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Michelle is the narrator and protagonist of the book. She is a bright and charismatic storyteller, prone to irony and self-awareness when recounting times of suffering. Throughout the story, Michelle reflects on her relationship with her mother and, by extension, her relationship to her Korean heritage, which she fears losing alongside her mother. Much of her story is dedicated to descriptions of Korean food and cultural customs in a way that draws the reader into her experience of the culture, and the result of this is a sensorial index of the smells, sounds, and flavors that define memories of the Korean side of Michelle’s life. 

From a young age, Michelle struggles to reconcile both sides of her racial identity. As a Korean American, she is ousted in both American and Korean arenas—in school she is taunted and misunderstood by her white peers, and in Korea she is othered by the language barrier and physical manifestations of her whiteness. Michelle often describes feeling worried that, without her mother by her side, people will be unable to recognize her as a Korean woman, and she will lose her own cultural identifiers. This fear of losing a massive part of her identity is an obstacle Michelle faces throughout the book, and as a result she is constantly trying to find a place where she feels she belongs. Ultimately she finds this in music; music tails her throughout the story, at karaoke bars, in her bands, in her love life. The text ultimately comes full circle, ending with her victorious show in Seoul where she performs songs she wrote about her mother in her mother’s homeland.

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