung Song is a first-generation Korean American painter, writer, and teacher and the author of Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl, a memoir about an Asian American woman's struggle with self-worth and mental illness. Docile was called “a savagely beautiful memoir” by David Henry Hwang and “a revelation” by Chloé Cooper Jones. The audiobook was named a Best of Apple title, and a Korean-language edition was released in 2025.
Raised in Texas, Song studied philosophy, languages, and creative writing at Princeton University. She pursued postgraduate studies in law and philosophy at Harvard before leaving to study painting in New York. Her paintings are held in private collections internationally. She was a nonfiction fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and is currently at work on a meta-memoir exploring the ethics of writing about other people, revision, and the failures of translation that emerged after her father's unexpected death following the publication of Docile.
Links
Website: https://hyeseung.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/hyeseungs
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About Estelle
Estelle
Erasmus is an award-winning journalist, TEDx speaker, and author of
Writing That Gets Noticed. She is the host, founder, and
executive producer of Freelance Writing Direct, an adjunct
professor at NYU, and the former editor-in-chief of five national
magazines with a combined reach of 10 million readers.
Her work has appeared in more than 150 publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, WIRED, PBS/Next Avenue, The Independent, and AARP The Magazine.
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